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[UGC] Question of the Week (3/2/10) – Recent patent moves stifle / encourage innovation?
It’s been a busy week in the world of patents and lawsuits:
Facebook patents the newsfeed: http://mashable.com/2010/02/25/facebook-news-feed-patent/
Google patents location based ads: http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/01/google-location-ads/
Apple suing HTC + Google over patent infringement: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/google-htc-apple-lawsuit/, http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/the-complaint-apples-patent-lawsuit-against-htc-is-all-about-android/
So are these warranted? Bluffs? Encouraging or stifling innovation? Chime on in…
Comments are closed.
about 3 years ago
It is a fact that some industries require patents to sustain high innovation levels. But for that to be true, some conditions need to be present: i) High costs of R&D; ii) Ease of reverse engineering / copying; iii) Products extracting value mainly from their functionality. The great example here is the Pharma industry.
The explanation: given the functional nature of the products and the ease to copy, the only way to pay for the astronomical investments and yield positive returns is to hold the exclusivity in the use of the product of the R&D effort. Without IP, there would be no incentive to innovate.
Now… talking about patents in internet… neither is the cost of R&D too high nor do the ‘products’ extract their value mainly from functionality!
It could be said that there is consensus around the fact that, when it comes to internet, the idea is a very small part of the equation – what really counts is the execution.
So why are these guys applying for these patents? Do they really want to enforce them or is it just to gain some leverage in potential negotiations (as the Apple suit may be)? I’m not sure, but if they do enforce their patents and prevent other people from executing cool stuff, then we would definitely be stifling innovation, I have no doubts about it.
In any case, the USPTO seems to be the part who is a little out of whack here… I have that opinion since they granted Google a patent for the search box with the two buttons a few months ago (really!?!). These actions open the door for patent trolls, who definitely harm innovation (because they usually don’t act in spaces where R&D costs are too high, since it wouldn’t make economic sense to them…)
At the end of the day, the USPTO needs to get their act together because, since they are granting patents for stupid things like these, how can one force the companies not to apply for them?
And for the internet/tech companies: if you want to win the battle, hire very smart people who can come up with really good stuff and execute greatly – instead of IP lawyers.
about 3 years ago
I agree with many of Adriano’s comments.
The whole patent system is broken. It is one thing to award patents for microprocessor architectures and complex medical devices, and it is something else to award patents to web innovations. These days, one can get a patent for really trivial inventions. And further, many companies read papers written by University researchers and patent those ideas. So they get patents for other people’s work as well. For example, a well-known firm recently patented an algorithm in the sponsored search area that a PhD student and I developed in a conference paper.
Overall, it is so easy to get patents these days that I don’t bother filing a patent application for any research work (the patent itself means very little). In fact, as Adriano points out, many patents hurt rather than encourage innovations. One needs better standards for patents.