Posted on 06/09/2011 12:42:12 PM PDT by markomalley
Microsoft Corp suffered a defeat on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld a record $290 million jury verdict against the software giant for infringing a small Canadian company's patent.
The justices unanimously agreed with a U.S. appeals court ruling that went against the world's largest software company in its legal battle with Toronto-based i4i.
The high court refused to adopt Microsoft's lower standard to replace the long-standing requirement that a defendant in a patent infringement case prove by clear and convincing evidence that a plaintiff's patent is invalid.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft had argued that a lower standard of proof involving a "preponderance of the evidence" would make some "bad" patents easier to invalidate while promoting innovation and competition.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Yup. Lots of paperwork with lots of lawyering and lots of fees makes lots of innovators say "the Hell with it!"
Especially when they consider that the only thing a patent will really do is license them to try to outspend 'Microsoft' on lawyers.
Always seemed to me that for software, a copyright would be the preferred tool, but this is an area I don’t know much about.
Um, no. It is to keep someone from hijacking your innovation as part of their product.
You are aware of the one thing—that the protection of one’s creative invention allows one to market it, as marketing it generally makes its secrets public.
A patent requires the disclosure of the secrets, a patent can be voided if key details are withheld. This disclosure preceded the introduction of a product (Indeed the inventor loses the right to patent any idea publicly offered for sale before the filing!)
Some things it makes sense to patent, some things don't. Where would Coca-Cola be today if they had patented their recipe?
On the other hand, a patent more often is used to quash similar inventions.
Often it is. This requires competitors to patent their own technology and cross license when and where they can.
Often when an invention is made, it is that the time is ripe for it—general social innovation or other discoveries make something obvious or needed in ways that did not previously exits. Many people discover the same innovation, all independently. That is, let me be very clear here, MANY people working in the same field would naturally be expected to come up with the same or similar innovations on their own.
Yep. Been there, done that. Got the patent.
Absolutely agree. Even though this affects microsoft, I’m again’ the ruling. Software patents are garbage that is severely adversely affecting the software industry. This is one of the few industries America still dominates. No wonder the government wants to destroy it.
Especially when they consider that the only thing a patent will really do is license them to try to outspend 'Microsoft' on lawyers.
And no lawyer would ever take a case against MicroSquish based on a portion of the potential settlement...
Me neither, but it does seem more like a copyright issue.
OTOH a patent drops dead after 20 years and a copyright is for 50 years AND IS RENEWABLE...
“It’s only about $5,000 for an individual to get a patent, about $10,000 for a corporation. “
Without the money to defend the patent in court its not worth the paper its written on. Likewise some company can use the courts to whack startups who don’t have the money to defend their product from bogus patent infringement lawsuits.
Chris Dixon, an investor and a long-term entrepreneur: "a key part of the problem is that so many patents are clearly obvious to anyone skilled in the art." ... any competent engineer could create what's found in the vast majority of software patents ... the examiners simply aren't competent enough to recognize what's obvious.
Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor64 and editor of the Techdirt blog: "few people in Silicon Valley actually think patents are a good idea any more. The system has become so distorted that most of the people they're supposed to benefit the most don't want them, but feel compelled to get them due to the system. What a massive amount of waste, leading to a mess that holds back innovation."
Fred Wilson, "The basic problem with patents is that you're trying to assign property rights to something that doesn't deserve property rights. The fact that these property rights end up in the hands of financial owners as opposed to the original inventors just exacerbates the problem. The basic problem is that [a] bunch of engineers can be sitting at [lunch] designing some amazing new feature and somebody unbeknownst to them has a patent on this feature and never actually implemented it and can now screw them over… It’s just not right, it shouldn’t exist." ... compares patenting software to patenting music, noting that neither makes sense.
Yes. That is an abuse of the system. I used to work in the same building as the “King of the Submarine Patents”.
What a character! He came in as a consultant, developed a process under contract with us, using our materials and facilities, then patented the technique and tried to sue us for violating “his” patent!
Barry’s main source of income was a number of patent applications he had pending but on hold. As soon as anyone would commercialize an idea, his application would go off hold and he’d get the patent and settle out of court for some fee and royalties.
The USPTO ultimately ended up changing their rules because of him...
An investor’s entire goal in life is separating an invention from the inventor and using that invention to separate customers from their money.
A patent gets in their way.
The company I went to work for after that one got one of the first "algorithm" patents. I left it, and felt a fool for having joined it. What a regressive company! The want to rest on their prior inventions and market position, like milking cows. That's not innovative. I am intensely innovative in whatever I do. I did not fit in well there.
I've seen both software and hardware patents repress innovation. With the hardware patents generally one can invent a modified product that does a similar function. That's not so easy with many software patents because they are so loosey-goosey. So software patents are more effective as tools of legal extortion.
That’s more acerbic than true. But it is truer given a patent system that allowed the “King of what-the-whatsie” to hassle you and others with dimwitted patent grants.
Mostly any employer owns any idea you have while an employee anyway.
Nothing wrong with getting residual payments on a good idea, it’s like receiving deferred pay. Depending on it, not so much.
Agreed on your take on software patents. A utility patent is typically on a method of achieving a given goal, and practically begs other clever souls to find other methods.
A software patent (as far as I can tell, and I’m certainly no expert here!) covers the goal itself.
Yes, that sounds like a good deep intuition of a statement. The method is the goal, the medium is the message. Like a any graphic cursor that uses an inverted field is a XOR cursor.
Ever since Autodesk had to pay $25,000 to "license" a patent which claimed the invention of XOR-draw for screen cursors (the patent was filed years after everybody in computer graphics was already using that trick), at the risk of delaying or cancelling our Initial Public Offering in 1985, I've been convinced that software patents are not only a terrible idea, but one of the principal threats to the software industry. As I write this introduction in 1993, the multimedia industry is shuddering at the prospect of paying royalties on every product they make, because a small company in California has obtained an absurdly broad patent on concepts that were widely discussed and implemented experimentally more than 20 years earlier.Such patents are inherently Marxist, by that I mean using imaginary property in way that is incredibly destructive to real private property, and doing so despotically. The most vicious and unprincipled wins.
Patent Nonsense, John Walker, May 10th, 1993
The big eat the small, and the small have no protection.
A patent must be novel, inobvious and useful.
This clearly failed two of the three...
“Patents were always intended for protection of physical creations or the arts”
Firstly, artworks are copyrighted (or trademarked, if you consider advertising art [and you shouldn’t]), not patented.
More importantly, software is a physical creation, you dope. Or the plans for one, anyway. What, do you think only specific finished whirlygigs are patented? Like the government squirrels away shelves upon shelves of devices in their Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque hidey hole? Please. They patent plans, and software design consist of plans.
“I wonder how much of the economy is drained each year continuing this horrible system that stifles innovation and creation. I’d guess at least tens of billions, if not a lot more.”
Oh yeah, we’re really stuck in an electronics/computer rut. When was the last innovation? like six seconds ago? We should by all rights be down to 3 seconds, damnit! What is this, the Stone Age?!?
But it wasn’t. Besides those limitations on patent are legislative, aren’t they? The Constitution is quite terse.
“Method and system patents stifle innovation. When you can make up an idea, not apply it to any actual system, and get a patent for it, even after it’s already out there, the system is broken.”
So glad to hear you are wise enough to know the difference. How easy it would be to give out protection only for real, physical, or whatever stuff instead of abstract “method and system” plans, and also what’s not already out there and what’s going to be immediately used. The world will never run out of genuises like you to distinguish between honest innovation of hardworking Americans and greedy fat cats.
On second thought, it doesn’t take a genius. It’s obvious that “the system” is broken, so who needs a system? Junk it all and see how much more “creative” we all become (sha-la-la-la).
“AND IS RENEWABLE”
Why they caps, praytell?
“Yes, that sounds like a good deep intuition of a statement. The method is the goal, the medium is the message.”
Too bad they can’t be as oh so clever as you: “Such patents are inherently Marxist, by that I mean using imaginary property in way that is incredibly destructive to real private property.” Talk about psuedo-intellectual gobbledygook (and gratuitous name-dropping, to boot).
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