I strongly believe that the pursuing of patents gets in the way of the collaboration that helps science progress. It creates evidence of innovation (ie patents), but slows actual innovation.
Anything that gives universities more of an incentive to pursue the patent angle, which this judgment does, will therefore be bad for science. :-(
(In CS, whole areas have become minefields for this reason. For example go out and implement a wavelet compression algorithm for images without violating any patents. Are you sure you didn't violate patents? Really sure? Exactly!)
See the mess around CRISPR patents for an excellent example of this.
However, both in reality are publicly funded whether that be through government grants or tax breaks on endowments. I think we should do a trade: an institution that in someway benefits from the public should get credit for the discovery but patent goes back to the public.
Edit: I realize there’s a chance that whatever I just said, there’s a small European country that already has implemented this idea.
I am extremely dubious that it will result in research that advances the state of science. Science flourishes best when you share results and hypotheses early and often, then get feedback/inspire others. But that type of communication threatens patents, so inspires people to put their research into black boxes until the legal paperwork has been filed.
Yes, research that can't be used for reasonable amounts of money, and therefore out of reach for startups.
For example, look at the Wright Brothers. They invented the airplane and didn't make any money. They spent their entire life suing people for stealing their idea. The system should encourage and incentivize creating ground breaking inventions.
I agree, but I don't think the current patent system does this. I think the length of patents should be reduced dramatically, 5 years sounds reasonable.
It's crazy when you think about how patents last for 20 years, which doesn't really work with the current pace of technology IMO (as an example, the iPhone wasn't released until 2007). So you can't use anything Apple patented to make the ORIGINAL iPhone work until... 2027? That doesn't seem good for humanity to me.
If the lengths were reduced, and the requirements much more strict, I think the world would be a better place.
Their key innovation was wing warping for control, but the industry rapidly switched to flaps and ailerons, leaving the brothers’ main innovation behind. Their aerodynamic concepts were advanced, but again others pushed beyond their concepts very quickly.
So their technical innovations were brilliant, but not used extensively by later engineers.
Their patent trolling is credited with setting back the development of the United States aviation industry for years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
So really, the only benefit is the actual patent ending up in the public domain, at the cost of further slowing down the field when someone ends up with patent rights assigned andisfeeling particularly litigous.
A proposal (in “Radical Markets”) I agree with is to charge a property tax of, say, 2% for each year that a patent holder wants to keep the patent. The value of the patent is whatever the owner decides it should be but (to prevent claims of $1 values) the owner must sell the patent to the first entity willing to pay more than the declared value.
This, in theory, would ensure that only patents that were genuinely useful would be kept around rather than being used as tools to stifle innovation or rent seek for those that actually create great works.
Are the patents for wavelet more oppressive than H.26[4-5]?
Of course, the US patent system is pretty deeply flawed. I participated in a study involving patent infringement allegations between two big companies, and my opinion was consistently "Why was this patent approved?"
Absolutely not. Suppose I, Mr Independent Inventor, come up with some idea and convince the patent office to grant me a patent, and then proceed to do exactly nothing with it. Five years later, Ms Employed Engineer working at ABC Corp comes up with the same idea, and they manage to turn it into a product, which becomes successful. I contributed nothing to their product. Why on Earth am I owed any money for their work?
Aren't those expiring around this time? I'm thinking a lot of the work was in the late 1990ies, e.g. jpeg2k was developed 1997-2000.
Do you have any evidence for this belief?
For anyone that doesn't know, in 2006 Apple was caught off guard and sued by Creative Labs over the iPod, resulting in a $100 million settlement. It was total nonsense and Jobs was right to be pissed, but what does he do? Does he get fired up to bring about patent reform? No! He doubles down on software patents himself and goes on to sue Samsung in the same shitty way in 2011.
I mean, it's too late now to turn the ship around on software patents. It's never going to change. But 2006 - 2011 were prime growth years for Apple, where they could have made a great case to the public for how software patents were bad and used in a totally bogus way against a well liked American company.
And if he didn't want to do that, he could have built up a library of patents to squirrel away for defensive purposes on a rainy day.
But no. He got burned by Creative Labs, hated the experience, and turned around and did the same exact thing to a totally unrelated company.
When it comes to software patents, fuck Steve Jobs and Apple.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/creative-pushed-stev...
Therefore, even with these losses, the patent system is worthwhile for them.
It's the smaller companies that should care and lobby as a collective.
If Apple was simply using devices it purchased from Broadcom, Broadcom should be responsible for all the damages.
That's why the appeals courts exist.
E.g. Sell 50% of the initially ruled $1.1B settlement for, say, $100MM.
Anything like this ever happened?
However even after realizing that, I personally still consider a design patent about rounded corners to be on the same level of B.S. as a software patent, and still stand by my conclusions. But I'd be interested to know why I shouldn't do that, and if you have more information I'm honestly all ears
I realize Jobs and Apple were/are big, but what makes you think he had any hope in hell of doing anything about patent reform?
Put them in the same class as Oracle as far as I'm concerned. After it happened I swore off developing another piece of software for Apple or supporting any of their products.
Would be interesting to see a study that showcases which was the major factor to research on that field is.
At least in biotech, patents drive a ton investment. How else do you get companies with billion dollar series A’s?
Their real contribution was coordinated flight control. That is, rotation or roll (via warping or whatever) in coordination with rudder. This is what really made stable air flight possible. They figured this out through tremendous personal expense, scientific method, and personal risk. A sustained multi-year effort. Seems reasonable to get at least some licensing revenue when others copy it.
And regardless of the size of an industry, people who have a high understanding of an issue are likely to have preconceived biases about a dispute. Stuff a jury full of tech people, to resolve a tech issue, and odds are, an Anyone versus Oracle dispute is not going to have a fair trial, regardless of the merits of the case. Most tech people hate Oracle.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766556249/episode-942-capital...
EX: A students tuition paid for by a research grant does not count as R&D spending by the University or even R&D.
https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluati...
I don't have a great opinion of the patent industry in general but in this situation Samsung's behavior was pretty blatant and unethical (IMO), and went well beyond "rounded corners".
everybody has reports like that.
Did you know competitive analysis is something that is frequently done across many industries? GM/Mercedes/Toyota are among the first customers to buy[1] their competitors latest models and they disassemble them to the last bolt to figure out/estimate materials, methods and costs per component, sub-assembly and unit level. I see nothing unethical or nefarious about that.
1. Often they pay companies like Munro & Associates (https://leandesign.com/) do the analysis on their behalf
No but Apple's patent for rounded corners didn't help Samsung engineers from creating their devices...and yet Apple filed the patent and sued Samsung for patent infringement.
Caltech should be championed for trolling a troll.
It's unfortunate that this story has now been twisted into "Apple suing Samsung over rounded corners", when in actuality Samsung deliberately produced a 132-page report comparing the iPhone to their current phones at the time and pointed out hundreds of features and design elements they should steal from the iPhone user interface.
https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluati...
If you read through the report it's pretty blatant and goes well beyond "rounded corners".
But that doesn't really matter, you can adopt concepts and designs from 3rd parties (including competitors) so long as the same is not protected.
The "rounded corners" was patented and infringement of the patent was a count on the lawsuit, and Samsung was found liable for infringing that patent.
What is unfortunate and "twisted" is claiming a research university is a patent troll. Research universities develop and patent new technology all the time, you could say its part of their business model, and historically they are happy to license their patents to commercial entities to take to market...very rarely do universities actually develop their new inventions for commercial purposes. Most would consider it a win-win to shift costs of development to universities, not universities being patent trolls.
Yes, the time and money Apple spent designing their devices saved Samsung quite a lot of money and effort when they had to design their own.
https://www.law360.com/articles/652442/dish-hughes-escape-so...
https://www.reuters.com/article/intuitivesurgical-lawsuit-id...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sony-settles-digital-camera-la...
> Why on Earth am I owed any money for their work?
And what about when ABC Corp steals Mr. Independent Inventor’s idea and makes millions on it? How is that fair?
Unfortunately, the US patent system is winner take all; i.e., wrong.
Maybe it's legal but I don't think it's ethical. And while implementing someone else's concept in your own way is one thing, point for point copying of a user interface that someone else designed is entirely another.
> What is unfortunate and "twisted" is claiming a research university is a patent troll.
I never claimed this.
Think about oxford nanopore and illumina for example. if illumina could just use their patents after 5 years and given that they already have 90% market share, they would be dead.
Most tech transfer programs at universities don't break even, they usually lose money [2]. This is even more insane than it sounds because the research is already paid for. Tech transfer deals don't even cover the university lawyers.
If the patents were so valuable why wouldn't the universities be starting unicorns left and right with actual investors or actual revenue? Instead they try to get the money through litigation.
It's sad (and a waste of money) that universities have become fixated on being get-rich-quick patent trolls instead of doing transformational research.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/&apple-wins-reversal-in-univ... [2] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/10/09/the-changing-face-of-u...
>If the patents were so valuable why wouldn't the universities be starting unicorns left and right with actual investors or actual revenue? Instead they try to get the money through litigation.
Not sure where you are coming from, but there are many University research tech spinoff's in the US, especially in the SF Bay area.
There's a vast gulf between the Fraunhofer MP3 patent and the commercial success of the iPod, Spotify and suchlike.
Patents, for all their downsides, are designed to get scientists to share results. Without patents you have enormous disincentive to sharing repeatable results: you can't charge money for it if anyone can go and copy you. With patents, you can freely share results and still charge money.
Should patents last as long as they do? Should there be a cap on how much companies can charge for patented medicine, since it's effectively a temporary government-granted monopoly on curing disease? All reasonable questions, but I don't think abolishing (non-software) patents would improve communication between scientists.
> “We are pleased the jury found that Apple and Broadcom infringed Caltech patents,” CalTech said in a statement. “As a non-profit institution of higher education, Caltech is committed to protecting its intellectual property in furtherance of its mission to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education.”
I've never seen it spelled CalTech in anything from the university nor from any techer.
It's especially absurd that 4x damages were awarded against Apple here when Apple is just a customer of the allegedly infringing party. 4/5 of Broadcom's customers were not assessed damages — why pick on Apple in particular? (I mean, we all know why — they have cash.)
(We can have a rousing debate about whether the intended functioning is something we think is societally advantageous or not, but the changes to that are different than the fixes we need to prevent patent trolls from causing so much harm.)
[1]https://matr.net/news/why-stanford-is-celebrating-the-google...