Calling all readers…
In the past, I have made a fairly simple assessment of patents, and their value. I want to revisit this conversation, because I have continued to think about this for months. What is a patent’s value? Copyright? Copying books used to be the norm. Patents are only valuable in a small number of countries. I pose these questions to our readers because I am conflicted in whether or not there should be these protections in the first place. We are in a new world where technology destroys all barriers, and information is shared freely, openly, and transparently. Information should not be the reason one company succeeds and another fails. It should be the perceived value it gives to its customers, something that directly reflects on a corporation’s operations and management. So I call upon our readers to help me answer these questions. Maybe I’ve lost a couple marbles, or maybe the world is changing directly under our feet.
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José Luis said
am January 22 2008 @ 9:20 pm
Hi,
as of patents, there are many posts on http://techdirt.com talking about the difference between patents/innovation that you might find interesting (patent law is complicated and changes in every country, plus there are international agreements, etc).
As of Copyright and IP, you might check http://www.seomoz.org. In their blog, they have a lawyer that have been posting on these issues (in a law diggested way). Look for a post named “Enforce Your Copyright” or something like that and filter by author.
Cheers.
James Grimm said
am January 23 2008 @ 7:11 am
Emile,
Wouldnt this defeat many peoples motivation to create? If I were to design something new but have a larger company come in and take it quickly before I establish myself, where is the reason to innovate again.
Of course the opposite side would be that I would constantly need to innovate to stay ahead of the competition, but would I have time to service my customers? Also which financing sources would take a chance on an upstart that could be copied almost immediately? Or which large customers would take a chance on an unknown quantity, why not wait til a large corporation copies it so you can get staying power, support etc…
With no protections, how many already established companies would have a division that would just search for new technologies to copy and use. I know I would if I was them.
I think without a motivation of profit and an ability to impose a legal ramification on those that would copy, many innovations today would never see the light of day. Why give up a good job on a chance if the likelyhood of some large corporation stealing your idea without compensation? Better to work the 9-5 grind and live comfortably..
I know my company has a narrow view on what they will patent and my ideas I have suggested are now trade secrets, not patents with the expected rewards that would entail. And I can not use them because they slapped the trade secret label on them…So my plan is to get up the courage to go it alone on my other idea(s); but without patent protection, I think I would never take a chance..
Jim
Emile Petrone said
am January 24 2008 @ 6:01 pm
Thanks guys! Jim, I think that this is the problem facing the music and film industry right now. Does that mean these industries will go away? No, it means they have to innovate on their revenue streams.
But this is really a question that I am very interested in. If Coca Cola’s secret formula came out, they would be toast. As I am assuming Pharma companies too.
However this is a tricky gray area because some pieces of information are in the public domain, like the Theory of Relativity. Where does the line in public/ private begin and end? How does one regulate when private information becomes public? More posts will come on this one!
Thanks again!
Emile
Abel Ferrandez said
am January 25 2008 @ 6:18 pm
Hi Emile,
In my opinion you are mixing several things when you say “these industries”, especially when you refer to them as “they”. The current situation that the music and film industry is facing right now will certainly mean that “they” will go away. “They” will go away because will disapear to exist as we know them, is just a matter of time. This is not to be confused with movies or music as product will cease to exist. “They” refered to as current industries may still be able to make profits, but will not be the same industries. Whether this is good or bad for the greater good of human development is another story.
If I had a company where I had to put a heavy investment to make things work, I would certainly make sure that nobody can do it the way I did, so I can keep on profiting of it as long as possible. Companies invest obscene amounts of money in new products, so they expect to get it back which probably won’t happen if you can buy the same stuff 10 times cheaper from a country where wages are 100 times lower and taking care of the environment is not in the priority list of local authorities.
Free open source as you put it is only ok as long as you don’t care about monetary profit, and this is illogical to ask from a capitalist society.
Now, about what is public and private. When it comes to knowledge, this is very well defined legally. To clarify these grey areas that you mention, there are legal bodies full of well paid examinors who will look very carefully at what you intend to claim as “intelectual property” on the basis of what is “public”. Public means basically any piece of information accesible one way or another to anybody and access to this information implies no ilegal activities. It is not so complicated to regulate what becomes public. Is not so complicated either to find out what is public (based on the definition above) before you attempt to claim IP.
All in all, and to answer your initial questions, patents are of great value. Lots of companies make a whole lot of profit out of products they patented, but they never actually sell, you would be amazed.
Emile Petrone said
am January 31 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Abel,
Thanks for the comment. I am looking at this issue if there is a different way of conducting business. As you say, you would make sure people could not copy what you are doing. However, that is not a security, its a wish. Already you can buy many goods from developing nations that are perfect copies of US products.
I still argue it is very difficult to argue what is public vs. private. Your definition is wrong because now any information that touches the web, is instantly accessible to anyone else. Whether or not the initial activity of copying the information in the first place was “illegal” becomes irrelevant. Its like a copy machine; its illegal to make copies of most texts, but people still make copies.
The law hasn’t caught up to what is happening in the real world. I understand your hope that you could protect a product, patent, or idea, but it is no longer possible. It is time for new models to emerge, and the world to change.
E
Calling all readers… « the horizon post said
am January 31 2008 @ 11:00 pm
[...] do we attribute and reward authors and creators online? This is a question I began @ OpenInnovators.net. Any piece of information that touches the web spreads like Kudzu [...]
James Grimm said
am February 1 2008 @ 5:40 am
Emile,
I would have to differ with you. While you are correct you can not protect against copying of your idea worldwide; you can with patents, keep those copies from competing with you in the markets you are in (if patent protection exists). So if you patent in North America and Europe, a copy from another part of the world would compete with your products in nations that do not have strong patent protections but in those two regions its almost a given that the copy would lose or not compete.
In my mind, patenting is a protection to ensure you get credit for the creativity you have. I believe the system is fine but there might be some abuses of the system and the patent offices need to get more resources to properly vet patent applications.
Jim
Gerson Barbosa said
am February 14 2008 @ 5:48 pm
Creativity requires openness, curiosity, emotional backup from birth through infancy and youth etc. Plus money for the dayly bread. From a developing country perspective, it´s very resonable to consider absurd to face trade barriers and an inherited foreign debt from past military governments. Add this to the impossibility of selling the air of the amazon forest, and than you will have to really use your creativity to interpret a little more complex am open question.
I mean, many people can´t “sell” their creativity due to $ocial differences they didn´t ask for.
Janne Korhonen said
am February 15 2008 @ 11:03 am
Emile,
first, thanks for a very interesting website!
Then, about patents: Patents and other forms of IPR protection are not, of course, end-all moves in a competitive environment. True, patents do divulge information that less scrupulous players can and do copy, and they do slow down the innovation process in general.
However, as others have pointed out, the basic reason why IPR protection is necessary is because it mitigates risks an innovator would face otherwise. From Wikipedia:
“There are four primary incentives embodied in the patent system: to invent in the first place; to disclose the invention once made; to invest the sums necessary to experiment, produce and market the invention; and to design around and improve upon earlier patents.”
Secondly, I would have to differ with you on what effects free transfer of information actually has in most industries. Excluding pure information (ie. books, data, movies, music, software etc), information in itself has surprisingly little value. Much of actual knowledge required to create new products and services resides in the heads of employees, and in the processes of the organization. Often, developing a competency requires time and a specific development path; known as “path dependency”, with patents, it increases the barrier to entry for would-be competitors in many industries.
One example is the Toyota Production System; despite free access to Toyota’s factories, competitors such as GM have been singularly unable to re-create it. Another example: some time back I had an interesting discussion with one Nokia researcher who told that although they are going to patent one of their new UI innovations, even if someone would copy the patents that would matter very little, as the patents do not describe - indeed, they could not describe - the intricate fine-tuning of the system that, in this case, really separates a good user experience from a terrible one. The know-how to do that fine-tuning in various products resides in the organization; it’s tacit knowledge, and nearly impossible to copy.
Finally, without patents, much of innovation would actually die with its creator organizations. As Wikipedia’s entry noted, one function of patents is the disclosure and dissemination of innovations. If patents were not used, companies would seek to protect their intellectual property through trade secrets - and as mr. Grimm notes, this would very probably mean that they wouldn’t be used at all. This is the reason why many innovations made before patent systems became commonplace are lost to us forever: for example, the intricacies of Damask steelworking have only recently been re-developed.
Therefore, patents are in fact central to open innovation, not just detriments to it.