Once Again: Patents Do Not Equal Innovation
from the lazy-press dept
It's always disappointing to see reporters who know better assume that patents are somehow a reasonable proxy for innovation. It's pretty common, even though research has shown (many times over) that the two are not linked. Yet, that hasn't stopped Business Week from fretting about the US losing its lead in patents, suggesting that it's a sign of innovation moving elsewhere. Of course, it appears the source for the story is also Ocean Tomo -- the same company that fooled a reporter into believing that patent sales would increase during the recession, just weeks before Ocean Tomo's own patent auction was a disaster.The real reason for the decline in patenting may actually be buried at the bottom of the article: companies are realizing that patents aren't particularly cost effective, and they're cutting back, focusing on actual innovation rather than throwing money away on the patent system.
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Filed Under: innovation, patents
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Dead horse
One dollar per beating!
Beat a dead horse right here!
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Re: Dead horse
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Re: Re: Dead horse
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Re: Dead horse
One dollar per beating!
Beat an idiot right here!
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Re: Re: Dead horse
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Year of the Horse
C.F. this NYT article on the exploding Chinese cellphone market.
Looks like there's plenty of innovation/competition going on in "Communist" China, unlike the nanny-state entitlement approach going on, er, here.
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That assumes that entities who use the patent system are not focused on innovation. That is so plainly false that I shouldn't need to give you examples of such entities.
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Re:
Not so. I said no such thing. But if you are wasting money on patents, that's less money that can go towards actual innovation.
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Dead Horse
Dead Horse
Dead Horse
He's Dead!
The Evil League of Pirates
Is coming so beware!
That sorely beaten horse
Will turn up again somewhere!
Hmm Hmm Hmm
I forget the rest...
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Dead Horse
The fact that it is some way tied into the Constitution enables these interests to bamboozle the politicians into thinking that this represents the people. When the consumers/people are the only ones who don't benefit, and would not even notice if there was no patent system.
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Re: Dead Horse
I'd think they would notice when there are fewer innovative products around, like beneficial and possibly life-saving pharmaceutical drugs. I think leukemia patients would notice if there were fewer medicines like Gleevec around. I also think people would raise a stink about the lack of research going into green technology, especially nowadays.
Not all technology revolves around computers.
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Re: Re: Dead Horse
Assumes, incorrectly, that patents are necessary to create these things. Nothing is further from the truth.
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Re: Re: Re: Dead Horse
Incidentally, the same relatively objective study also indicated that about 14% of all inventions would likely not exist without patents. A bulk of the 14% are drug oriented, followed by chemicals, followed by mechanical. Software is at the opposite end of the range. According to this study, all software existing would have been created without patent protection, and most (but not all) electronic inventions would exist without patents.
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Re: Re: Re: Dead Horse
No rational corporation is going to spend X dollars, especially in the pharmaceutical area, to develop a medicine without patent protection, when it will take a competitor 1/1x10^6 of X dollars to reverse engineer the medicine. This is so plain it is beyond dispute.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Dead Horse
Other businesses I've been in including semiconductor, computers and software, change so fast that patents can be a hindrance to keeping up with the market. The ability to execute and move to the next generation can be more of a competitive advantage than what patents could give. Restricting use can block "fractal expansion" of industries which might otherwise directly raise the originating as much or more than the "competitors". This is how Silicon Valley started with semiconductors. Yes, some patents but but not like biotech. This is aligned with how Open Source originated. Sometimes the right openness can be more deadly against your competitors than "closedness".
My experience in biotech includes having a CTO tell me "With our patent portfolio, our customers have to buy from us, we don't need to innovate". The dissonance with the company's claimed "corporate values" was too much for me to stomach and too much for many others - they have had enormous employee turn-over yet management doesn't seem to understand why.
The fact of the matter was they could have innovated just a little bit allowing for a better price-performance point which would have expanded the market to a size far larger than the reciprocal price change and better achieved the corporate objectives and made more money. But that's the case for most F1000 companies in the US these days - the problem is so many no longer know how or even have the control capability to innovate their products thanks to outsourcing.
The happy karma for this biotech company is they have enormous employee turn-over, financial and stock price problems largely resulting from how it is run. The sad part for humanity is that they have one of the best and more promising technologies but it's largely wasted with people are suffering or dying needlessly as a direct result. In other words, it's managed to become mostly a Lose-Lose situation.
On the other hand, a number of stealth competitors are waiting in the wings with steely knives for when the key patents expire and those folks have plans that go well beyond what was discarded as "unnecessary innovation" 10 years ago.
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Re: Re: Re: Dead Horse
No, it assumes that patents enable or encourage the creation of these things. It is possible that some of these things would be created without patent laws, but likely not in the amount that they are created.
I'm not saying that innovation in these areas would grind to a halt without patents. I'm saying that such innovation would slow down to a snail's pace without patents.
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Re: Dead Horse
Oh yes, you will, pridurok
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mindless and patentless techdirt lemming-punks
freaking idiots
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Re: mindless and patentless techdirt lemming-punks
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I am already fed up with you, punks
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Progress
Forcing them to get past this seems nigh impossible, and yet they make strides, for them anyway, to do better. Google was going to say this in response, but what kind of response is this?
This is like two different Index Card Sections in a Library, one flaunting how much it has that's illegal, and one which says it always obeys the rules, but both point to the same books.
Yeah maybe you could argue they shouldn't flaunt it, but so far that is what seems the be the crime in all of this.
I want a torrent site to come out, which says it obeys everything they say, does takedown requests, and seems friendly to studios or RIAA, but keeps on trucking, so to speak. I'd laugh when they got bought by them.
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The point here is that the patent system gives these entities incentive to pursue bogus patents. Without the patent system, you don't have bogus patents.
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Also, while the patent justices themselves may or may not be engineers, they can certainly consult with various experts in a field (each one can choose who he wants to consult with or they can even consult with the Internet or any blog or anyone they choose). Just like a judge (and jury) can consult with experts in various fields before making a decision about a case.
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