There Are 250,000 Active Patents That Impact Smartphones; Representing One In Six Active Patents Today
from the patent-thicket dept
A few years back we created a graphic to highlight the ridiculous patent thicket around smartphones. It really just highlights some, though not all, of the litigation concerning patents related to smartphones.A new analysis shows just how insane the patent thicket is today. Done by "defensive" patent aggregator RPX (they try to position themselves as the "good" version of Intellectual Ventures), the estimate is that a stunning250,000 active patents today impact smartphones. 250,000. As the article notes that's one in six active patents today -- and for an industry that is certainly less than 1% of US GDP. As a comparison, the pharma industry, often put forth (inaccurately, in my opinion) as an area where patents make sense, has accounted for a little over 6% of US patents over the past 15 years. Also, there's this:
... in the pharmaceutical industry, there are approximately 46.8 patents per every 1,000 jobs, whereas in the computer and peripherals equipment sector, there are 277.5 patents per 1,000 jobs. Even the semiconductor industry, known for its highly complex products, has a patent/job ratio of 111.6 patents per 1,000 jobs -- approximately 40% the rate of patents to jobs as the computer and peripherals market.It definitely appears that there's something of a "bubble" going on around smartphone patents -- which is what happens when you have a hot emerging area, combined with ridiculously broad patents. It also makes for an astounding minefield for anyone new who wants to enter the space, especially if you don't have a massive war chest to license or fight in court.
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Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, smartphones
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:P
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there would be many methods of achieving something with software, the problem occures when the people making a product dont bother to work out their own method to achieve somthing, so they just use your method of making cheese, instead of developing their own method.
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And method patents shouldn't exist, especially not the particularly tortured interpretation of them currently in force in the United States...
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In the future, at least read the title of the article before commenting please.
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This harkens back to the Cornell article
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"in the pharmaceutical industry, there are approximately 46.8 patents per every 1,000 jobs, whereas in the computer and peripherals equipment sector, there are 277.5 patents per 1,000 jobs. Even the semiconductor industry, known for its highly complex products, has a patent/job ratio of 111.6 patents per 1,000 jobs -- approximately 40% the rate of patents to jobs as the computer and peripherals market."
A nicely misleading series of stats, because it leaves out the key: how long the business has been around. Pharma is ancient, semi conductors go back to the 50s, and cell phones go back about 30 years... and smart phone less than a decade - which means that 100% of the patents in the smart phone area would be active at this point.
There are also a number of companies absolutely pouring money and resources into R&D.
The number of patents doesn't suggest over broad patents, rather it suggests a large number of very narrowly focused patents. I suspect many of them are variations on a given patent. Given that there are a number of different cellular systems, data transmission methods, and the like. Many of those patents are likely replicated to cover operating with different systems.
I just think that it's easy to go "wow, 250,000". Really, you should be going "wow, thousands of new products released every year". Innovation rules!
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Citation needed.
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That's stupid. A patent describes a method of doing something. Minute variations on a patent that are prompted by the idiosyncrasies of the an arbitrarily chosen platform/technology should not be patentable.
Example: just because I discovered how to make a car run on water, that doesn't mean that I should be able to patent a method of making a motorcycle run on water: they use the SAME technology, with minuscule adaptation to fit the form factor.
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After the 1 download = 1 lost sale bogus assumption now we have 1 patent = 1 new product assumption. Sounds right.
It also makes for an astounding minefield for anyone new who wants to enter the space, especially if you don't have a massive war chest to license or fight in court.
We have plenty of examples of patents crushing the starters ;)
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Wow, you suck at math. 250,000 patents, 1000s of new phones. There is no 1 to 1 relationship.
Another stupid comment from Mike's toady.
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Considering patents are currently being granted something like five years after being filed, no, I don't think this has anything to do with the current state of "innovation" in the market and everything to do with the amount of leverage that comes with a large patent portfolio. Leverage you can exert over (actual or potential) competitors.
Also, have you seen these patents? They're laughable. None of them are covering anything non-obvious or innovative, and often in fact are covering things that were already extant years before the patent application was filed.
Also, the only real source of "innovation" (and I use the term very loosely, here, as most of these "innovations" are just obvious extensions on existing concepts) on the software side of the smartphone industry right now doesn't actively seek patent protection for their "innovations"...
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Sure, but a lot of the patents in the smartphone space are just obvious, and follow even a robotic algorithm:
1) Take something done on computers over networks
2) Design method to do same thing on computers over wireless networks
3) Patent the method, and sue.
4) Kaching $
Poster child for above, NTP. But the same can be said for mobile search, mobile advertising, mobile video streaming, etc, etc. There's patents for all this stuff, even though it is completely obvious that all stuff done on computer networks should be tried on mobile networks too.
Each of these comprises a "new way of doing things" as you mention, and each adds value to society. But almost none is inventive or worthy of granting a monopoly.
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BUT the whole field just keeps growing!
My solution is the usual plain and simple brute force: I'd do away with trivial patents by requiring a physical model (NO software patents, then) and having a (trained) monkey (or a committe of such) glance at them and immediately discard those which are obviously trivial, never to be raised again in appeal, nor fee refunded.
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Re: BUT the whole field just keeps growing!
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The 'prototype' could solve shitloads of problems yes but it'd still leave gaps (independent invention, how startups could face the deep pockets of the bigger companies etc). Still, that's a remarkably sane and productive comment if we ignore the first part.
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http://www.ipvideocontest.com
http://www.ipvideocontest.com
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another biased article
If you were a real reporter, which you are not, you would do your homework and find that the vast majority of the inventions those patents cover are used by...no one. This is just more dissembling by invention thieves trying to justify their corporate greed.
Masnick and his monkeys have an unreported conflict of interest-
https://www.insightcommunity.com/cases.php?n=10&pg=1
They sell blog filler and "insights" to major corporations including MS, HP, IBM etc. who just happen to be some of the world’s most frequent patent suit defendants. Obviously, he has failed to report his conflicts as any reputable reporter would. But then Masnick and his monkeys are not reporters. They are hacks representing themselves as legitimate journalists receiving funding from huge corporate infringers. They cannot be trusted and have no credibility. All they know about patents is they don’t have any.
http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html#pt.
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Take your thicket and stick it!
All you get to see is the result of my using my useful chart and planner without having any idea (well actually I'll just end the sentence there for this Blog has certainly earned the NULL word).
Trade Secret, no maintenance fees! No time limit. No courts and no attorneys. Nobody even knows it exists.
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what do you know about patents?
No patents? Brilliant idea.
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Patent thickets
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it's just business
Kill software patents! Competition is good for innivation, and patents kill innovation. If you want to make money quickly, immitation is the way to go anyway.
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Re: it's just business
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http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-12-19/cutting-through-the-patent-thicket
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affordable press release service
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