Crowdfunding Patented; Kickstarter Threatened, Asks Court To Invalidate

from the can-they-crowdfund-their-defense dept

Back in 2004, I first wrote about musicians using a platform called ArtistShare to help raise funds from fans. It was an early version of crowdfunding -- but as I noted in the post itself, it was no different than a number of similar ideas that were out there. ArtistShare was definitely a part of the first wave of similar offerings, which included things like Sellaband and Bandstocks. It's was a great idea, but it wasn't exactly original. More recently, a second generation of such companies has become much more well known and much more successful... with Kickstarter definitely being the big name in the space.

It turns out that ArtistShare's CEO, Brian Camelio, applied for a patent on the basic concepts of crowdfunding back in 2003, and, while it took a while, that patent (7,885,887) was issued earlier this year, officially for "Methods and apparatuses for financing and marketing a creative work." You can read the details, but it basically describes exactly how most crowdfunding works today. Apparently, he then started contacting Kickstarter (and, one imagines, several other crowdfunding platforms), trying to get them to pay up. With Kickstarter, he apparently sent a couple of letters and then showed up unannounced at their offices one day.

After going back and forth with him for a bit, being threatened with a possible lawsuit, and noticing that Camelio had transferred the patent to a new operation called Fan Funded, which they believed was to be used for suing others for patent infringement, Kickstarter filed for a declaratory judgment saying that the patent was invalid and, even if it was valid, that they didn't infringe.

In an interview with PaidContent (at that link above) it appears, bizarrely, that part of the thinking on Camelio's part is that he just doesn't like Kickstarter compared to his own business:

"As an artist myself, I feel that KickStarter may be hurting artists by focusing on 'donating money' rather than celebrating the artist for what they do. Their model does not build fan relationships but just continually asks for hand outs."

Here's the thing: I actually agree that this is a major weakness of Kickstarter's model and have said so to people who have asked me about Kickstarter in the past. It's a one-and-done sort of thing. But... the way to respond to that is to build a better product that serves the market better. If you don't think Kickstarter does the best job serving artists, then make your product better. Don't threaten them with patent infringement and try to justify it by claiming you just don't like Kickstarter's model.

Hopefully the court rejects such a broad and obvious patent. Perhaps Kickstarter should crowdfund its legal efforts here. Amusingly, as pointed out by THREsq, one of the latest Kickstarter projects is a book from a patent agent celebrating the artwork found in patents...

Filed Under: brian camelio, crowdfunding, patents
Companies: artistshare, fan funded, kickstarter