Why Do We Let Those Who Benefit Most From Monopolies Write The Laws That Grant Them?

from the it's-a-problem dept

Rick Falkvinge's latest piece at TorrentFreak covers an important issue: the fact that all too often those who write our patent and copyright laws are lawyers practicing in the space. That is, they're the people who benefit the most from perpetuating the system and expanding it further. That's not to say that all copyright and patent lawyers always think expanding the laws are better, but it is pretty common -- and when you get to the folks crafting the laws, it's very common. The article highlights an all too common occurrence, in which a patent or copyright holder threatens or sues someone, and the person or company sued pays up because it's cheaper to pay than to go to court:

And so, another “license” is paid up, and copyright lawyers use it as proof to politicians that licenses are paid and the system works. It’s circular reasoning at its most insidious.

The danger here lies in the difference of perspective: lawyers and politicians regard court proceedings as having zero cost, as basically being a correspondence or a negotiation. In the reality entrepreneurs live in, however, the court cost of a monopoly lawsuit can easily hit a million euros.

Of course, it can be even worse than having them just write the laws. There's the infamous case of Giles Rich, the patent lawyer who wrote a large part of the 1952 Patent Act... and then went on to become a judge at CAFC where he ruled on the interpretations of the law he, himself, had written. People note that he's had more influence than anyone on patent law in the US in the modern era... and almost all of it was in one direction only. And this kind of thing happens all the time... because politicians think that the people to ask for how to write patent and copyright laws are the lawyers rather than the businesses and citizens who will be most impacted by these laws:

So the next time the monopoly laws need revision and redrafting, the politicians go to the monopoly lawyers with demonstrated understanding of the substance matter. Politicians note that the lawyers have been correct in their predictions that license money would start to flow, and take it as proof the system works; they can’t see or know money is flowing for all the wrong reasons.

And so, the monopoly lawyers get to expand and revise those laws yet again, when it was nothing but a legalized extortion racket from the start. The cycle continues.

Filed Under: copyright, laws, lawyers, monopolies, patent

The 'Other' One-Click Patent Holder Sues Apple, Paypal... And Victoria's Secret

from the are-they-hoping-to-get-paid-in-models? dept

A couple years ago, we wrote about how Amazon, holder of the extremely infamous "one-click patent," had been sued by another firm, Cordance, claiming to hold a one-click patent. About a year and a half ago, Amazon apparently won that case. Unfortunately, a judge effectively overruled the jury, saying that some of the claims the jury insisted were invalid were actually valid. Thanks to that, it appears that Cordance is back, and is suing Apple, PayPal and Victoria's Secret, claiming they all violate its one-click patent (6,757,710). The patent seems to be crazy vague. It's still stunning that anyone -- let alone two people -- can hold a patent for letting someone buy something with one click. Separately, the article notes that Victoria's Secret is currently dealing with five separate active patent lawsuits, all based in East Texas (of course). Kind of makes you wonder if someone thinks that the models will actually show up to defend the company...

Filed Under: one-click, patent
Companies: acacia, amazon, apple, cordance, paypal, victoria's secret

Microsoft's Patent On GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding

from the well-that's-not-very-nice dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that Microsoft has received a patent (7,813,570) on a method of GPU-accelerated video encoding. As some are pointing out, this broad patent appears to cover what many other companies are already doing. Once again, this should raise two key questions: if so many companies were already doing this, doesn't it suggest this was the obvious progression of the technology, and thus making it unpatentable? And, second, if so many companies were already in this space, doesn't it suggest that the incentives to build this kind of technology were already provided by the market, absent of the additional, market-limiting, incentives of the patent system?

Filed Under: accelerated video encoding, gpu, patent
Companies: microsoft

IBM Patents Dividing The Number 60 By Your Car's Speed

from the divide-by-zero dept

theodp writes ""A billboard," IBM explains to the USPTO in its newly granted patent for Determining Billboard Refresh Rate Based on Traffic Flow, "is a large outdoor advertisement." Guess you have to pad your writing a bit when a cornerstone of your 'invention' is dividing the number 60 by the speed of a car (in mph). To be fair, Big Blue explains things this way in the patent: "A system for determining the refresh rate per minute of the dynamic billboard based on the traffic flow information, wherein the refresh rate is equal to 60 mph/V, wherein V is equal to an average velocity in miles per hour of vehicles passing the dynamic billboard. If the average velocity is 60 mph, the new refresh rate of the dynamic billboard is one refresh per minute (i.e., each advertisement is displayed for one minute), while if the average velocity is 10 mph, the new refresh rate of the dynamic billboard is six refreshes per minute (i.e., each advertisement is displayed for ten seconds)." Which begs a question: Will you see an infinite number of ads if traffic comes to a full stop?"

Filed Under: patent
Companies: ibm

Tons Of Companies Sued Over Broad Patent On Controlling Workstations In A Computer Network

from the sue,-sue,-sue,-sue dept

As we keep waiting for a Supreme Court ruling in the Bilski case (any day now...), Glyn Moody points us to the news of a lawsuit that has been filed against 26 different software companies for violating an incredibly broad patent (5,832,511) on "Workgroup network manager for controlling the operation of workstations within the computer network" (say that 10 times fast). The list of companies sued is a who's who in software:

Apple, Activision, Adobe, Autodesk, Capcom, Citrix, Corel, Dassault, Delcam, Square Enix, Electronic Arts, Frontrange Solutions, IBM, Intuit, Konami, Digital Entertainment, Maximizer Software, Nuance, Parametric Technology, Sage Software, Sega, Skype, SPSS, Teradata, THQ and Legacy Interactive

I'm sure none of those companies could have possibly come up with a system for controlling the operation of workstations within a computer network without this patent. At some point, isn't the fact that such a vast number of companies appear to have come up with the same basic thing independently a perfect prima facie case of obviousness?

Filed Under: patent, remote computers, workstations
Companies: activision, adobe, apple, autodesk, citrix, corel, ea, ibm, intuit, konami, nuance, sega, skype, spss, square enix, teradata

Gibson 'Settles' Patent Lawsuit Over Guitar Hero

from the rock-on dept

You may recall that famed guitar maker Gibson started claiming that its patent (5,990,405) on a "simulated musical concert" system was being infringed upon by various musical video games. Gibson went nuclear, suing everyone it could possibly think of, including companies who were just retailers of the game for patent infringement. Pretty quickly a court told Gibson that the lawsuit "bordered on the frivolous" which didn't bode well for Gibson. However, THREsq points us to the news that Gibson has "settled" the lawsuit and will be dropping the case. Given the way the courts reacted early on to the lawsuit, you have to imagine that "settlement" wasn't for very much money. My guess is that Viacom offered Gibson something less than it would have cost to continue defending these lawsuits to make the company go back to focusing on making guitars.

Filed Under: guitar hero, patent, settlement
Companies: activision, gibson, viacom

TiVo's 'Big Win' Over Dish On Patents Looking Less And Less Solid, As Patent Office Rejects Patent Claims

from the oops dept

Early on TiVo had won pretty much of all of its patent battles with EchoStar over its DVR technology, perhaps helped along by a bit of bull buying in Texas. We had noted, however, that the USPTO had expressed concerns over the validity of the patents, and we wondered why the court case would move forward while the patents themselves might be rejected by the Patent Office. But, the case did go forward, and while TiVo initially won at the appeals court level (which made it so happy that it sued others and demanded ridiculous sums from EchoStar), things haven't been looking quite so good lately.

Last month, the appeals court vacated the earlier decision, and agreed to rehear the case. And, now, it turns out that the USPTO has rejected two patent claims that were a key part of this fight. Of course, as TiVo is quick to point out, this isn't the end of the review process, but it certainly raises serious questions about the validity of the patents TiVo is basing its whole strategy on.

Filed Under: dvr, patent, uspto
Companies: echostar, tivo

Economist Assumes That The Problem Is 'Thieves' Rather Than Bad Patent Laws

from the wow dept

cryptozoologist points us to one of the most ridiculous analyses of the current patent situation by economist, and former Ross Perot running mate, Pat Choate, who doesn't seem to have a clue how innovation actually works, in claiming that patent infringement is usually "patent theft" by big companies. Independent invention? Overly broad patents? Patent thickets stifling innovation and research? Not even possible. It's all "theft."

America's largest big tech corporations are now using a business technique called "efficient infringement," which means that they calculate the benefits of stealing someone else's patented technology against the possibility of getting caught, tried in court and being forced to pay damages and penalties. If the benefits exceed the costs, they steal.

What makes patent theft so attractive is that infringement is not a criminal act and those found guilty face no jail time. Paying up is the worst that can happen to the infringer.

Of course, someone actually knowledgeable about patents would know the difference between infringement and theft. They would also know that it's quite rare for there to be a case of a company actually copying an idea from someone else. It's almost always independent invention -- and many of the lawsuits that he's so keen on later in the article are cases where an overly broad patent is brought up in a lawsuit about an innovation the original patent had nothing to do with.

This is a problem that happens all too often in these discussions. Folks who don't know much about how innovation really occurs in the tech world, and who falsely conflate concepts in tangible property with a completely different government-granted monopoly right -- automatically assume that infringement is the equivalent of "stealing." Are there cases where big companies "copy" an idea from a small company? Yes, absolutely. But it's a lot more rare than many make it out to be. The really innovative ideas? Those are the ones that big companies don't even realize are big ideas until it's too late.

A column like Choate's is dangerous in the amount of misinformation that it puts forth, backed up with the veneer of truth without any basis in fact.

Filed Under: economist, patent

Microsoft Sued Over Buy From FM Zune Feature, Despite It Functioning Differently Than The Patent

from the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it dept

Technically, we're told, patents only are supposed to apply to specific inventions, and not general ideas. It doesn't always work that way in practice, of course. AdamR points us to a lawsuit filed by some guy against Microsoft, claiming patent infringement in Zune's "Buy from FM" feature that lets you buy a song that you hear over FM radio. The guy is claiming willful infringement and demanding treble damages, because he apparently wrote Microsoft a letter back in 2006. Of course, there appears to be a pretty big problem with the claim, in that the patents in question (6,463,469 and 6,473,792) appear to describe a process of unlocking music already found on a local harddrive -- which is not how the Zune's feature works.

Filed Under: patent, zune
Companies: microsoft

And... Here Come The iPad Patent Claims

from the live-by-the-patent... dept

Back when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, one of the points he made clear in his presentation was how Apple had applied for over 200 patents on the device. And, yet, despite all of that, Apple has been sued over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And, of course, only recently did Apple file a patent lawsuit in the other direction.

Given all of this, it was really only a matter of time until the patent litigation began flying over the iPad. Slashdot points us to the news that Elan Microelectronics is seeking to ban the import of iPads into the US via the ever-popular ITC loophole. Amusingly, the whole point of the ITC injunction process is supposed to be to protect American companies against foreign companies importing in patented technology. Yet, in this case, it's a Taiwanese company suing an American company. This seems like a pure money grab, like many of the iPhone patent lawsuits, and once again demonstrates the problems of the patent thicket around mobile devices these days.

The patent in question 5,825,352 is for multi-touch screen inputs, and was apparently originally held by Logitech. Of course, in many ways this really highlights the points we've talked about. What Apple did with the iPhone was quite innovative, but wasn't really that inventive. It took concepts that had been out for a while, including multi-touch, and did something really cool with it: putting it into a compact, mobile device that people really wanted. The other players in the space weren't working on anything like that at all, and now patent battles are simply a waste of time holding back more innovation, rather than letting companies actually continue to come up with the next great thing.

Filed Under: ipad, itc, loophole, patent
Companies: apple