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Patents Books Media Book Reviews

Steal This Idea 222

Posted by timothy from the also-at-amazon.com dept.
daltonlp writes "Many stories under the "patents" topic on Slashdot are about objectionable patents (Amazon's one-click purchase patent, for instance). These stories typically draw comments full of righteous indignation and jeers about the incompetence of the US patent & trademark office. Don't you wish you could package that sentiment in a handy, bound volume? Maybe with a few more hard facts than you're likely to find on /. ? Well, now you can." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review of Michael Perelman's Steal This Idea. It's not a new book, but it seems more relevant every day.
Steal this Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity
author Michael Perelman
pages 272
publisher Palgrave Macmillan (April 2002)
rating Worth Reading
reviewer Lloyd Dalton
ISBN 0312294085
summary A hard-hitting look at the state of the U.S. patent & trademark system.

Most of the themes and arguments in Steal This Idea will be familiar to anyone who's read a Slashdot thread on patents. Michael Perelman is an economics professor at California State University. In Steal This Idea, he takes the position that patents (and trademarks, to a lesser extent) hurt science and the economy more than they help. He makes a pretty convincing case.

Roughly half the book is devoted to the negative effects of patents on scientific research. Perelman claims that tying research to intellectual property skews the balance of study away from basic research on fundamental problems, and toward short-term research geared toward improving existing products. Several real-world examples are given--many of the most potent come from the world of biological and pharmaceutical research:

Two decades ago, Philip Needleman, then a researcher at Washington University, in St. Louis, and his co-workers postulated the existence of two cyclooxygenase enzymes, COX-1 and COX-2. By 1990, Dr. Needleman, then chief scientific officer at Pharmacia, had guessed that the COX-2 enzyme plays a critical role in inflammation. By 1992, three other groups, including one at Rochester, had confirmed the existence of the enzymes by describing the genes that control their production. Although Rochester won the patent, the competing teams at UCLA and Brigham Young University claim that their work was fundamental.

Whether UCLA, Brigham Young, or Rochester deserved the patent is beside the point. More important is the idea that the granting of a patent on a bodily substance permits the owner to demand royalties from any company that produces a medicine that targets the substance.

Perelman gives historical evidence of IP hampering the development of new technology. His best example is the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry, until the U.S. government voided many of them in the interest of accelerating radio technology during WWII.

Finally, Steal this Idea makes the case that scientific progress in the last half of the twentieth century owes a greater debt to basic research from academic and publicly-funded scientists and researchers than to corporate research. The concern is based on the large amount of time (decades, rather than years) needed for basic scientific discoveries to become marketable products is largely ignored by corporate research, which is focused on quarterly results.

It's curious that the internet--maybe the most obvious example of this, is barely mentioned. After all, business research has failed miserably at defining network protocols that match the resilience and utility of the network designed by publicly-funded scientists in the 60s. This may be because Perelman is less interested in obvious examples than lesser known ones, of which there are several in the book.

The second half of the book argues against patents (and Intellectual property in general) in terms of economic theory. Economics is Perelman's area of expertise, but it is not mine. I had to read most of these chapters twice before I understood them. They're interesting stuff, though. Perelman illustrates various ways economists attempt to shoehorn non-tangible goods (information) into economic models based on "lumpy objects." He illustrates the flaws in several of these models, and how these flaws translate into inefficiencies in actual markets.

Good:

The book isn't just a rant, although it sometimes reads like one. Perelman is firmly biased against IP, and he sometimes uses a few paragraphs to rail against corporations in general. But the book is logically laid out, and presents evidence in well-defined pieces, always clear about what each example is meant to illustrate.

The examples. Those mentioned above are just a few of the many real-life events noted in Steal this Idea. They comprise the bulk of Perelman's case against patent IP. It's always tough to build an argument on anecdotal evidence, but in this case, there's a great deal of evidence.

The scope. I had doubts that a 211-page book could do justice to the issues with every type of intellectual property. Fortunately, Perelman doesn't attempt to cover copyrights, and barely touches trademarks. The overarching theme of the book is that intellectual property (mainly patents) in the hands of corporations works against the original goals of its creators--to encourage innovation and help the economy. The book does a solid job of supporting this claim.

Bad:

IP is supposed to be a "limited" monopoly. Patents are, arguably, the most "limited" of the three types of IP in the US (copyrights, patents and trademarks). Perelman could have acknowledged this, and given concrete examples of why the limits aren't enough to balance the monopoly power. He doesn't explicitly do so.

Copyright is nowhere to be found. That's not all bad, since any book would be hard-pressed to do a better job of handling copyright issues than Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright . Still, Steal this Idea might have included a few more references to copyright-specific cases or works, if only to encourage further reading (patent & trademark examples include many references).

Perelman gives some illustrative figures about why the patent mess is so bad, and why the USPTO is unable to control it. But there's not much meat there. Hopefully, someone will take a more in-depth look at the USPTO itself, and how it operates.

Conclusion:

Steal this Idea has a great deal of information, packed into a fairly short book. It's a good companion to Digital Copyright, and well worth reading for anyone interested in how IP works (or doesn't work).

You can purchase Steal This Idea from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Steal This Idea

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:03PM (#6124516)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Are you implying that amazon and Microsoft have not yet patented the idea of collecting ideas together in the form of chemical marks on bound sheets of processed trees?

      They both have patents pending on this. Since neither of them have found any prior art, the PTO will probably grant one of them :)
  • geez, what's with all the theft [slashdot.org] in book reviews as of recent?

    Mike
    • Heh, it could have been even closer... the original working title was "Steal This Network". Publisher says that "Steal This..." isn't trademarked. I guess Abbey Hoffman wasn't big on that? :)
    • steal this comment! (Score:2)
      by sweeney37 (325921) * on 12:03 PM June 5th, 2003 (#6124520)
      geez, what's with all the theft in book reviews as of recent?

      Mike

      Theft is rampant in these parts.
      • Re:steal this comment! (Score:3, Funny)
        by Surak (18578) * Alter Relationship on Thursday June 05, @04:15PM (#6124653)
        (http://colonialfamilies.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 24, @11:56PM)
        steal this comment! (Score:2)
        by sweeney37 (325921) * on 12:03 PM June 5th, 2003 (#6124520)
        geez, what's with all the theft in book reviews as of recent?

        Mike

        Theft is rampant in these parts.

        My journal has hot /. gossip. [slashdot.org]

  • Steal nothing. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:03PM (#6124526) Homepage Journal
    This book does the exact same thing all the slashdot posts do, nothing.

    Until our goverment is more worried about pissing off the constituents instead of the "sponsors" we'll get a government run by the corporations.

    Money talks, bullshit walks. Welcome to the U$A.
    • Money talks, bullshit walks.

      Hey, that's pretty good! You should trademark it.

  • Red Title (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Tweakmeister ( 638831 )
    What's with the Red Title?

    Screenshot [hogens.com]

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:04PM (#6124539)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • steal the idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Transient0 ( 175617 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:04PM (#6124546) Homepage
    but pay for the book, godammit!

  • Like anything else ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:06PM (#6124561) Journal
    Just like anything else..... all IP isn't necessarily bad. There's a heavy anti-IP slant on Slashdot, and that's a shame.

    What's wrong with being able to make a few bucks off of something unique, new and original of yours?

    Just like anything else, *abuse* of the system is the problem. How do we sort the wheat from the chaff?

    I'm not entirely sure. I think part of the problem lies in the USPTO. They probably need to have some subject-matter experts on hand who can check all the patent applications thoroughly.

    Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.

    Any suggestions on how to improve?

    • Re:Like anything else ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:17PM (#6124669) Journal
      Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.
      Any suggestions on how to improve?

      Well, if the problem is too many original ideas, then the simple solution would be to introduce into the general populous:

      • A diet of pre-processed food low in the proteins essential for brain development.
      • Passive entertainment with a low intellectual content, starving their brains of stimulus.
      Another good idea would be to encourage the nation's youth to use an abbreviated form of the language with a weaker grammatical structure and a lower information-carrying capacity. This will cause their brain cells to organise into patterns less capable of originality and logical thought.

      Oh, wait. We've already tried that, haven't we?

      • Re:Like anything else ... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Suidae ( 162977 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:20PM (#6125162)
        n abbreviated form of the language with a weaker grammatical structure and a lower information-carrying capacity.

        Interesting. While I'm not dealing with any teenagers at the moment, so I don't know what slang they are developing, I'm not so sure the dialects I've come across have any less information carrying capacity than the subset of standard spoken english that they would use if they didn't have their slang.

        I think that it might be less that the developed dialect not having the capacity and more that the typical set of ideas in the sub-culture is limited. That is to say, they ain't got nuttin to talk about, so 'day ain't needin' all 'dem big words.
      • ur gttng a ltl contentious thre, m8.

        wd u lk fries wv that?

      • I am not entirely certain that we are forcing people to eat low-protein foods, or consume certain kinds of entertainment. I think you are misplacing cause and effect here. People do those things because they already are stupid, not because there is some conspiracy to produce more stupid people. My understanding is that the core of the problem is that the uneducated tend to have more children.

        As for your criticisms of slang and dialect, it is obvious you have never studied linguistics. The differences i

    • Re:Like anything else ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by timjdot ( 638909 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:19PM (#6124687) Homepage
      USPTO has experts. Most patents are not "new and unique" they are just modifications and mostly that any competent engineer could create without any special insight. Visit the USPTO and take a read. My wife's cousin worked at the USPTO in the 90's and the problem then was the Japanese would read each patent and file 11 patents covering each possible revision to the original patent in order to block improvement!
      Patent is big business. Takes a regular person $6k or so to get one. Takes 3 years AFTER the filing last I checked. Used to be 2 years 4 years ago. At this rate before long, patents will expire before granted.
      Only big business can defend a patent - look at lemon or whatever his name was who is #2 most prolific patenter ever and invented lots of the automated manufacturing but was not paid by the major automakers until he was like 65. Patents do not result in knowledge sharing etc.
      I think everyone knows these things. Too many systems of our government made sense at the beginning of the industrial age but were never deprecated.
      Clearly this is why one-world government is bad. The nation that structures around advancing knowledge rather than lawsuits about it will surpass the U$A. We need more competition in governments rather than more unification.
      Would you vote for a candidate who sought to fix the patent technology roadblock? I would.
      Tim

      • Lemelson (Score:3, Informative)

        by angle_slam ( 623817 )
        Only big business can defend a patent - look at lemon or whatever his name was who is #2 most prolific patenter ever and invented lots of the automated manufacturing but was not paid by the major automakers until he was like 65.

        His name is Lemelson, and he has licenses of over $1 Billion. There are various places to find information on him, such as the Lemelson Foundation [lemelson.org] and The Lemelson Center [si.edu].

        Kind of odd to see him being hailed as a hero on /., considering his heirs are suing anyone they can think of

        • OK, I'll villify Lemelson.

          He filed, as has been stated, very general patents a long time ago. He then used a loophole in patent law which is peculiar to the USA. While a patent in any country usually runs for a number of years from the date of initial filing (typically 20 years), the USPTO allowed an amended filing to get a new filing date, rather than the original one. By repeatedly filing amendments, the patents can last far longer than the intended term.

          Lemelson used this technique to run patents from

      • Only big business can defend a patent - look at lemon or whatever his name was who is #2 most prolific patenter ever and invented lots of the automated manufacturing but was not paid by the major automakers until he was like 65. Patents do not result in knowledge sharing etc.

        You mean Lemenson. The story is quite different from that. I remember reading about it in the NYT. Apparently, he patented many things which were plausible and fairly common sense ideas, although impratcical at the time. One of them

      • If I read the law correctly, simple variations on an existing patent should not be patentable. Here is the relevant passage, in party of the first part phraseology (from U.S. Code, Title 35, Ch. 10, Sect. 103): "A patent may not be obtained ... if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter p
    • <sarcasm>

      Why not create a non profit org to take money from Slashdotters and apply for all sorts of technology patents before the big companies can... that way, the org could just decide not to enforce the patents and everyone would live happily ever after.
      </sarcasm>

    • Re:Like anything else ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sco08y ( 615665 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:46PM (#6124868)
      Just like anything else, *abuse* of the system is the problem. How do we sort the wheat from the chaff?

      Nope. Abuse of the system is the *syptom*. The problem is that it's a system that lends itself to abuse, as currently designed.

      Part of the problem is that there are *SO* many applications, that the USPTO can't handle it.

      Decentralize it? Does there really need to be a single PTO for the entire country? The Constitution doesn't mandate that, it simply provides Congress the authority to set it up.

      International patents work pretty well... if the 50 states could each decide how they wanted to process patent applications, they could try different things. Hopefully you'd get some real innovation in dealing with the problem.

      (And you could decentralize it even further, I'm sure, with some imagination...)
      • ...if the 50 states could each decide how they wanted to process patent applications, they could try different things.

        I'm affraid you'd end up with a few states implementing weak requirements for origionality in order to soak up patent filing fees from disingenuous "inventors." With one patent office, at least there's no competition for business.

        Also, I think there's virtue in limiting the number of patents that can be filed. With only one slow (broken) patent office, it's like being shot with a pistol i
        • And don't forget that each state will want to lower requirements and increase times in order to attract businesses. And as soon as one ups the time, the others will follow suit... just like price wars, in reverse.
    • As Jefferson said, patents are 'Embarrassments to the Public' they take knowledge and methods that may be usefully employed by anybody competent to understand them, and fence them off from the many for the financial benefit of the few.

      Perhaps if the patent system made RAND royalties mandatory it might begin to serve the inventors and public in the way you assume, and that without getting into the wheat and chaff issue.
      Which, not to be a conspiracy theorist about, I feel the US administration is hoping tha

    • Re:Like anything else ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by caesar-auf-nihil ( 513828 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:06PM (#6125033)
      Well, you're right that certainly there is nothing wrong with an actual inventor protecting his invention and getting paid for it. The original patent system was designed to get inventors to get paid for their work so that they shared it with others via the patent. Back when patents were first granted and created, usually what would happen was that the new invention was kept under wraps and not shared with the greater scientific community, thus slowing down progress. So patents were created as an incentive to share that information.

      Now let's fast forward to today. In major corporations (I work in one), I'm paid to work on scientific research. ALL of my inventions are property not of me, but of the company. My new innovations are patented by the company, and they own it, not me. Okay - so my "benefit" for providing patents to the company is my pay which compensates me for my innovation and advancement to science. No problem there. The problem is how those patents are then used. Since my ideas are the property of the company, I have no control over them once they're owned by the company. So what you see today are patents being used not to protect a new innovation, but to prevent others from using that new innovation. This is the key point. Patents are granted to companies who have no intention of making the innovation a reality to benefit mankind, but rather, something to use in competition with other companies to prevent the other company from gaining an edge over them.

      See the difference between how patents used to be and how they're used now? You are also right that the USPTO is part of the problem, granting patents for things that should not be granted. My personal favorite is one where a company claimed a small amount of an inorganic chemical provided a benefit in a plastic, and the inorganic chemical could be made of anything in the periodic table of the elements. Utter bullshit. The point of the whole matter is that the patent system is broken in how it is used, and how patents are created - but the abuse of how patents are used is THE major problem here.
    • and does not rely on IP to do so. I am paid to come up with "new and original" work, by people who believe they need it, just like most people are.

      Comparable few people make a living of selling their IP rights directly.

    • What's wrong with being able to make a few bucks off of something unique, new and original of yours? ... I think part of the problem lies in the USPTO. They probably need to have some subject-matter experts on hand who can check all the patent applications thoroughly.

      You do realize that if an idea is original then there is no subject-matter expert? (Well, I'll grant you that new ideas build upon old ones, but when Einstein published his theories there were no experts on relativity.) If your idea is really

    • The book review states

      IP is supposed to be a "limited" monopoly.

      The parent poster states

      Just like anything else..... all IP isn't necessarily bad. There's a heavy anti-IP slant on Slashdot, and that's a shame.

      Neither of you appear to know what you're talking about when you argue in terms of "IP" (intellectual property). I would hope that this thread would bother to distinguish between the disparate areas of law that are covered under the largely useless term "IP".

      Trademarks, copyrights, and

    • What about only allowing individuals to patent, not companies!

  • the thicket of radio patents ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06@@@email...com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:07PM (#6124580)
    the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry, until the U.S. government voided many of them in the interest of accelerating radio technology during WWII

    Wow! Now if only the U.S. government would do the same thing with computer patents, things would be grea ...Oh, wait. I forgot that the U.S. government is now formally a subdivision of Microsoft/AOL/TW/Fox/MPAA/RIAA. Oh well. Nice while it lasted.

  • The case against patents (Score:5, Informative)

    by brentlaminack ( 513462 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:10PM (#6124609) Homepage Journal
    An older reference to patents in general can be found at Don Lancaster's site Tinaja.com [tinaja.com]. There's a pdf of the original paper, and some e-book links. Don's been an active author in the technology world for several decades. His site has some other amusing opinion pieces as well. Enjoy!

  • They help, and they hurt. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PS-SCUD ( 601089 ) <peternormanscott@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:10PM (#6124615) Journal
    Do patents slow down scientific growth? Sure, if you have to go through the patent owner to do something, it creates a bottle neck, and increases expenses. But you also have to understand, patents motivate people. It encourages them to invent, and discover, because they know if they find something knew, or create something, they can patent it and make money from it. If inventors couldn't make money off their inventions, there would be alot less of them.

    • Re:They help, and they hurt. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:39PM (#6124826)
      But you also have to understand, patents motivate people. As an avid tinkerer, I have several patentable ideas. I just can't afford to do it. Patents motivate corporations far more than they motivate people due to the cost. Could my ideas result in enough profit to warrent the cost? Yes. Would it actually happen? There's only one way to find out. The little guy has a serious risk/reward problem here.
      • Even if the little guy could easily get a patent for a reasonable sum, any large corporation could copy his idea and tie him up in court until all his profit from the idea would be used up. He'd be better off settling out of court by licensing the patent to the large corp.

        I don't think there is a solution to this, orgs with lots of resources can usually win over orgs with few resources, presuming compentency on both sides.

        Remember that 'invention' for hair styling called the 'topsy tail'? Its a basicly
        • Even if the little guy could easily get a patent for a reasonable sum, any large corporation could copy his idea and tie him up in court until all his profit from the idea would be used up. He'd be better off settling out of court by licensing the patent to the large corp.

          What's wrong with licensing the patent to the large corporation? If you invented something and it is useful, do you really have the capability to build and market it yourself. Most "little guys" don't, so the reason for the patent is to

    • of companies that need an improvement in some field. They would hire inventors to come up with the improvement and share the benefits.

      As it is, inventors rarely make money from patents. They usually have to hand them over to the employer and just get a fixed salary. So individuals won't lose much.

      Of course, there would be problems like motivating companies to join the consortium rather than just waiting for others to develop the technology. But the patent system has many problems as well. Who knows which
    • You miss the entire point of the book. Obviously both of those factors are at work, but the author has written the book to answer the question, "Do patents hurt more than they help?"

      His detailed scientific and economic analysis reveals that they do. So, ditch 'em.

      There - just stole his idea.

      -renard

    • There is much more than that. It causes a patent holder with a toe hold on a monopolized item to cling to old technology instead of opening up to new technology they do not monopolize. While this happens even without patents, patents aggravate the occurance. This seems to be particularly true in drug companies. The case has been made that much less innovative research is being done by companies more worried about their control of patents than making people well.

    • This is by far one of the biggest myths of patents. Google "Brian Martin Intellectual Property" and read his paper.

  • Stolen things... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:11PM (#6124620) Homepage Journal
    The name, of course, brought to mind the classic Abbie Hoffman book "Steal This Book". Since I hadn't read the copy I stole from my Dad years ago (which he stole from an early Tower store) in a very long time, I popped "Steal This Book" [google.com] into Google [google.com] and was pleased to find several links to the ENTIRE BOOK [tenant.net]!

    I think it's ironic that the Hoffman book is found online in it's entirety after being brought to mind by a book about copyright protection and IP law. The universe has a strange sense of humor/justice...

    • Some stuff still works (like the free buffets at bars for those who order drinks, especially in hotel restauruants), but other stuff in this book is a bit out of date. For instance, supermarkets now use clear plastic bags for produce, most jars now have 'tamper-resistant' packaging, putting your own pricetag on doesn't work anyway because most cashiers have barcode scanners now (although bringing your own *barcodes* on adhesive labels might work for some things)...

      • although bringing your own *barcodes* on adhesive labels might work for some things

        Particularly random weight (ie, sold by the pound) goods like meat, the price is usually encoded into the barcode. The first part will be an item class code, the second part is the price, as calculated by the actual weight of the item. Its trivial to print some new tags using whatever symbology the store uses and stick it on top of the existing label.

        You'd have to be pretty damn cheap to go to the trouble of printing new
        • Ah, but if the price rings up wrong (dairy and some other products excepted) you can get it free!
          • True, I'd expect the tag to be inspected in that case though, so it would have to be a very good counterfit, and you'd then be deliberately drawing managment attention. You'd save much more by discounting all your random weight items (price encoded on the ticket) by some large percentage.

            Taking it further, you could retag normal items with valid UPC/GTIN numbers from other cheaper products, preferably of the same brand. But that would be much more obvious as you wandered around the store, peeling sticker
            • Having working in retail, it's much easier to just make a fuss. Most places, including where I've worked, permit cashiers to take 10% off just to shit you up, without needing a manager.
            • I've seen hand scanner/printers that you can run over something and it will spit a copy out the other end. Load it with white label tape, walk around and find a cheap item. Scan it. Make 100 copies of the same bar code. Stick it to all of the items you want to buy, use the Self Checkout line at your local supermarket.>:)

              Kintanon

  • Clarification on the enzyme issue. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:12PM (#6124630) Homepage Journal
    Although Rochester won the patent, the competing teams at UCLA and Brigham Young University claim that their work was fundamental.

    I don't believe the patent was on the COX-2 enzyme itself, only it's application for medicines to reduce inflamation. If someone found a different use for the enzyme, I don't think the patent would cover it.

    Who cares if it was fundemental. They researched it, found it, and claimed "FIRST POST!^H^H^H^H^HPATENT!" It's their right to get a patent for their work. Yes, it would be great if other drug companies could compete and make said drug for cheaper. However, you get into the "chicken and egg" problem of drug companies not doing research because it's not profitable. Besides, the author states that "scientific progress in the last half of the twentieth century owes a greater debt to basic research from academic and publicly-funded scientists and researchers than to corporate research." So why didn't they find it first? Prior art would have killed the patent. The truth is that corporate research provides an important contribution. If it didn't, this wouldn't be an issue.

    • Re:Clarification on the enzyme issue. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frater 219 ( 1455 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:14PM (#6125110) Journal
      Who cares if it was fundemental. They researched it, found it, and claimed "FIRST POST!^H^H^H^H^HPATENT!" It's their right to get a patent for their work.

      And here we have an elegant example of the logical fallacy known as "begging the question"; that is, assuming for your argument the very conclusion which is under contention: whether or not there is, or should be, a right to exclude others from a discovery in fundamental science, simply because one manages to file it first.

      (It is the claim of the U.S. Constitution, for instance, that patent and copyright are not natural rights akin to life, liberty, and property: they are, rather, privileges created by Congress for a purpose. They rest on a consequentialist ethical system rather than a natural-law one: specifically, they exist to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts. If they fail to meet that purpose, then they fail to be justified.)

      There has been no evidence cited that the consequentialist argument defends the extremity of patent (and copyright) that is presently enforced. Pursuers of greater copyright restrictions, and pursuers of vague and obvious patents, both assert that artists and researchers would have greater incentive to create and discover, if their works received greater monopoly protection.

      However, this is a bare assertion without any evidence for it; a statement of faith and not of reason. It should not motivate the restriction of the public by further onerous laws. In the absence of evidence for the claim that a restrictive law would further the public good, a free nation should err on the side of preserving liberty and not on the side of extending further monopolies for the already-privileged.

    • "So why didn't they find it first?"

      There are many reasons you can be wrong here. They most likely were the ones to find it first. Now the reason a company has a patent on it brings me to my next series of probabilities (which you would know are common if you have ever done reading on the subject). The company could have given the Uni. some funding with attached strings, such as the corp. gaining "IP" rights to all the research in question. Second, Uni's do basic research, which is of utmost importance.
    • And without the "prize" of winning exclusive rights for being the first company to commercialize the drug, all those companies wouldn't have worked and fought to hard to be first. We would't have seen as much investment into COX-2 drugs and the medicines would not have come to market as quickly.

      The true economic argument against patents is that they actually encourage too much investment in research. In this case, all those companies spent enormous sums on research, gambling that they would win. But onl
      • One advantage of the patent system is that the value of the prize is set by the market for the product. Alternatively you could have a government Czar handing out research dollars as he sees fit for whatever project he feels is best. Then research becomes focused on whatever cause is politcially correct at the moment. Patents can be worth billions of dollars or they can be worth nothing. Companies estimate the value of pursuing patentable research based on the potential market for the resulting products

  • Not the usual anti-patent rant (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GGardner ( 97375 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:13PM (#6124643)
    We've all seen and mocked stupid patents, like the patent on swinging sideways on a playground swing. However, I don't think pointing out random bad patents is a useful way to critique the current US patent system. We all know there are a huge number of patents, and with any huge collection, there are outliers.

    However, when searching for the mythical Novell Unix patent a the patent office [uspto.gov] I was really struck by how bad every software patent was.

    For example, when searching for patents assigned to Novell (search criteria AN/Novell), the very first patent returned is number 6,567,873, which is a patent having to do with spinlocks in an SMP kernel. Basically, the patent covers the idea of exponential backoff for a contented resource. This is something which ethernet has done for 30 years, and I'm sure there's even further prior art.

    Another Novell patent involves resizing FAT file partitions on the fly, and involves no real insight at all.

    But it's not these two patents. Almost every single patent is either just this obvious, or just this derivative of prior work. Check it out yourself -- pretty much every computer program ever written must violate hundreds of patents.

    • The USPO doesn't know how to differentiate between these things. They cannot do the research to learn this because the current focus of the executive branch is forcing smaller government.

      This has adventages, but when IP is protectable and defendable making use of these certificates as the core defense, these office should be granted the budget of any legal office. It's not, IMO. The USPO seems horribly out of touch with modern or detailed technology. The experts they employee are either *not* or *incred

    • Re:Not the usual anti-patent rant (Score:4, Interesting)

      by codefool ( 189025 ) <ghesterNO@SPAMcodefool.org> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:04PM (#6125015) Homepage Journal
      There was a time in the early 90's when every corporation went pantent crazy. I worked at the time for [a company that is now HP], and we had to go to Patent School where we were 'taught' how to fill out log books, get them reviewwed and signed, etc. all in the effort to protect the Company's IP. Now, we all kept notebooks like all good scientists, but this was more of a process to make sure that the evidence was there as to exactly when and what was 'invented'.

      This behavior was justified by the need to have a sufficient patent portfolio when bartering with other technology companies. Rather than battle out an infringement claim in court, companies would just trade patent rights, like high-tech marbles in the schoolyard.

      So I and my team went to work and developed some pretty nifty stuff . I got four software patents out of the deal. Not because I particularly felt the work was patent worthy, but because I got a grand for each one, and a pretty cool plaque in a Handsome Plastic Frame.

      Every one of those patents are bogus. I borrowed all the technology - regular expressions, IP-IP protocols, and just plain-ol-object embedding. When I would tell this to the patent lawyers, they said the patent was viable because of the context it was presented in. That is, if the base idea for the patent itself is obvious, it can be argued that its application is not. Ergo, cha-ching!

    • Re:Not the usual anti-patent rant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @02:21PM (#6125681) Homepage Journal
      I'm the unfortunate filer of a patent. I did it because I wanted to keep my job secure. I didn't want to at first. The idea was kind of innovative, but no especially so. But then a competing company changed my mind.

      My field has only three huge multinational corporations. As I was debating whether or not it would be worth it in the long run to toss my patent application in the shredder, we got hit by a patent by Philips, one of those big three. We had prior art on this patent. We had been doing it for ten years. We had never patented it because it was so bloody obvious, with art prior to ours dating back to the Apple Lisa. I was thinking Philips was going to get a swift kick in the butt by our attorneys. But no, we decided to cross license for it. It turned out that it was cheaper to let them use one of our worthless patents in exchange for their worthless patent instead of spending two hours of court time listening to a judge laugh his head off at the absurdity of the patent.

      I came to the realization that patents in the modern world are nothing more than a set trading cards used by corporations. Some of those cards, like a Mickey Mantle, might have some genuine value to them, but most are worthless obviousness.

      Patents have become valueless commodities. It doesn't matter about any indivual patent, so long as you have more patents than your competitor.

  • patents and pills (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PukkaStoryTeller ( 661614 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:16PM (#6124667)
    a slightly offtopic comment. patents can be abused by drug companies. when a patent for a drug is about to expire the company will release a similar drug and patent it to stop the generic companies from being able to profit. examples would be the weekly prozac and clariton-d. i am sure there are many more. i watched a dateline special on it once.

  • Patent scope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:17PM (#6124671)
    Patents are, arguably, the most "limited" of the three types of IP

    Have to disagree there. At least I can't violate copyright without actually copying someone else's work. Patents can deny me the right to my own, independently developed ideas. They don't last as long, but they're much more powerful.

    • At least I can't violate copyright without actually copying someone else's work. Patents can deny me the right to my own, independently developed ideas.

      Obviously, you've never heard of the George Harrison copyright infringement suit [vwh.net]. He independently created the song "My Sweet Lord", but the authors of the song "He's So Fine" sued and prevailed, saying Harrison copied the song.

      • He independently created the song "My Sweet Lord", but the authors of the song "He's So Fine" sued and prevailed, saying Harrison copied the song.

        That is not my reading of the document you linked to:

        "With all the evidence pointing out the similarities between the two songs, the judge said it was "perfectly obvious . . . the two songs are virtually identical". The judge was convinced that neither Harrison nor Preston consciously set out to appropriate the melody of HSF for their own use, but such was not

        • According to this finding and admission [in Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs], the work was not independently developed, but was copied from the original, even if subconsciously.

          What specific steps can a songwriter take when writing a song to avoid subconsciously copying a published musical work?

  • This review really made me want to read this book. I think the centeral problem with Intellectual Property is the whole notion of defining a right as a property. The legal system should go back to treating patents, trademarks and copyrights as temporary rights to exclusive use, rather than the newer notion of equating them with physical property.

  • His best example is the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry

    Baby radios are a fucking stupid idea. I'd rather listen to country and western, even.

  • Happen to own a copy of the book... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thdexter ( 239625 ) <dexter@nOSPAM.suffusions.net> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:58PM (#6124948) Journal
    and I'm also an Economics major. The economics is really mostly dead-on, except that the author seems to imply that research is of more worth than profit. Which is of course true, but not in a free-market system--or anything related to it. If anybody's interested on how you and I get screwed over, though, go read some Noam Chomsky. All the government thinktanks develop cancer drugs, malaria drugs, whatever, and once they're perfected, they're sold for pennies to corporations who then sell them for $102/pill. Really, the only way to salvage this is to either have the government manufacture drugs (but socialism is just one step from COMMUNISM BOO HISS) or impose rules on drug makers (which again is regulation--companies hate this.) The people need to realize that health care is a right, not a privilege. And that's why I scoff when Bush declares himself a compassionate conservative and then cuts welfare programs, or cuts his oil buddies' tax rates. Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Green Party, and I think that we should have a maximum income... better to screw those that live well than those that are too busy being hungry to sit around with bags of money and diamond back scratchers.

  • Property and Rights are NOT different ! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Compulawyer ( 318018 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:07PM (#6125049)
    My apologies to another poster, but... Property and rights are the exact SAME things. Traditionally there were tangible objects and there was property. In the olden days, the only "real" property was an estate in land -- thus, "real estate." Personal property (the vast bulk of what today is considered property - anything other than real estate) by and large did not exist.

    A tangible object only becomes property when rights attach to that object. The core property right is the right to exclude others from using the subject property. To use another real estate example, think of the law of trespass. Trespass laws prevent others from using real estate.

    Take this now to the next level - intellectual property. Because IP is based on an intangible ("an idea" as the author of this book has called it), the property is defined by the bounds of the rights in the intangible. The right to exclude is inextricably bound with the intangible and becomes part of the definition of the right. Therefore, the right is coextensive with the property because it IS the property.

    To go back to the real estate example, the right to exclude is coextensive with the physical boundary of the land in question. That is why estates in land and the land itself are two very different things. The land itself is nothing. The estate in the land (that is, the rights attached to the parcel) is the property.

    Most people (even most lawyers) never make this distinction when it comes to patents. You will sometimes hear talk about the "patent monopoly," but this term has been rejected by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the federal appeals court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases in the United States). The Court has made clear that patents define the metes and bounds of a piece of property and do not grant monopolies. There are sound reasons for this distinction that I hope you will forgive me for not discussing here. it is enough for this post that the distinction exists.

  • I think what should be done is that every product has to pay a "patent tax" of a fixed percent, just like sales tax.

    How that portion is divied up is between patent claimants, not the manufactures. Thus, if you use ideas or potentially use ideas, then the different patent claimers will have to battle with each other instead of the manufacturer or user.

    It might look like "yet another tax", but we pay anyhow now, just in a less organized fashion. This recommendation just moves the legal haggling to an area t
  • Personally I disagree with the whole notion of IP being bad. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks ensure inventive and creative people that they get the credit, recognition, and money that they deserve. The problem is how this process is done today. It used to be that you actually had to have a physical object to patent, but when they changed patents to cover processes then things got wacky. 1-click checkout. Y2K fixes.

    The few examples that are mentioned in the book are what's wrong with patents. Pate

  • Evil Patent Agents/Lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After getting tossed out of a job a few years back, I toyed with the idea of becoming a patent agent. The logic being that I already had a strong engineering background, it would make a good part time job that could turn into a full time one and vise versa, and finally it would be a great differentiator on my resume.

    In Canada, you do not have to go to law school to become a patent agent. You simply work as a trainee at a firm for at least one year then write the appropriate exams.

    After going through a s

  • I read a few good points that Don Lancaster Made on his website [tinaja.com]. I have to admit that his audience is people who really has mastered a technology and can do something better than anyone else, for them putting out a patent is an invitation to theft. But it is also a good read for anyone thinking of patenting their good idea, it might be more sound to be beaten down in your shoes and walking away feeling like a looser than being talked into protecting something that wouldn't really hold on closer scrutiny.

  • It's ironic, but the Amazon one-click purchase patent is a bad example of a "bad" patent. It's actually quite a good patent.

    No site had, and no programmer before or since would ever feel comfortable letting someone buy something without a second click for a confirmation. This is well documented, and any programmer of any age would tell you this. It was a true innovation in thought to both the online community and the programming community.

    A better example would be something that was an imminently obvio

  • Let's beat bogus patents with 'Prior Art Registry' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mhackarbie ( 593426 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @12:19AM (#6129547) Homepage Journal
    I don't know much about the law, but I have been spending lots of time happily developing molecular modeling software with lots of neat ideas that I hope will never be patented. Can't a lot of these bogus patents be stopped with some kind of 'Prior Art Registry' where people describe useful ideas and have a timestamped record of it which can prevent some bozo from trying to patent it down the line? I did a Google Search and found only the barest references to a 'Gnu Prior Art Registry', but it doesn't seem to exist. Anyone else know more?

    mhack

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