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The Patently Absurd Blackberry Case | 54 comments (54 topical) | Post A Comment
Invalid patents?[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#15)
by Anonymous User on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 07:20:22 PM PDT

"Put another way, would it be right for me to start my own Gripelog and steal your lucrative idea?" Yes, it would and that's the point. Ideas are nto patentable - atleast that is supposed to be the way it works. The advent of biological, business method, and software patents have all but wrecked the philosophical underpinnings of the patent system. But the fundimentla point is that "You can not own an idea". Ideas are not property, they have very few of the attributes of real property. The broken IP system we have eveolved in the US threatens to destroy one of our most cherished freedoms - Freedom of expression. Underlying all expression are ideas. Can Ed own the concept behind the GripeLine ? If so then Can Craig own the idea of the List ?, What about Blogs? Newsites? Maybe we shouldpatent Democracy ? Relativity ? Gravity ? That someone could own gravity is absurd, but not really much more aabsurd than all too many patents granted today. Then there is the claim/false hope that atleast Patents expire and the situation will be self correcting. Microsoft's original FAT patent was created in the early eighties - an is long expired. Yet the media has hyped the contest over the validity of a more recent patent pertaining only to the specific way in which long file names are created that is not a particularly novel or interesting idea - it is little more than good basic programming, yet according to the hype should it hold up all OpenSOurce will collapse ? Additionally the Patent office is swamped, they do not even have the ability to make certain they do not approve a patent for something already patented - and they do regularly. Yet despite this the courts - rightly, because it is NOT their job to analyze the validity of patents, but to answer the sole equally difficult technical question of whether the defendants product infringes on the plantiff's patent. There are alot of ideas to try to fix the patent system. Mnay good ones, but they are all band aides.Over 200 years ago we created the modern system of intellectual property. Our founding fathers held their noses as they did so - they called patents and copyrights monopolies. The motivation for overcoming their distaste was to attmpt to balance the disparate power between individual authors and inventors and large enterprises. Yet within a few decades it was obvious even to them that Patents and Copyrights had actually made the situation they were looking to correct worse, but by then the system had attained its own life. The intellectual Property system is going to self destruct eventually. Ignoring philosophical arguments, as a practical matter the system does not work, can not be fixed and will only get worse with time. But despite that though there are starting to be rumblings of basic understanding, there is still an enormous amount of money involved, and we are far from either the political will or the fundimental understanding of its problems. Fortunately most of the world has NOT followed our example any permitted bussiness method and software patents. Hopefully, they will continue to observe and learn from our mistakes.

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My "Lucrative" Idea[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#18)
by Ed Foster on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 10:39:58 PM PDT

Yes, indeed, anyone who wishes to compete for all the fabulous wealth I'm making off the GripeLog is more than welcome to do so. But pretend for a moment I actually wanted to stop someone from "stealing" my idea. What legal recourse would I have?

Well, if you actually ripped off my material, or called yourself the GripeLog or the GripeLine, I would certainly have a chance of making a case against you under copyright law. But if you just did an online computer gripes website of your own -- and some people already have, and some of them are pretty good, as a matter of fact -- copyright law would give me no claim on you. And that's obviously the way it should be.

But the way patent law works now, I conceivably could have an Internet business method patent on the very concept of people posting their gripes about technology products. (The fact that this business method doesn't have a viable business model behind it wouldn't count against me.) Since I haven't applied for such a patent, someone else could file for it tomorrow. And given all the extremely inane patents that have been granted in recent years -- NTP's patents being not even close to the worst -- it's possible they'd succeed. Once they had it, they could easily drive me out of this lucrative business.

That is the way patent law is being interpreted by the courts these days. By the way, as pointed out in this Slate article, we can attribute this plight to a case of "judicial activism" run amok. So if the judge in the Blackberry case does shut them down, it is only another step in our judicial system's march toward the supremacy of intellectual property over all other considerations.

Ed Foster



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The Patently Absurd Blackberry Case | 54 comments (54 topical) | Post A Comment
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