IBM Sues Amazon For Patent Infringement 204
Petersko writes "It appears Amazon is about to be sued for patent infringement by IBM". From the article: "Hundreds of other companies have licensed the same patents, and IBM has tried to negotiate licensing deals with Amazon "over a dozen times since 2002," Kelly said. Amazon.com, which has bought a lot of hardware from Hewlett-Packard Co. over the years but not IBM, has allegedly refused every time."
Almost a month old (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But. . . wait a second! (Score:3, Informative)
IBM is the ultimate patent troll. They make quadzillions every year licensing their patent portfolio. In fact, Microsoft's recent foray into the patent business are based on recreating IBM's success. When it comes to patents IBM is definitely not the good guy.
Re:Patents (Score:5, Informative)
The system is not premised on the idea that nobody else could have come up with the idea. The system encourages people to take their ideas and reduce them to practice. Having the invention filed with the government exposes the knowledge to the public, who benefit where the alternative is keeping the details a secret.
The patents system has devolved to be that if you are the first to file a piece of paper .. regardless of how obvious your idea is .. you win a monopoly on it for 20 years (with possible infinite extension via mickey mouse legislators).
Unlike some other countries, the US is not a first-to-file jurisdiction. Instead, it is a first-to-invent jurisdiction, generally giving rights to the first person to come up with the idea. Furthermore, obviousness is a bar to patentability (although a challenger is not allowed the benefit of hindsight when making this obviousness determination). Except in very strange circumstances (usually involving government appropriation of defense-related inventions) there is no way to extend patent rights beyond 20 years. The mickey mouse legislators you refer to are dealing with copyright. Just because you are the first to invent something, doesn't mean society would have been deprived of your invention were it not for you. It just means you got there first (thanks to better resources available to you). It's like a winner of a race claiming that if it wasn't for him, nobody else would have crossed the finish line.
The limited rights given to a patent holder is one of the main incentives that drives the metaphorical race you describe. Without patents, things would surely be invented... just not as quickly. And once they were, the details would be kept completely secret, robbing value to society. Without patents, here's how the race would go: once the winner reaches the finish line, all the other runners are instantly transported to the finish line and given gold metals. So what is the incentive for any one runner to be first? Nobody would run. They would more likely meander indifferently towards the finish line.
I'm not some crazy lover of patents. I believe that some reform is in order. But the basic premise makes sense in our currently capitalist business environment.
Re:What is everyone thinking? (Score:3, Informative)
But, seriously, the small guy needs patent law more than the big guy.
That's a nice theory, but the reality is that the small guy can't afford patents, and the big guy can. The little guy is much better off keeping the important ideas secret, protecting them with trade secret and contract law (NDAs, etc.). Patent litigation is ruinously expensive, and if you end up fighting with a big guy, odds are very good that he'll dig up a dozen patents of his own that you are infringing.
Note that I do think patents are a good idea, in the abstract, but our present implementation is so badly broken as to be a net negative -- especially with respect to software.
Re:What is everyone thinking? (Score:3, Informative)
I caught a headline on Slashdot the other day saying that Intel had been granted a patent on Web phones. The summary said it had been filed for in 2000. I didn't get the chance to read the article or comments. However, it struck me as ridiculous that a patent filed for in a technology's infancy wouldn't get awarded until after that technology had matured and was in wide use. It seems to me that if a patent can't be awarded within a year of filing, it should invalidated.
It also seems to me that the length of time that a patent is valid is ridiculously long. Now it may be that it takes twenty years to take an idea from prototype to profit. However, I've never seen this as being the case with software. If software patents must exist, they should be valid for, at most, four years. It's wrong that a piece of software be protected by patent law for what is effectively it entire life of said software. How many people remember when the GIF patent expired? Now, how many even knew what a computer was when it was filed? GIF was an important step forward in exchanging information between computers. Before GIF, digital images were stored as raw memory dumps that could only be viewed using the same type of system. However, GIF was soon replaced by a hundred different image formats and died long before it's patent expired.
Of course, how much protection a patent (or copyright for that matter) can provide is determined by how wealthy you are. Sure, the law says you are protected. However, you are only protected in so far as you can afford a lawyer, court costs, etc. One of my favorite stories is about the invention of television. The poor guy spent every penny he had and died broke before he was awarded the patent. It didn't hurt RCA any to fight him.