Former Intel CEO Andy Grove Wants Struggling Industries To Stop Slacking 235
lousyd writes "Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel and current instructor at Stanford Business School, has a message for industry. He believes that health care and energy, especially, could learn a lesson from computing's innovative and relatively government-free history. He asks students to imagine if mainframe vendors had asked government to prop them up in the same way that General Motors recently was. On the issue of computer patents, he insists that firms must use their patents or lose them: 'You can't just sit on your a** and give everyone the finger.'"
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:1, Interesting)
And that's exactly what they want (stop loosing some money to patent trolls but keep all the "advantages" of this absurd system). Bad is, it puts small inventors out of equation (although the patent system was specifically designed because of them) because their ideas will be legally stolen before they can turn it into a product.
I'm sure that politicians would be in favor of a pro-corporate change, because it does it's purpose of protecting established technical strongholds from arising competitors. That way western economies want to keep being protected from countries that manage to develop a competition and to keep technological and economical advantage forever. I belive this is primarilly why government is so keen on keeping software patents around, despite many complaints. Free software is a headache to all of them, as it's basically a domestic community product, so attacking and endagering it provokes a strong backlash and stone throwing on politicians and "offending" companies.
The protection of a lone inventor is just an utopia, anyway. So, I'm in favour of shutting the patent system down alltogether, but I don't belive it will happen. It's not in the interest of wealthy people.
Re:So, what's the answer supposed to be? (Score:4, Interesting)
The private sector was clearly interested only in hoping "data islands" from which "publishing" could be strictly controlled (and billed) along with limited interconnection through proprietary network protocols, and not in creating some kind of generic interconnection as such where network services and data could be offered by any participating peer. If we did not have the government funded Internet at the start, we would still be today essentially experiencing some decadent of or something like Compuserve or AoL, that is a metered data service delivered from an isolated digital island, and perhaps even things like broadband may never have become widely available outside of businesses looking to connect ipx over x.25 networks :).
Re:No thanks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, it becomes a registration system that grantees payment of royalties to inventors for a specific period of time, paid by anyone that wants to use a patent.
So a patent holder can not restrict use of an invention. this allows others to use it as a base for further invention and innovation. It also removes, to a big extent, any reason for companies to fight patent awards, or try to steal or use patents without paying, which might lower the number of lawsuits, etc. Why risk paying lawyers when you can just use it cheaply and legally?.
I am not certain how to determine the royalty rate though. Could an auction system work? Or maybe a percentage of the cost to manufacture, which would be harder to fudge than percentage of profit?
One reform does need to be made, similar to what the parent mentions: You should not be able to file a patent application for anything that is already being produced and marketed by anyone, including yourself. If you forget to file and it is sold or produced before the patent application is filed, well, you screwed up. It should automatically be in the public domain, regardless of what ever kind of excuses or prior evidence you can mock up.
The world has changed since the 18th century when the basis for the U.S. patent system was formed. (I dunno about other systems). It is far easier to keep track of what people are making and selling in distant places than it was 300 years ago, and easier to assess royalties, etc. There seems to no longer need to be a simple ban on anyone else using a patent.
Yeah, lots of details lef tout, and probably lots of holes, and a bunch of new problems different than the current ones. But would it be an improvement over the current system? Maybe you patent gurus here can comment.
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:3, Interesting)
I read that the original argument for patents was to avoid the secretive guilds of the medieval era. That is, in exchange for temporary societal protection and granting of monopoly, information was opened up. Now, perhaps that was the argument needed when back in the day, all you really "owned" was what you could protect and horde.
But I wonder how much of that purpose today's patents actually achieve in obtaining, for the public, new info worth having, rather than obvious variants, rehashed variants, or things that could be reversed engineered from products of the company. Many of the interesting things still are done under "propietary" (read: secret) processes.
Re:Read the article, (Score:1, Interesting)
he hardly mentions healthcare in the way the summary implies. He states that the pharma industry needs to get it's ass in gear, and that's about it.
legalisation would sure put more money in pharma's pockets hahaha.
it's not really a surprise that a redundant and useless industry like pharmaceuticals is having a hard time these days. same with cars. these are things that are pretty vacant. nobody needs a new car every two years, a properly built car should last 30 years at least with an engine change and regular maintenance. and most drugs are sold to cover up symptoms of other problems like misconceptions about how much of each nutrient we actually need and the subtle long term effects of things that are classified 'safe'.
when times are tough, frivolous things tend to lose the consumer dollar. maybe if big pharma started funding real health research and exploring recreational psychoactive drugs they'd see their bottom line pick up. proper results in the former and safe drugs in the latter increase lifespans and happiness which results in a better economy. this idiotic idea that people can't be trusted to administer psychoactive drugs responsibily basically means these very clever pharmacology people have a very narrow field. psychoactives is a wide open field and nobody's legally allowed to capitalise on it. big pharma is best equipped to. shame it's not likely to happen.
the legacy of highly effective brainwashing campains against psychoactive drugs is a society that is afraid of the idea of investigating the field at all, let alone making it into a proper industry. if the entrenched psychoactive drug industries didn't have the advantage of irrational ridiculous laws and ideas about psychoactive drug use i'm sure they'd be in the shitter these days too. i can tell you one thing for sure, caffeine would NOT be the most widely consumed drug if people had the option of a vibrant research industry exploring other potential stimulants. and i'd say the liquor industry would probably be begging for bailouts too if they had to compete with a legal cannabis industry.
and before i neglect this point... guess which industry is the most thoroughly full of redundant non-useful activity? finance? not to say banks don't perform critical useful functions in society, but the more abstract derivatives get the less relevant they get to reality.
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:1, Interesting)
Andy Grove said, "You can't just sit on your a** and give everyone the finger." And later he added, "Hey you kids, get off my damn lawn!" ;-)
But Mr. Grove is correct - government often makes things stagnate and hold steady, such as when AT&T had a government-protected monopoly over the phone lines and computer modems. From the 1950s to the 1980s the only speeds available were 110 bit/s and 300 bit/s. If AT&T still held that monopoly, we'd still have 0.3 kbit/s modems and the late-90s web explosion would have been impossible (too slow).
But the Carterphone decision (circa 1981) eliminated that monopoly and multiple companies began a "speedwar" that rapidly moved speeds from 0.3 to 56k in only ten years time. And then they branched-out further with cable companies bring 1 Mbit and higher speeds, which forced phone companies to adapt or die.
Another (in)famous example was the Government-owned Tribant car. Yeah sure the government made sure people had cars, but the technology was stuck in the 1940s. Government stagnates.
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm too lazy to do it... (Score:3, Interesting)
It actually makes sense to have companies be taxfree. They provide jobs which is a useful service to the nation and should be encouraged, just the same way we encourage other useful services like the foundation for the arts or the government-run school system or or city metro or whatever.
Plus we all know that taxes get paid by consumers anyway. If next year the Congress announced a 20% National Tax on every product sold, do you think Walmart or MS or other Corps would just say, "Oh that's okay. We'll pay it ourselves." Of course not. They'll pass it onto the customers as 20% higher prices. Corporate taxation is just a hidden tax that ultimately comes out of OUR wallets.
I think an organization that provides Americans with jobs should be tax exempt, if only as a way of saying "thank youse for my jarb". ;-)
Re:Er Wait a Minute... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
The hardest part about long term waste storage is getting people to give it as little thought as they give the millions of tons of material pumped into the atmosphere by coal power plants (and it is becoming clear that they actually put more radiation into the environment than nuclear, so it isn't just a matter of the potential problems associated with the CO2).
The idea of creating institutions that need to stand for thousands of years is a little scary, but I'm a lot more scared of turning off the lights.
AT&T and other monopolies (Score:2, Interesting)
But Mr. Grove is correct - government often makes things stagnate and hold steady, such as when AT&T had a government-protected monopoly over the phone lines and computer modems
The reason AT&T was created as a monopoly was to help build telephone infrastructure.
There used to be dozens of telephone companies and electrical utilities. However they only served urban areas and everyone strung up their own cables. When they went bust the cables were left there as there was no one to clean them up.
Monopolies were legislated so that one company could build the infrastructure for all residents (urban and rural). They were guaranteed a fixed profit and in exchange had to serve all areas equally, with urban dwellers subsidizing the building of infrastructure in rural parts (farming was greatly helped by electrification in many aspects--which helped them become more efficient and lower food prices).
Now perhaps the phone monopoly was allowed to live too long. Or perhaps the monopoly should have been for the infrastructure (cables), and there should have been competition for the actual service (like Sweden does with ISPs). But the monopoly was initially formed for very good reasons, and without it we wouldn't have the electrical and telephone infrastructure as quickly as we did.
And other government interference was Europe mandating GSM: it forced all companies on the same playing field and gave people choices in equipment and services. Whereas in the US laissez faire model you have multiple carriers, with multiple standards, with only token "competition" between them because once someone on one system the switching costs can be very high.
The competition should be in services, not in infrastructure. The infrastructure should be one open standard (either voluntarily picked or mandated).
Re:So, what's the answer supposed to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S:
I didn't respond to all your points, because many of them you conceded that government involvement was useful. However, your Social Security example is particularly off-base, because I was talking about government-private relationships, which Social Security is not really an example of. It seems to me that private enterprise when combined with government backing (combined mandates for public benefit) produce more remarkable results than either purely government or purely private endeavors do.
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:3, Interesting)
Taking away the capacity of the patent holder to screw down the person who is innovating based upon patented work is a good thing, but then the patent holder deserves a return for their R&D. Perhaps if the rules were fixed up front, that would be give certainty. I'm not sure about auctioning, since a lot more variables come into play. Perhaps if you set royalties at 20% that would be good for both patent holder and user over the long term.
But what about derivative works based on two or more patents? - So I'm not sure the whole royalty system would work so easily.
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm too lazy to do it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:3, Interesting)
Government projects in democratic countries are answerable to the people, and thus has to consider all the consequences so society of their actions. Keeping a perhaps inefficient steel industry around prevents unemployment and keeps communities together, and if a government run steel industry is managed by a democratically elected government, it has to take these things into account.
Private enterprise has no such burden; it can take a shit on workers, communities, natural resources, pretty much at will. It shifts all the negative consequences of its actions off its own balance sheet and lets society (normally through government) cover the costs of sorting it all out.
The widely spread myth that private enterprise is more 'efficient' is merely an accounting anomaly; democratic government has to take responsibility for its actions and pay to sort them out. Private industry can make someone else pay to sort them out.
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been thinking lately, (don't let that scare you), that instead of the patent system granting exclusive rights, it should grant exclusive royalties.,
No. The government should not dictate how much a patent is worth -- which is the effect of what you suggest.
Patents (and copyright) are a way of giving market value to creative effort. Any "reform" of either that removes the absolute ability of the inventor (author) to control whom uses their IP removes said IP from the market, and instead makes it a form of government regulation.
Should patents and copyright be reformed, to make some things which are currently protected (business methods & software respectively) not eligible for them? Yes. But should the basic idea be altered? Not unless you're also going to make big changes to our market-based system.
(Yes, software should not be covered by copyright -- it should be governed by a design patent, same as any other product of engineering.)
Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So, what's the answer supposed to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to add to your excellent and highly accurate post, Good Citizen dangitman, as opposed to bothering with some of the idiotic and moronic criticizing posts which follow it: If Wall Street could ever come up with anything remotely as successful as Social Security (an insurance program for the majority), we would all be mightily impressed.
Instead, they keep coming up with an infinite amount of securitized financial scams (or as they call them, "instruments") to continue The Great Financialization.
Re:So, what's the answer supposed to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So, what's the answer supposed to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>So, what if you don't have the money to put into a private savings account?
Then you sign-up for Welfare when you retire at age 70 or higher. That's what that program is for - to help those without enough money to care for themselves.
>>>The majority of businesses fail over time
If only the government would do that same (or have the balls to layoff not-needed workers to reduce expenses, rather than have them just sitting-around doing nothing). Government is a MONOPOLY and therefore no better than if Microsoft had a monopoly, or Comcast had a monopoly, or Ford had a monopoly.