There it is again! The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons. This is the biggest problem with patents on standards, not just a big problem for technological innovation in general.

It would be nice if courts were to give more weight to the cost of patents in terms of lost downstream innovation space rather than to just assume that patents = innovation.

Tragedy of the anti-commons?

If Apple wasn't demanding $30-40 per device, negotiations might have gone a lot better. Apple behaves as if they honestly believe that others should pay for more it's patents and that they should pay nothing for patents belonging to others.

The term, "vexatious litigant" comes to mind. I suspect the courts will be happy to oblige Apple with appropriate remedies for Motorola.

I think it's a combination of patents and "health care" industry protection from so-called free trade agreements. Noted economist Dean Baker has documented the trade and patent protection that the health care industry gets, and that the same protections are rarely ever mentioned by economists.

If "free trade" is good enough for electronics, clothing, cars and the rest of the working class, then it's good enough for the health care industry.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/04/why-don-t-we-globalize-health-care/

Boldrine and Levine have show rather conclusively that drug development tends to go where the patents are not in their book, Against Intellectual Monopoly (http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm). They also effectively demonstrate that the introduction of new drugs actually slowed with the introduction of patent protection in any country where patent protection is introduced.

For some reason, the assumption that patents foster innovation is taken as a fact without looking at the evidence amassed so far. I think it's grand that Boldrine and Levine lend a voice to skepticism of the "patents foster innovation" mantra, but I wonder, just how did they get on the board in a district of the Federal Reserve?

Given jerks like Lemelson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson), of patent extension to the ultimate conclusion in the barcode scanning realm, innovation will be retarded in the extreme if we allow patents to continue. With the technology available now, especially with the advent of 3-D printers, patents may not even necessary to induce innovation in the near future. The technology available to us now makes reverse engineering much easier than it used to be.

One example of trade secrets that I truly detest is the food ingredient trade secret. I would like to know what goes into the food, rather than to read "artificial flavors and colors". Maybe you're right that patents discourage trade secrets, but given the level of secrecy exercised by the biggest corporations now, I don't think so.

I can understand your sentiment, but as far as I know, not even the Bible says a man has a right to his ideas. Even Jefferson says ideas should be free to share for the mutual enlightenment of man. Even an idea embodied in an invention should not result in compensation beyond production of the invention.

Considering the problems facing us now, we're more likely to survive if we share our inventions and ideas rather than restrict their use in any fashion whatsoever.

He may be more like a pawn.

I thought that was done.

i wonder if they tracked the type of beer as a variable.

I wonder what the EULA will look like.