“Information Age innovators need not apply. At least that’s the implied message being stretched like police tape across the door of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). The agency seems fixated on eliminating the last, true, sustainable American advantage: our capacity to innovate,” John Kheit reports for BusinessWeek. “Recent moves by the USPTO have resulted in a precedent-setting legal victory that now threatens software patents with extinction, putting companies like Apple and Google at risk along with the U.S. economy.”
“Software is key to modern innovation. But more important, it’s among the last strongholds in American economic might. Open the box on a new Apple product, and you’ll see a note saying ‘Designed by Apple in California.’ It leaves out the implicit ‘made in China.’ That’s what America does. It innovates. It designs. It conceives and invents. Today, America makes ideas. And then we outsource the manufacture of our ideas, and sell those to the world. Indeed, in just a few decades, the U.S. has gone from a country that largely produced tangible goods to one that produces blueprints for intellectual property. And one of the greatest areas of intellectual property production in the U.S., as noted by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, is software,” Kheit reports.
“Notably, during Apple’s recent quarterly report, Jobs commented about the iPhone: ‘The traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in 100 different varieties. [W]e approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different from most of our competitors,'” Kheit reports.
“Now, it appears the USPTO is hell-bent on destroying such intellectual property rights,” Kheit reports. “The most recent evidence came from an Oct. 30 ruling by an appeals court that could narrow what’s patentable and make it much more costly to obtain patents, particularly for newer companies. Some fear the decision also leaves many innovative software technologies in limbo.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Carl H.” for the heads up.]
On the flip side, it also means that companies can’t patent “innovations” which are really just a slightly different way of accomplishing a process, and then sit on a patent, hope that someone infringes on it in the future, and file a lawsuit in Texas.
I think the courts are recognizing that every slight difference in a software process or idea may not be patentable, but that such patents may do more to stifle innovation or may significantly add costs rather than having fewer patents issued.
bizlaw,
I agree with you in principle, but where are your specific examples?
“well, what shall we do then sir, patent your head?”
No, you can’t patent an idea. You can patent the chip design to add numbers, you can copyright the software if it does it in a new and novel way, but you can’t patent 1 + 1. This would be the real end of business innovation and would lead to a stampede of patent applications that would be end of business and science as we know it. The idea behind the machine should and must remain free or there would be no more competition allowed.
Get a box Mr. Kheit
My MacBook Pro box has…
Designed by Apple in California
Assembled in China
BobWillsIsStillTheKing,
I other words, no functioning and functionally unique prototype, no patent, right?
GUMMINT inaction – sorry – in action.
Thankfully government is closed down today – so they can’t screw up things for a day.
Okay MDN flashback to when you first posted that Apple 200+ patented innovations on the iPhone…
I brought up a SCOTUS decision that does not make it so easy defend to stupid patents. Again just because you paint a car purple does not mean you have the patent on all purple colored land vehicles.
Finally the patent office is getting it.
Just my $0.02
I think Apple is safe but the guy that said he thought out iTunes before Apple is pretty much fried
“And then we outsource the manufacture of our ideas, and sell those to the world. Indeed, in just a few decades, the U.S. has gone from a country that largely produced tangible goods to one that produces blueprints for intellectual property.”
Thank you Unions.
The 3 largest industries in the US that are farqing worthless today are all Union controlled: Automakers, Airlines, Education.
The Union demands have KILLED production sectors in the US. You wanna whine about ‘no good jobs in the US’? Thank the Unions. Business owners don’t wanna put up with that bullshit, so they move operations overseas. Don’t believe me? Start your own business and find out for yourself. Otherwise, go cry to your momma.
Software patents, as currently implemented, are STIFLING innovation, not the other way around. They carry the same protections as patents on physical items, with no acknowledgement that software is far easier to “manufacture” than a physical product, nor that the software industry moves and changes way too quickly to justify exclusivity for 20 years. The latter is especially aggravating when it comes to submarine patents, i.e. when patent trolls don’t actually implement anything and don’t publicize it, but once someone actually does the hard work, and gain traction, they pounce on them and try claiming royalties.
Worse, many of the granted patents are obvious in implementation, or at the very least hardly innovative once you slap two or more technologies together. Patent reviewers aren’t sufficiently technical in many cases, and they’re swamped with software patent applications because it’s so easy to come up with them. A database-driven method of retrieving a user’s profile so they don’t have to re-enter credit card info when buying something? Puh-leze.
The European Union has resisted software patents for the past decade, despite lobbying, bribes and literally fishy attempts to slip legislation through (it was a rider in a fisheries bill being tabled on a lazy afternoon, thankfully an alert geek caught it and let the world know before it was too late).
I’m not against the idea of patents in general, but software is in an entirely different class and must be treated differently.
Sorry, but this is crap. Software is protected by copyrights and EULAs not patents. Patents granted for software are universally ridiculous. This intellectual property law crap is an attempt to stifle innovation and control markets by pretending ideas can be ascribed to a single compan y or person.
Amen, brother.
Don’t get me wrong: there was once a time when unions cared about the little guy. Now, they’re just thugs. The rules they have pushed through have made manufacturing in the US less productive, more expensive and uncompetitive with the rest of the world. Their response: demand even more. Thanks to unions, American cars have lower quality and cost thousands of dollars more than foreign cars. GM, one of the world’s largest corporations, is on the brink of bankruptcy.
Granted, Detroit’s Big Three corporate management is equally to blame, with management that’s used every opportunity to shoot itself in the foot, and continue following flawed business strategies and ignoring obvious trend shifts. But unions are steadfastly ignoring what is going on in the rest of the world. Instead of trying to partner with the corporations to keep jobs, save costs, improve productivity and quality and keep America competitive, they’re doing the exact opposite.
Now, unions want to force themselves on white collar industries, take away the right of your being able to vote privately (so that they can intimidate you) and more. The more union boss thugs have their way, the weaker America will become, and the faster more jobs will go abroad.
Greed. Stupidity. Arrogance. That’s sadly the American way.
MDN – I call “crap” on your headline. This decision will save Apple from moronic patent trolls. This will *unshackle* innovation, not threaten it.
Many of the patents Apple files are defensive patents, to protect against patent trolls filing for the patent themselves after the fact and extorting money from Apple. Companies like Apple will actually be able to *save* money in the long run, by not having to file for stupid-obvious patents, and not having to spend tons of money in court defending their IP from patent vultures.
And the source article *is* written by BusinessWeek, who would naturally champion short-sighted ways of making a quick buck without having to do any actual work. So the fact that they’re wailing and moaning about this seems to be a good thing.
I totally agree with everyone that says this will “open up” innovation. Remember how Apple and others were being sued for using a “menu” system to organize music (e.i. the iPod). This kind of crap is finally coming to an end,
Certainly, access to patented technologies is a MASSIVE problem. The best example I can think of would be dozens of ‘green’ energy production and energy saving patents that have been bought up by BIG OIL over the last few decades, specifically so they can be buried and prevent alternatives to purchasing petroleum products.
Meanwhile, I can’t remember a period of time when the US Patent Office actually had a good reputation. They have been considered deadly slow and infused with dunderheads from management on down for as long as I can remember. I’d go so far as to call the place a hell hole. It’s just my opinion of course.
What is particularly amusing, to examine the other side of the coin, is that as recently as nine years ago there was a loud exclamation from the technology industry that the patenting of software, which at one time was considered a copy written media, would kill innovation by allowing more vague software concepts to be patented as opposed to verbatim code lines. This in fact help stoke the engines of Open Source software creation where anyone can use and add to the software product, allowing its mass use.
CONCLUSION: I think we may have a debate on our hands as to which approach is actually a greater incentive for innovation. One thing for certain is that inventors deserve and require compensation for their inventions. Otherwise the incentive to innovate is removed. This is exactly why China, despite expensive efforts, has been an utter failure at invention of new technologies and why they will continue to be a failure under their Communist form of Totalitarian rule. No gain, why bother with pain?
@Nutcracker
Too simplistic to blame unions for all outsourcing.
Corporations will seek out cheaper labor, first it was Japan, then Korea and Taiwan, now China. When the prosperity brings higher wages they move on and continue the cycle.
“Corporations will seek out cheaper labor, first it was Japan, then Korea and Taiwan, now China. When the prosperity brings higher wages they move on and continue the cycle.”
Well that explains everything. When they turn the U.S. into a third world country, they are planning on corporations eventually ending up back here for the cheap labor.
Then it will start all over again.
Patents have become absurdly easy to obtain. In an unrelated industry, a game publisher obtained a patent on a card game. The ‘innovation’ consisted of a ‘method’ of turning a card sideways to indicate it had been used in play. Thats right, the player reaches out with his hand and turns the card sideways, that’s covered by patent. The company then threatened publishers of competing collectible card games with lawsuits if they did not discontinue their products that used similar rules.
Several family members graduated from high school, were hired by Caterpillar, and retired after twenty years of assembly line production with $100,000 plus annual incomes and 100% company-subsidized health insurance in 1983. Obviously, no organization (private or public) that provides this high an annual income for general staff can remain solvent for long.
Of course, many US executives receive a highly disproportionate amounts of annual income and golden parachutes, further eroding the economic stability of the same companies.
Obviously, greed and envy are universal human flaws. Unfortunately, we all pay for human avarice as selfishness are self-destructive. Hopefully, future workers and executives will be more objective and realistic about valuing their annual net worth.
Anyhow, Job’s income is based almost exclusively on Apple’s stock value which places his wealth solely on Apple’s ability to sell innovative products at prices that encourage consumer spending. Unlike Detroit, Apple’s philosophy emphasizes accountability over all else. Until and unless, Detroit realizes that no job is guaranteed will the Big Three recover.
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