Do Patents Stop Companies From Creating 'Perfect' Products? 292
Chris M writes "In a recent CNET article, the mobile phone editor writes about what he thinks would make a perfect phone. Unfortunately, as someone in the comments section points out, much of the technology that is used in this concept phone belongs to separate companies. 'I'm sorry to be the Devil's Advocate here, but most of those feautres are patented to separate companies. It would require almost all the major manufacturers [working together] to do this, which is highly unlikely.' Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating 'perfect' devices, or are there other factors at work?"
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
What would be cool (Score:3, Informative)
Then you could drag and drop the desired features onto the phone that is plugged into your computer via USB.
That would be the perfect phone.
You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it. So it seems to me that someone saying that it's patents holding this back only show their ignorance of the patent system.
Re:Incorrect (Score:2, Informative)
New Inventions, not new concepts An invention is a specific implementation of a concept. If you can't specify how it's built, it's just a concept. (Or rather, that's the way it's supposed to work. Software patents are a slightly different kettle of fish, but the same rules should apply)
The protection garnered by a patent grant is one of an exclusive monopoly. You can prevent anyone else (within the patent office's jurisdiction) from stealing your invention, even if you would be infringing on other people's patents if you tried to make it yourself.
So, Mr. Lim could go ahead and apply for a patent on his ideal phone, and turn around and license it to LG or Samsung or Motorola or Nokia and let them negotiate with the individual patent holders. Meanwhile, the phone doesn't get built due to ongoing negotiations, but it stays patented, and if any manufactures are sufficiently interested to license the design, Mr. Lim collects royalties.
(IANAL - but I am a law student writing my senior paper on patents)
Re:Not Really (Score:5, Informative)
Currently, I own the Samsung i607 (blackjack) which earns about an 8/10 from me, which no other phone ever did. It's very thin, light, durable, and has an easy-to-care-for matte finish. It has a full QWERTY keyboard, and a very nice screen, fast processor, 3G, etc... If it had a 4-day battery life instead of 1.5-2 day, and a standard bluetooth stack that would let me sync and tether with ease from my Ubuntu laptop, it would match my dream phone... Not so hard, really...
Yes, not just phones (Score:5, Informative)
Company A patents technology X, but has no interest in making a product that has technology X plus feature Y. Company B would like to make a product with technology X and feature Y, but is stumped by the patent. Result: the world never gets an X+Y product.
This is not just theoretical. I work in a field knee deep in patents and I see this sort of nonsense all the time.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
Try building a phone that works with the CDMA cellular network, and doesn't violate Qualcomm's patent. It's not going to happen. They've patented too much stuff that's too fundamental to making an interoperable device.
If you piss them off, or if they decide for some reason not to license their patent(s) to you (e.g., you want to make a multi-network phone and their other customers -- the telcos -- don't like the idea), you're S.O.L. as far as most of the U.S. cellphone market is concerned.
Video compression is the same way. Try to build an MPEG-4 encoder that doesn't violate the MPEGLA's patents; it's not going to happen. Sure, you could build some completely unrelated video encoder, but that's of extremely limited utility in a world where standards matter.
Re:What would be cool (Score:1, Informative)
Yes...AFTER you pay the dues to the original patent-holder
That's not how patents work. If you change one thing and patent the new "invention", it's a new patent, completely separate from the original one. You have to reference the original, but there are no fees to be paid.
Licenses (Score:1, Informative)
As to the "perfect phone," I'm almost as unimpressed by his "perfect" phone as I am with C|NET and its two paragraphs per ad-laden page web site. I'm perfectly happy with my Razr (I'd be happier if I could save MP3s on it). Submitters, be warned: if you submit a shitty site like C|NET and I'm drinking from the firehose, I'll vote you down!
-mcgrew
Re:Dual Batteries? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sometimes (Score:3, Informative)
If there is any one type of IP law that I would not want abolished, it is patents. Far from stifling innovation, they actually require it. Because the patent system requires that all patents are fully documented, and since the patents themselves expire relatively quickly (compared to other IP), it requires companies to be constantly innovating. Yes, they get a government monopoly in the short term, but by the time the patent expires they need to either create something better, or they will be undercut by new companies who didn't have any of the R&D costs that the original company had.
Certainly, this is better than other IP. Copyrights, for example, are vastly longer than patents. Even without the constant extensions, we are still talking about the life of the creator plus some. Surely you can see how this extreme length could easily lock up innovation worse than patents do. Trademarks, while not really applying to this situation, are far less helpful for innovation. Heck, the basic concept of trademarks requires that you sit on an idea rather than doing anything really new with it.
Without any of these, companies are forced to rely on trade secrets to protect their ideas. If you want to talk about the stifling of ideas, you can't get much worse than this. Since there is no protection, there is no reason to have any flow of ideas in public. We can see this happen again and again in pre-patent societies where techniques would become lost when the people who kept them hidden died before passing them on.
Of course, we can argue about the exact details of patents, such as the 20 year period. I agree that this is too long, but if anything it is a sign that the system works. Innovation has become so rapid that many things have become totally obsolete within the 20 year period. Personally, I would say that it seems clear that innovation is hardly being stifled.
Re:Incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What would be cool (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how patents work. If you change one thing and patent the new "invention", it's a new patent, completely separate from the original one. You have to reference the original, but there are no fees to be paid.
True. But if you try to create any instances of your patent, then you will have to pay fees to the original patent-holder (or get sued.) See, patents are like class definitions, but to create an instance of that class, you have to pay. You may extend someone else's definition, and then they will need your permission to change it, but you still need to create an instance of the base class with yours.
He is technically correct... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
You mentioned FUD. A big problem is patent FUD. What matters is what people think. Chilling effects. Many people think patents might be violated even when not. Or they feel they're not in violation but don't want to get in long expensive court battles even if victory is certain. Or they know they will be in violation of patents that should never have been granted, and calculate that trying to get them invalidated isn't worth the expense or that going ahead and hoping they aren't sued is too risky. These problems are made worse by the government's attitude of "when in doubt, grant the patents and let the courts sort 'em out." The patent office rakes in more fees, the lawyers get richer, the justice system hires more people to handle the load, and the rest of us foot the bill for this very expensive system.
As for examples, how about Apple's "Look and Feel" patents on the MacIntosh GUI? Microsoft was not allowed to use a trashcan icon. When they opted for a "recycle bin" they were nonetheless challenged again by Apple, weren't they? How about the hundreds of patents on the hundreds of tiny variations on arithmetic coding? While LZW and the GIF image format weren't too hard to work around, arithmetic coding was another matter. Only takes one of those hundreds of patent holders deciding to sue to make arithmetic coding not worth the trouble, not when Huffman is almost as good. The result is, no one will touch arithmetic coding even though the basic algorithm is free of patent protection. Instead, everyone uses Huffman coding. The primary difference between the long vanished "bzip" and "bzip2" is in bzip2, bzip's arithmetic coding was replaced with Huffman. People would not even use bzip because of that.
Note that we're talking about the users who by rights should have nothing to fear from whatever alleged patent violations authors may have committed. Instead, the possibility that a court might pull the plug, as nearly happened to the Blackberry, is enough to scare off users. Then there's the stunt SCO pulled, trying to shake down Linux users for $699 each in licensing fees, lest they convince a court that they aren't blowing a bunch of smoke and do manage to get an insanely draconian and unenforceable injunction ordering everyone to stop using Linux. That anyone actually paid SCO is sad. That patent trolls might have such leverage is ridiculous. Dell customers don't have to worry should Dell be found in violation of some patent. Dell's PCs won't suddenly stop working. But somehow Linux users do have to worry, with MS claiming Linux is in violation? WTF?
Excel worksheet as a database (Score:1, Informative)
Yes. Tragedy of the Anticommons (Score:5, Informative)
This is a well known phenomenon, referred to as the Tragedy of the Anticommons [wikipedia.org]. Yochai Benkler describes how multiple patent holders delayed the development of radio [jus.uio.no] until the U.S. government intervened:
It's an old problem. (Score:4, Informative)
There's plenty of historical evidence that things like patents and copyrights are primarily a barrier to progress, unless the government steps in a second time and decrees some sort of mandatory licensing. (But this doesn't have much effect on the doctrinaire arguments that we read here so often.
Re:It's an old problem. (Score:3, Informative)
There isn't much the Patent office can do about a petty son of a bitch.
Re:What would be cool (Score:3, Informative)