"We recognize that innovation has a value, and patents are the way to protect that."
Innovation has no value to the public if you don't produce and ship a good product. In my opinion the company that actually ships something should always have the upper hand because it's good for consumers. Patent reform should follow a use-it-or-lose-it model. If a company comes up with an innovative idea, ships a product, and that product stays on the market (in one form or another) for many years they probably deserve to own the patent. If people are buying it then it must be halfway decent. If they never produce a shipping product they shouldn't be able to hold the patent hostage. If they decide to stop selling a product that uses the patent someone else should have the opportunity to dust it off.
I mostly agree, but patents were partly intended to protect small-fry scientists/inventors who came up with good ideas that they couldn't necessarily commercialize themselves, by providing a legal mechanism to keep manufacturers from just ripping off the idea as they shopped it around. It makes more sense when it's not a portfolio company holding hundreds of patents, though, and when the inventions are genuine breakthroughs: e.g. if a biotech researcher comes up with something that really would improve pharmaceutical research greatly, it seems okay to me if there's a legal mechanism to make pharmaceutical firms pay him licensing fees if they want to use the invention, even if he himself never ramps up into pharmaceutical research. This becomes much more of a minefield if the bar to novelty/nonobviousness is low, though, because then you just get people preemptively "inventing" a bunch of things that other people would've found anyway, and then demanding licensing fees.
That's got to be the mother of all patent lawsuits to date.
I hope that it will now become clear to the world at large that a patent without any intention to produce a product is simply a waste of time and money. I'd much prefer it if all these patent filing clowns would keep their 'research' locked up in their vaults and called them trade secrets, that would give nobodies like me a chance at just getting on with our jobs without stepping on someones patented toes.
The optimistic side of me hopes that people are seeing the writing on the wall for software patents, and are hoping to extract value before the landscape changes.
This is the problem with Patent troll "portfolio companies" like his: It doesn't make anything, so there can never be a countersuit with protective patents.
So, even if we had IBM step in with its portfolio of 30,000 patents (and growing by 5000 each year) and snarl up the entire industry to prove a point, Allen would be like "whatever" and soldier on, because he makes nothing.
disclaimer- I'm against software patents in general. However, in this case, to argue against my own opinions:
The research and resultant patents in this case were in the public record for all to see, read, and if they found the idea useable, free to contact the patent holder to discuss a deal.
The patent systems a broken mess - no argument here. But a firm that actually did research on specific items, kept track of a relatively small portfolio and then selectively went after some big boys isn't as much of a patent troll as those who just buy up thousands and thousands of them and muscle people around.)
Also, what could be the point of such a lawsuit? Surely Paul Allen cannot think that he can have out-of-court settlements (no cross-licensing since his company does not produce anything) with all the listed companies. Some of them will surely fight back.
Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt Rutan.
The only way they can fight back is to invalidate the patent or prove it doesn't apply to their situation.
And "patent trolls" tend to collect and file tons of almost meaninglessly broad patents and hten send armies of analysts and lawyers to look at them and find some small or big fish to sue, depending.
In this case, the patents were filed by Mr. Allen's venture itself, a venture created as a think-tank to do research and come up with ideas - which were then published (via the patent mechanism) for the world to see, and potentially license - all they had to do was keep an eye on the patent system and contact the right people to ask for a license.
It's really odd that Paul Allen is doing this, he certainly doesn't need the money or the hassle. Is it possible that he's suing these high profile companies to spark some kind of legislative reform re: software patents?
This is amusing. Here's some history on the company. Interval Research was an R&D outfit that Paul Allen founded back in the 1990's. You've never heard of it, because they were incredibly secretive. So hush-hush that when they went belly-up no one outside of the company knew about it. Literally. It took months before the Press finally got wind of it.
The place was a great place to be if you were doing research. Literally "let a thousand roses bloom". Unfortunately, they were horribly mismanaged. Allen blew hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly over budget, before he finally realized that he wasn't getting anything out it. They wanted to be the next version of SRI. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out.
Top management was, at best, incompetent. At worse, downright crooks. They hired some people on certain terms, and then shortly afterwards said "Opps - we really meant to hire you at a lower level". Truly a boneheaded move. Fortunately it didn't happen to me, but the look on people's faces when they found out was unforgettable.
Interval did some really amazing stuff; years ahead of its time. But they could never get the products out to market (though they tried), mostly due to amazing incompetence on the part of the lead engineers. You know the type. Big egos and no talent. Perhaps there was an exception to that rule, but I don't recall it.
I'm not surprised that Paul Allen has turned into a Patent Troll; it will be the only way he can get his money back. The only thing surprising is that it took him so long. But he never impressed me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. As for other history, they had a number of big names there, from many fields. In tech, you may have heard of Lee Felsenstein if you're familiar with history. Their office was in the Research area of Palo Alto. Near Stanford, down the street from the Wall Street Journal, between Page Mill and Hillview
Despite that unfortunate ending, I still look back fondly on Interval. They paid well, too. I made lots of money off of Paul Allen. Thanks, Paul!
Why waiting so long ? There should be a prescription on this type of claims. This technology is used in a very visible way for years now. So they could not ignore it and thus implicitly permitted to use it.
If they didn't knew they had these patents, how could the other company know ?
This type of pattent 'mines' will have the consequence to scare to death companies. Foreign companies will stay away of US just to avoid the risk to step on such mine. And US companies may move their business in countries with much less risks (i.e. europe, Asia).
Who cares? It sounds big and scary and really bad... especially to us start-up types but I'd bet that there is nothing that hasn't been patented or could be deemed to be covered by a patent that's been put out on the web.
Seriously, start looking through the patents filed on Google (I started with one of these Paul Allen ones, then moved on to others filed by others but which were cited) and came to the conclusion that this is all ridiculous.
While I wholeheartedly agree with protecting IP, to me that is more of a copyright issue (not ripping off code) rather than ideas.
Ultimately what it means for us is: Go forth and code. Create whatever you want and ignore the patents out there. If you are successful, and a patent troll sues you, you can come to an agreement (license or otherwise). Really, no worries here.
You know what I think we should do? Institute a law where you can't sue a company for patent infringement unless you do so before they introduce and make a substantial amount of money off that product. Say, 1 million in revenue or something.
Company A makes patent infringing product.
Company A makes puppet Company B that licenses product for <substantial amount of money>, successfully fulfilling any sort of patent infringement limitation you can think of for the low low cost of a few lawyers.
Any policy you think of is going to have ridiculous loopholes and require companies to have patent 'watchdogs' who will need to search out fledgling products to make sure they're not infringing on any patents. These company watchdogs will have to justify their wages... by making even more patent lawsuits than there are now.
Even marketing a product (or service) employing the patent I would be happy with.
Fuck, even implementing the patent I would be happy with.
Requiring some minimum revenue before the patent counts for you is a great way to have your patents wantonly violated by larger firms before you can get started. Software startups are too agile for patents to matter much, but that's not as true for other industries.
"The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.
A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user's main activity."
Another interesting way to look at it, if he did win big in this case then gave it all to worthy causes it could be a net win for society.
Hopefully it draws attention to software patents flaws. If government were hesitant to move away from them altogether maybe they could try a 2 year trail of no new patents or something.
[+] [-] jsz0|15 years ago|reply
Innovation has no value to the public if you don't produce and ship a good product. In my opinion the company that actually ships something should always have the upper hand because it's good for consumers. Patent reform should follow a use-it-or-lose-it model. If a company comes up with an innovative idea, ships a product, and that product stays on the market (in one form or another) for many years they probably deserve to own the patent. If people are buying it then it must be halfway decent. If they never produce a shipping product they shouldn't be able to hold the patent hostage. If they decide to stop selling a product that uses the patent someone else should have the opportunity to dust it off.
[+] [-] _delirium|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
I hope that it will now become clear to the world at large that a patent without any intention to produce a product is simply a waste of time and money. I'd much prefer it if all these patent filing clowns would keep their 'research' locked up in their vaults and called them trade secrets, that would give nobodies like me a chance at just getting on with our jobs without stepping on someones patented toes.
[+] [-] dminor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muhfuhkuh|15 years ago|reply
So, even if we had IBM step in with its portfolio of 30,000 patents (and growing by 5000 each year) and snarl up the entire industry to prove a point, Allen would be like "whatever" and soldier on, because he makes nothing.
[+] [-] dedward|15 years ago|reply
The research and resultant patents in this case were in the public record for all to see, read, and if they found the idea useable, free to contact the patent holder to discuss a deal.
The patent systems a broken mess - no argument here. But a firm that actually did research on specific items, kept track of a relatively small portfolio and then selectively went after some big boys isn't as much of a patent troll as those who just buy up thousands and thousands of them and muscle people around.)
[+] [-] patrickaljord|15 years ago|reply
He does license patents, if IBM can prove one the licensed patent is based on one or more IBM patents, they could counter sue.
[+] [-] adharmad|15 years ago|reply
Also, what could be the point of such a lawsuit? Surely Paul Allen cannot think that he can have out-of-court settlements (no cross-licensing since his company does not produce anything) with all the listed companies. Some of them will surely fight back.
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt Rutan.
> Some of them will surely fight back.
all of them will fight back.
[+] [-] dedward|15 years ago|reply
And "patent trolls" tend to collect and file tons of almost meaninglessly broad patents and hten send armies of analysts and lawyers to look at them and find some small or big fish to sue, depending.
In this case, the patents were filed by Mr. Allen's venture itself, a venture created as a think-tank to do research and come up with ideas - which were then published (via the patent mechanism) for the world to see, and potentially license - all they had to do was keep an eye on the patent system and contact the right people to ask for a license.
[+] [-] andrewgioia|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|15 years ago|reply
This is amusing. Here's some history on the company. Interval Research was an R&D outfit that Paul Allen founded back in the 1990's. You've never heard of it, because they were incredibly secretive. So hush-hush that when they went belly-up no one outside of the company knew about it. Literally. It took months before the Press finally got wind of it.
The place was a great place to be if you were doing research. Literally "let a thousand roses bloom". Unfortunately, they were horribly mismanaged. Allen blew hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly over budget, before he finally realized that he wasn't getting anything out it. They wanted to be the next version of SRI. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out.
Top management was, at best, incompetent. At worse, downright crooks. They hired some people on certain terms, and then shortly afterwards said "Opps - we really meant to hire you at a lower level". Truly a boneheaded move. Fortunately it didn't happen to me, but the look on people's faces when they found out was unforgettable.
Interval did some really amazing stuff; years ahead of its time. But they could never get the products out to market (though they tried), mostly due to amazing incompetence on the part of the lead engineers. You know the type. Big egos and no talent. Perhaps there was an exception to that rule, but I don't recall it.
I'm not surprised that Paul Allen has turned into a Patent Troll; it will be the only way he can get his money back. The only thing surprising is that it took him so long. But he never impressed me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. As for other history, they had a number of big names there, from many fields. In tech, you may have heard of Lee Felsenstein if you're familiar with history. Their office was in the Research area of Palo Alto. Near Stanford, down the street from the Wall Street Journal, between Page Mill and Hillview
Despite that unfortunate ending, I still look back fondly on Interval. They paid well, too. I made lots of money off of Paul Allen. Thanks, Paul!
[+] [-] uptown|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maukdaddy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmike|15 years ago|reply
If they didn't knew they had these patents, how could the other company know ?
This type of pattent 'mines' will have the consequence to scare to death companies. Foreign companies will stay away of US just to avoid the risk to step on such mine. And US companies may move their business in countries with much less risks (i.e. europe, Asia).
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kilimanjaro|15 years ago|reply
HEY PAUL ALLEN, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
[+] [-] protomyth|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwynings|15 years ago|reply
U.S. PATENT NO. 6,263,507 U.S. PATENT NO. 6,757,682 U.S. PATENT NO. 6,788,314 U.S. PATENT NO. 6,034,652
[+] [-] hsuresh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motters|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willheim|15 years ago|reply
Seriously, start looking through the patents filed on Google (I started with one of these Paul Allen ones, then moved on to others filed by others but which were cited) and came to the conclusion that this is all ridiculous.
Here we see that Apple could possibly sue anyone for invoking the "mouseover" or "hover" events: http://www.google.com/patents?id=mPYiAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...
While I wholeheartedly agree with protecting IP, to me that is more of a copyright issue (not ripping off code) rather than ideas.
Ultimately what it means for us is: Go forth and code. Create whatever you want and ignore the patents out there. If you are successful, and a patent troll sues you, you can come to an agreement (license or otherwise). Really, no worries here.
[+] [-] marknutter|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crystalis|15 years ago|reply
Any policy you think of is going to have ridiculous loopholes and require companies to have patent 'watchdogs' who will need to search out fledgling products to make sure they're not infringing on any patents. These company watchdogs will have to justify their wages... by making even more patent lawsuits than there are now.
[+] [-] philwelch|15 years ago|reply
Fuck, even implementing the patent I would be happy with.
Requiring some minimum revenue before the patent counts for you is a great way to have your patents wantonly violated by larger firms before you can get started. Software startups are too agile for patents to matter much, but that's not as true for other industries.
[+] [-] 3d3mon|15 years ago|reply
"The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they're currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social networking sites.
A second, among other things, allow readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user's main activity."
[+] [-] robryan|15 years ago|reply
Hopefully it draws attention to software patents flaws. If government were hesitant to move away from them altogether maybe they could try a 2 year trail of no new patents or something.
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
It's hard to imagine Allen owning any technology Google or Apple are using...
[+] [-] kijinbear|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Keyframe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ignu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|15 years ago|reply
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/11/junk-patents.html
[+] [-] madair|15 years ago|reply