Sunday, February 10, 2013
Post 4: Patents as Obstacle to Innovation
In the majority of people's minds patents is a great tool for protection of their intellectual property. Patents give the company the competitive advantage, which is sort of a monopoly to sell the product in the market without any competition. Or, patents can be an additional source of revenue where the company can license its rights for using its intellectual property to others - which makes it a barrier to entry for a competitor. By all means patents is a great way to protect company's IP which allows businesses make profits and invest further into R&D.
However, the author of the article published in InfoWorld.com argues against patents in the software industry. They can't be efficient and they prevent innovation and technological progress.
Patents can work in other capital-intensive industries where having a patent grants the company a state-sanctioned temporary monopoly so that it starts getting return on investment. However software industry has a totally different dynamics - and software patents have a different value for the company.
The way software industry works is that programmers solve the existing problems, and often they create the solutions with similar features to the existing ones. This happens constantly, and by accident. Creating a solution to the problem and then finding out that there is already an identical patented idea on the market, and the engineers can't use theirs.
Software patents don't have code written in them neither any technical specification. It is the description of the idea or process with maximum possible details so that later it be a great tool for attorneys in their patent law suit battle.
The way patents are created in the software industry needs to be changed - to make them more efficient and stimulate innovation and technological progress because currently patents is not a great means of protection of developers' ideas but the tool for attorneys in Patent Wars among the tech giants, the one who can afford it.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/why-software-patents-are-evil-188738?page=0,1&source=fssr
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Great post! I agree that the patents in the software industry must change!!! Its a mad world in Silicon Valley nowadays, with giants attacking giants for Billion dollar settlements. We need a more efficient and easier way of giving innovators protection! The giants don't deserve the protection, the little guys do!
ReplyDeleteMichael, thank you for your comment. I agree - for big companies patent law suit is like another way of making money, but small startups are the ones who suffer the most from IP theft, and the ones who need their IP protected to develop their business at a faster pace.
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