

Inventor stumped by 43-year patent delay  - wglb
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-inventor01-20140301,0,255272.story

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jdreaver
I've become extremely jaded against intellectual property recently. Far too
often, IP law is used to for long, drawn out legal battles that do nothing to
help society, while costing the tax payers a ton of money.

Property is a way to deal with _scarcity_. Two people cannot simultaneously
wear a shirt, for example, so one of them "owns" the shirt. Two people cannot
both drive a car to different locations at the same time, so one person "owns"
the car. Of course, you can lend your shirt or car to someone else, but the
final say as to how those two resources are used belongs to the owner.

The product of intellectual labor, using this scarcity condition, cannot be
considered someone's property. The only tangential relationship IP has to
property is that one person uses force, namely, the government, to prevent
others from using "their" idea for economic gain. This scarcity is artificial
because absent that threat of force, everyone would be able to use the idea
freely. Physical goods are subject to scarcity as a consequence of physical
law; a car acn't be in my driveway and your driveway at the same time. (This
argument applies directly to patents and copyrights, but also to trademarks in
that a word or phrase can't be used to market something for economic gain.)

Besides the moral argument, which I know some people don't care about (it is
subjective, of course), there is a utilitarian argument. Some act as if,
without IP law, no one would be willing to create new ideas; it's as if the
only incentive for creation is economic gain from a government-granted
monopoly on an idea. Just take a look at the news to see that IP law is more
commonly associated with patent trolls and corporate legal battles than
protecting Joe Inventor's new idea.

At the very least, I wish people would stop comparing downloading movies and
music from the internet as stealing. If I steal your car, you can't use it. If
I "steal" a song from the record label by copying the exact sequence of bytes
that represent a song from my buddy's hard drive to my hard drive, we can both
still listen to the song. I understand that some people support the song
creator's claim to the song as "property," in the form of IP. However, even
then, there has to be a middle ground between copying against the wishes of
the song's creator, and _theft_ in the eyes of the law.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_At the very least, I wish people would stop comparing downloading movies and
music from the internet as stealing._

Games released via Steam have shown evidence that when a singleplayer game is
unavailable as a torrent for free, then people will pay for it. The
counterargument to this is that most people who torrent wouldn't pay for it
anyway. But I assert that there is a third class of people: those who first
check to see if it's available for free, and if not, pay for it. Whether these
people constitute a significant portion of revenue is an open question, but
it's hard to classify their actions from a moral standpoint as something other
than stealing.

The closest classification other than "stealing" would probably be "sampling."
I've often been frustrated at an inability to try out a certain kind of dev
tool before buying it outright, and their free version is usually missing
features which I really need to test. But there needs to be a large-scale
study as to whether people really behave this way normally, or if they just
take what they can get for free. Unfortunately it's difficult to find an
unbiased source of funding for such a study, so the resulting research paper
would probably be slanted in one moral direction or the other instead of
presenting the raw data.

It's not an easy question to answer. I think technological capabilities will
decide how companies will behave, because those who don't accept reality will
go out of business.

~~~
DanBC
> Games released via Steam have shown evidence that when a singleplayer game
> is unavailable as a torrent for free, then people will pay for it. The
> counterargument to this is that most people who torrent wouldn't pay for it
> anyway. But I assert that there is a third class of people: those who first
> check to see if it's available for free, and if not, pay for it.

What about the fourth classification of people who search for a way to buy
something and who torrent it when it's not available?

Don't forget the weird restrictions placed on regional DVDs by the industry,
and the laws that prevent me from converting my player to a multiregion
device.

~~~
lostlogin
I'll add a 5th class. Those who pay, can't use the crap they get for some
reason, so torrent a functional version. I fit this category often. Got out a
Sopranos series. DVDs wouldn't play over airplay for some DRM reason, and
torrenting was quicker than ripping. Another time it was getting a Windows
install onto a MacBook Air was so painful that a torrent was easier than some
horrid workaround that involved a 4 hour drive to get a disc and a disc drive
as no legal method of getting a download was available (from memory it was
Widows 7 about a year and a half ago, but have struck the issue of having no
legal download available with legacy Widows versions at other times too).

------
sehugg
Hyatt's microprocessor patent was invalidated in 1996, but not before he
extracted $70 million or so in royalties from Japanese and European companies.

More context:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/20/business/for-texas-
instrum...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/20/business/for-texas-instruments-
some-bragging-rights.html)

[http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/who-invented-the-
mi...](http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/who-invented-the-
microprocessorhyatt-v-patent-office?news=844054)

------
loceng
'"I respect Gilbert Hyatt's work — the process of engineering is difficult,"
Bassett said in a telephone interview. "But innovations are more than ideas.
The broader context matters. If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the
microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did."'

This pretty much goes for every innovation..

~~~
Perseids
True. But the stronger argument is that they would also happen at roughly the
same time, as hinted by the fact that many ground breaking innovations were
found independently by different scientists once the necessary prerequisites
were discovered. This dependence on the scientific society as whole is often
conveniently ignored by those arguing for strong IP[1] protection.

And even worse is that many patents actually severely hinder the spread of the
concerned innovation. As an example in cryptography see the Offset Codebook
Mode for authenticated encryption. Even though the authors have now granted
free use for open source software it has remained an extreme niche solution.
Or see NTRUEncrypt, probably one of the best shots for post-quantum public key
cryptography.

[1] I don't like term _intellectual property_ , because in it lies the quiet
acceptance of the idea in general, that thoughts and knowledge can be owned.
Calling it IM - intellectual monopoly - is more to the point. We should not
forget that a huge part of the fight for the public opinion is won or lost by
the concepts our language provide us with and limit us to.

~~~
loceng
Agreed. And updating the terminology would be good. I have a blog post draft
written up relating to perhaps using the word "times" and "monies" instead of
merely time and money - as the brain is likely to see "time" and "money" as a
singular, fixed object, which will not allow the brain to be as fluid when
thinking about times and monies - more fixed, means more scarce - more fluid,
means variability and more possibility, less pressure.

------
semisight
My grandfather helped Hyatt to write his patent. Interesting to finally see
any press about him.

~~~
wglb
Cool. Was he a patent attorney?

------
EGreg
Copyright protects work that people did from being copied. It is fairly
narrow.

Patents protect "ideas". It is much more likely that someone may come up with
the same or similar idea completely independently, than someone would come
with up the same exact computer program or book. Patent protection is very
broad. Especially in the US due to the Doctrine of Equivalents.

Soo... I am for copyright protection and not patent.

------
thinkcomp
Gilbert P. Hyatt's patent applications, assignments and lawsuits can be found
here:

[http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=1391559](http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=1391559)

------
marincounty
The biggest problem I have with the U.S Patent system is cost. They should
price the fee for issuing a patient on yearly income. This would level out the
playing field. It just might prevent some entities trying to patient rounded
edges? And it would allow the poor investor a fighting chance of protecting
their idea. The Internet has changed Everything. Brilliant ideas will be lost
because of lack of funds.

~~~
dhoulb
No, sorry, this is a terrible idea,

Every broke idiot with a pen would write up every idea under the sun.

Companies, with resources to actually bring those ideas to life, would have to
pay way more to be able to do so, driving up the cost of innovation in
markets.

Also, presumably, a company would just pay a broke guy to submit the patent on
their behalf, and pay them a small fee. Leading to a horrific industry of
'broke guy recruiters'.

Lone inventors are actually the primary group harming innovation here, not
large companies (contrary to what your politics and gut might wish for). They
patent some broad thing they have no intention of making, and sell those
'inventions' on for a quick buck to holding companies who make their money
from suing people.

Patents need to not exist any more. For all the noise companies make about
patents being important, if you took them away tomorrow, the world would be
exactly the same. Nothing would change.

