
An Open Letter from Jeff Bezos on the Subject of Patents (2000) - breck
http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly//news/amazon_patents.html
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payne92
Shortening the patent period (he suggests 3-5 years) will go a long, long way
to addressing many of the current problems.

It would incent companies to focus on core inventions, instead of filing
20-year lottery tickets.

Patent value to trolls would be greatly reduced, lowering the incentive for
nuisance lawsuits. (Companies can continue to file new patents as they
continue to innovate).

It would increase the incentive for universities to commercialize ("get moving
before the patent expires!").

In Jefferson's day, when information and innovation moved much more slowly, a
14yr patent period (now 20 in the US) made more sense. Today, it just means
the set of in-force patents diverges wildly from the leading edge of
innovation.

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imanewsman
For some context, Bezos wrote this letter months after Amazon was awarded its
infamous patent on one-click checkout. Amazon used the patent to sue Barnes &
Noble and ultimately force it to add extra steps to the checkout on
barnesandnoble.com. Bezos wrote this letter a few days after a scathing op-ed
about the patent and the lawsuit came out in the NYT, but never chose to turn
the patent over to the public domain. It's now been 20 years and the patent is
expiring next month.

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Raphmedia
Related :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15046601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15046601)
\- E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

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kosei
So what happened?

 _If done right -- and it could take 2 years or more -- we 'll end up with a
patent system that produces fewer patents (fewer people will bother to apply
for 3 or 5 year patents, and fewer patents means less work for the overworked
Patent and Trademark Office), fewer bad patents (because of the pre-issuance
comment period), and even the good patents won't last longer than is necessary
to give the innovator a reasonable return (at Internet speed, you don't need
17 years)._

~~~
ABCLAW
There is very little in the way of empirical research on the effectiveness of
patents and specific patent policy elements, so regulators are fairly
hamstrung; they know the area is important but mis-formed, but they can't
really get some form of consensus as to which elements are broken and which
aren't.

In Canada, for instance, federal government's patent policy research apparatus
is essentially two people. Two.

Additionally, the epistemic academic work required to provide a proper
critique of the industry is not well funded by public or private sources. On
the private side, most interested parties are incentivized to be patent
maximalists, while on the public side, applicants are basically pitching an
argument to the legal academy that indicates that their central dogmas are so
tremendously wrong so as to be unjust.

Additionally, the issues caused by a lack of patent reform are not acutely
felt by the majority of individuals or industries, which means the benefit is
concentrated while the pain is distributed. Representation at industry forums,
accordingly, is slanted.

In the pharmaceutical space, for instance, WIPO had no issue with crushing
access to medicine until there was a global outcry, and patted itself on the
back when they introduced access provisions, despite themselves admitting the
provisions were basically unused after four years following their introduction
because the local industries and talent that they presumed were already dead
and gone.

TL;DR: No inertia.

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deepnotderp
I'm not so sure it's so clear cut. Some inventions genuinely take years to get
ready (cough cough anything semiconductor) and even small things require
significantly longer time periods when the filer doesn't have a whole lot of
money, eg is a startup or a lone wolf.

That being said, the system is clearly broken.

Two suggestions i have is to shorten software patents to 10 years and adjust
the length of a patent based on the financial capability of the filer (eg
pegged to inflation). The other thing is that filing for a patent should not
be so expensive because of the lawyer, it's just ludicrous. If the lawyer can
be removed via a combination of software and policy changes (either pubic
efforts, private efforts or both), then people will be able to pay
significantly more for examination. For small inventors, a "slow lane" that is
significantly cheaper can be allocated. Another idea is anonymous (for the
filer) crowd sourced prior art search with incentives.

~~~
yahna
Or just make it so that things like 1 click checkout can't be patented.

It's not worthy of protection to the person who got there first. It's just
not, it's ridiculous.

~~~
deepnotderp
On that i agree.

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frogpelt
I know there are much more pressing problems than patent reform but it's too
bad no changes (that I know of) have been made in the 17 years since this was
written.

~~~
yahna
Might have soemthing to do with people like Bezos doing little more than
talking a bit about patent reform to calm the rage.

He could have said "you're right, this is ridiculous" and just given up the
patent 20 years ago.

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Nomentatus
[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-
hi...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hinder-
innovation/)

[http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/ipindex2017/](http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/ipindex2017/)

