Microsoft Pushes For Single Global Patent System 495
Xerolooper writes "What would the world be like if everyone could enjoy the same patent system we use in the USA? From the article: 'A senior lawyer at Microsoft is calling for the creation of a global patent system to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world.' They have already attracted opposition from the open-source community and the Pirate Party. According to the article, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will be meeting in Geneva on the 17th and 18th of September."
We need this. the patent systems works *so* well. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm sure the current patent system is such a marvel that we need to magnify the effects of it world wide. Think of it: an unknown patent in an unknown country will be worth decades of lawsuits and trillions of dollars, instead of the mere years of lawsuits and millions of dollars we see now.
No Patents Without Representation! (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't a bad idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
This encourages companies to share instead of keeping ideas locked up in notebooks and getting patents later.
Advantages for Inventors and Small Businesses (Score:5, Interesting)
A unified patent system would actually benefit individual inventors, small businesses, and startups more than established players with deep pockets. Right now if one wants to file for patent protection in every country with a patent system worth the name it costs ~$200,000 in filing fees alone, to say nothing of attorney and translation costs. The lifetime maintenance fees of that single patent will be well into the millions. Even only filing in the 'big three' of the US, Europe, and Japan typically costs well over $100,000 in government fees and attorney fees.
For a big company like Microsoft, that's just the cost of doing business. But that $200,000 is a huge amount of money to a startup, to say nothing of an individual garage inventor. Globalization and the internet mean that an inventor can sell an invention to people all around the world for far less than it would have cost 20 or 30 years ago. Protecting that invention all around the world, however, is often prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-funded, established companies.
It's true that companies like Microsoft would also benefit from lower filing costs, but small companies and individual inventors will benefit much more. It will also mean less money wasted on lawyers, as a single attorney in a single country can handle the whole process instead of having to use attorneys all over the world. And of course it will mean less duplication of effort in government as patent offices share resources. Right now there is an enormous duplication of effort as each application in each country is met with the same prior art, which is overcome with the same arguments. This is a tremendous waste of both government and applicant resources.
Re:Global patent system? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because corporations are legal persons, so should pay taxes just like all other people do.
If you want to abolish corporate personhood, then sure, we can abolish corporate taxation too. But you can't count corporations as just proxies for individuals in one case, and not in another.
Re:nightmares (Score:5, Interesting)
"You mean, like... abolishing the whole "intellectual property" bullshit?"
Actually, no. I really believe that patents are justified, but they are being terribly abused. Likewise with copyright. With either one, if I come up with a truly original idea, I feel that I should be permitted to make money from it, for a period of time. No competition, it's all mine. For a LIMITED period of time, of course. Certainly no longer than a decade. 5 years, 7 years, 10 years max.
And, I really believe that if patents and copyrights were regulated in such a way, people would accept them.
My two cents, anyway.
Re:nightmares (Score:4, Interesting)
So we need another transformation now: "What is intellectual property? It is thought control."
Re:Global patent system? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just silly. Of course you can count a corporation as a proxy for an individual in one case and not in another.
Corporations are treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing profits. They are not treated as proxies for individuals when it comes to distributing liabilities.
Corporations are regulated quite differently than individuals are because they have the potential to do much harm as well as much good.
Corporations are a creation of the State. The State can define and redefine them as it sees fit.
Re:Advantages for Inventors and Small Businesses (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need a patent to sell a product.
That's true, but for a lot of kinds of products it helps a great deal or is a practical necessity. This is true of anything that is easily reverse engineered and especially true of anything that is substantially cheaper to make than to develop. Pharmaceuticals are the classic example, but it's also true of commonplace inventions like coffee cup sleeves [google.com], for example.
If you are already making and selling a product, no one can jump in and buy a patent for it and try to sue you (well, they can try).
That's true, but the purpose of a patent is not to prevent others from excluding the inventor from making and selling something. It's to allow the inventor to exclude others.
Thus, a patent is a great idea if one wants to sell, for example, coffee cup sleeves to coffee shops all over the world without worrying about competitors underselling you because they didn't have to develop the sleeve, only copy it. Globalization and the internet make it very easy to sell sleeves all over the world, but only patents give the inventor the ability to exclude parasitic competition.
Re:This isn't a bad idea... (Score:1, Interesting)
Umm... first to file prevents organizations from collaborating, since your collaborator can scoop you, patent first, and leave you out to dry. Only way to collaborate is get NDAs before discussing the project at all, then hoping those NDAs count as more important than the "first to file."
I don't argue that first to invent may cause some people to not collaborate (in hopes of a windfall lawsuit), but it would cause at least as many problems in collaboration.
At least, that's how I see it as a biochemist in the US.
Re:nightmares (Score:2, Interesting)
"a truly original idea" not based on 200.000 years of work, thought, inspiration, trial and error by our fellow Homo Sapiens?
No competition, it's all mine!
Patents and copyrights: ignorant, ego-centric, arrogant money-grabbing BS.
Intellectual property my arse.
My two cents, anyway ;)
Re:nightmares (Score:5, Interesting)
There are actually some admirable parts of the US patent system. For example, disclosure. You can disclose your product in the US up to a year before you file your patent. In Europe, there's no grace period. What the lack of a grace period means in practice is that startups that don't know any better get bitten while established companies don't. A grace period also lets startups try to raise money to fund development of their product before you have to fork out $10k to get it patented. In general, that aspect of the US system is small business friendly.
In terms of software, while it used to be really bad, I think US patent law is moving in the right direction -- it looks like ultimately they'll allow software patents, but they're going to have to be a *lot* less general and a *lot* more in depth. Which is a good thing. I think all patents should have a shorter term, especially software patents (these days, if you can't turn a profit in 5-10 years, you're not going to -- and the public domain is more important than ever). But that's no reason to throw out the system altogether.
I've taken a much softer stance toward our patent system after I got involved with it in the process of starting a business. Now our trademark system... ugh, don't get me started. I may not be able to trademark my business's name because there's a company that sells Asian videos and eyeglasses under the same name, and they got shoved into the computer catch-all category '9' with me simply because their videos are downloadable online. Everything even tangentially related to computers gets shoved into category 9, but beanwhile, there are separate classes for, for example, "precious metals" versus "common metals" (and all sorts of things like that).
Re:nightmares (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. Patents allow those who invest in research to recover their costs. What I want to know is: why is this simple idea, the purpose for the existence of patents, not part of the patent system? Why do patents come with an arbitrary time limit? Wouldn't it make more sense to have patents expire after the research costs have been recovered? Sure it would be more difficult to track the costs/earnings per patent, but the reduction in patent system abuse that this would bring would, in my opinion, make it well worth the effort.
Re:nightmares (Score:4, Interesting)
At the cost of $200 million it was most likely developed by NIH grants to universities that Big Phrama attached to after there was some promise. The big secret of the pharmaceutical industry is that almost no money is spent on R&D it's all spent to make the treatments about to come out of patent protection just slightly better so they re-patent the and then spend a truck load of money on marketing to burry the old drug in the mind of the companies and the doctors.
If they spent about 1% of their current marketing budget on R&D the array of drugs would be so, so much better.
Re:nightmares (Score:4, Interesting)
It also makes submarine patents too easy "let's show this new idea on the news and hope someone implements and starts selling it - then patent it".
Re:Global patent system? (Score:1, Interesting)
EXPLAINING OUR UNITED STATES TAX SYSTEM WITH BEER
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beers by $20." (A tax reduction)
Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22 % savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (15% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before and the first four
continued to drink for free, but once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "But he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got TEN times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something very important... They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible
And you wonder why.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Plenty of posters wondered why people were cheering the i4i patent ruling over microsoft...
This is exactly why, if they get screwed enough by the current system in the us then maybe they will stop trying to push that same flawed system on other people.