Perspective: Why I love patents and copyrights

Keith Richards in a near-death experience. Does TV get any better?

Ocean Tomo, a Chicago-based company that holds auctions for patents, copyrights and other intellectual property, will put a gem on the block in its next auction taking place in London on June 1: film footage of the Rolling Stones guitarist getting electrocuted during a U.S. concert in 1965.

"The Stones do not currently have this footage themselves; this particular piece of film lasts 10 minutes, with the electrocution scene occurring at the close, and lasting approximately a full minute," the catalog for the auction states.

The footage is part of a collection of film that is owned by Mark and Colleen Hayward and is being sold as a single lot. Other footage in the lot includes an early film of The Beatles playing in Blackpool, England, and some shots of Paul McCartney in 1966 yukking it up on a Learjet owned by Frank Sinatra.

TV stations pay around $3,000 to broadcast about 30 seconds of footage from the Hayward collection.

The Haywards will also auction off a collection of photos of rock stars over the decades: The Clash, AC/DC and The Moody Blues. You'd have to go to the Konocti Boat Harbor to see some of those acts today.

Although it's not a really popular sentiment these days, I think patents, trademarks and copyrights are simply fantastic and a primary, necessary driver of the world economy.

It won't be all celebrity memorabilia at the intellectual property auction. Most of the lots involve chemicals (a formula for flexographic printing from Meat/Westvaco), wireless communications, medical devices (customized bone implants--a patent with a $200,000-plus value), green technologies (an efficient way to incinerate waste from our pals at KusuKusu Industry), or electronics (anyone care for a gas composition sensor from Accentus?).

Despite early skepticism, the open auction concept for intellectual property is clearly gaining steam. In the company's April auction in Chicago, $11.4 million worth of intellectual property was sold, including two lots that went for $3 million and $2.8 million each.

Although it's not a really popular sentiment these days, I think patents, trademarks and copyrights are simply fantastic and a primary, necessary driver of the world economy. Without them, the rapid pace of technological innovation around the world would slow to a crawl. And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?

Why all the frothy sentiment? Intellectual property provides one of the most dependable means toward wealth and independence in the world today. In the Dark Ages, one could obtain wealth by raising an army and burning someone else's kingdom to the ground. In the Gilded Age, those on the fast track had a secret weapon of success: they bribed state legislators to obtain canal and railroad contracts.

Unfortunately, those career options just aren't as viable as they once were. Instead, we have to invent stuff, and thus people should get compensated for the effort.

And it does take effort. Think of Larry Page toiling away on the early PageRank patents. Think of Mark and Colleen Hayward. Imagine all those evenings they had to spend listening to Donovan spout Celtic gibberish or helping get John Bonham out of hotel security custody during those years they amassed their photo and video collection. Surely some reward is in order.

I actually came to this conclusion from the other end. Back in 2005, I set out to write a series of articles on patent trolls, so-called individuals who preyed on hardworking, industrious Americans with a file of flimsy patents.

What I found instead was a gray area. Nearly every so-called troll turned out to have a somewhat persuasive story. Intellectual Ventures, a patent firm started by former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, was staffed with fairly renowned scientists who didn't fit the profile of people trying to make a quick buck in court.

Another man, criticized as one of the most litigious people in the U.S., had a great explanation for his behavior. He had only sued people who had signed--and then violated--nondisclosure agreements. Two other guys I met, engineers from the Midwest, spent eight years of their lives attending meetings trying to license their invention to car manufacturers and getting stiffed. (Eventually, they sold their patents for over a million bucks.)

The most humorous encounter was the engineer at IBM Labs. He railed against patents and how people exploited them in court. I asked him if he had any. He did: three of them. Had he donated them to an open-source organization? Why no. They constituted, errr, tangible advances in science.

The difficulty in coming up with federal patent reform and the uncertainty surrounding how some recent Supreme Court decisions will play out show that striking a balance isn't easy. Copyright is the same way. Everyone likes to think that studio execs are evil incarnate. But when you steal movies, you're also whittling down the royalty checks for some old lady who had to make out with William Shatner in a bit role on Star Trek.

I have encountered many people who had strong, emotional reactions against patents and copyrights. Remarkably, though, few of them had ever been sued in court. And fewer still had ever written a book or cut an album. In short, they hadn't been hurt by so-called trolls, and they didn't own much worth pirating.

But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and reprint this for free.

Biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time share resort, among other occupations.

More Perspectives

[billmosby]

I agree

Just as long as the PTO doesn't grant patents whose claims can be <br />found in the literature published 10 and 20 years before the <br />patents issued, or if it does, there is a process for invalidating the <br />patents that doesnt cost millions of dollars.

[jbosson]

Hurray for all things broken.

Cant imagine that anyone would want to kill all patents or copyrights. But some things need to be fixed badly. One would be blind not to see that.<br /><br />Too many economists find that patents strangle innovation in some fields. Look at the research from <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.researchinnovation.com/" target="_newWindow">http://www.researchinnovation.com/</a> etc. <br /><br />A great patch for the system would be to listen to the ATTvsMS decision and stop patent claims on publication. Publication claims are against spreading knowledge. So the Supreme Court was right to stop that nonsense. I cant see any of the inventions that you mention that would suffer from this either. Fix the system or the system will be in trouble sooner or later.

[jbosson]

wrong link, sorry:

Should be: <br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.researchoninnovation.org/" target="_newWindow">http://www.researchoninnovation.org/</a><br /><br />On software patents: (MIT)<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf" target="_newWindow">http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf</a>

[arluthier]

Apples and Oranges

Comparing Copyrights and Patents are apples and oranges to me.<br /><br />A copyright protects your content and prevents it use elsewhere. A patent says I created this and noone else can even make anything that is similar. Saying that copyrights are like patents would be saying Joe song writer wrote a country western song where his dog died... and now no one else can write country songs that involve dogs dying. Unless Joe gets his cut.<br /><br />In my opinion a Patent should protect an invention... a tangable one... not an idea (unless you can prove progress in working towards development). Patenting an idea only prevents other from actually acheiving what you could only think up.

[GadgetDon]

I love them too, but they're still broken

I love patents and copyrights too...but they're still broken.<br /><br />There are patents that are on things so fundamental, they might <br />as well be patenting the zero. There are other patents granted <br />that fail the obvious test for someone in the business, or while <br />they may have a unique idea they are written so widely that they <br />become ludicrous.<br /><br />I love Patents and copyrights. But that does not excuse <br />everything done in their name. And what I hate most about <br />those abusing the system is that they might kill support. The <br />RIAA and the MPAA already gave Copyright a bad name.

[bignumone]

Love them/Hate them

This is an illustration of why we must have a patent system, AND why it needs to be rehauled!<br /><br />I work in Pharma, and we have actually experienced a patent that was so well written (by us) that we can not patent another compound even close to what the original's structure. The problem? The compound was never taken to market and it looks as though it performs as intended very well and very safely. There is so little patent life left on it that it is not worth developing through clinical trials. You know no non-generic pharma will touch it once the patent expires because they have no exclusivity to recoup the expense of further research. The generics won't touch it because they live off the sweat of other's work...they don't do research other than formulation...they just copy what they know is successful.<br />I wonder how often this happens? Can you imagine the drugs not developed because of the loss of exclusivity?<br />Everyone out there that hates large (or even small) drug companies should think about this!

[Macsaresafer]

Prior art.

The biggest problem I see is that there doesn't appear to be any <br />real search for prior works before issuing a patent. <br /><br />I've just been reading about Burst.com's suit against Apple. <br />Most, if not all of Burst's claims are based on ideas that have <br />long been implemented in television, compact disks, hard <br />drives, and many other fields. The problem here as with so many <br />other frivolous suits is that they've managed to get a patent on a <br />vague idea rather than a specific design, and that's where the <br />patent system is broken.

[billmosby]

Exactly.

Whatever happened to the idea that you can't patent an idea? <br />Maybe somebody should patent that idea. Just kidding, but it <br />sometimes takes an absurdity to adequately describe another one.

[asdf]

WHo buys this guy's lunch?

Intellectual property provides one of the most dependable means toward wealth and independence in the world today. <br /><br />Look, this statement is false. It costs 40-60 grand to file a patent through an attorney. Patents not filed through an attorney are seen as worthless to investors. The cost of enforcing or defending yourself against a patent is a million bucks per patent, per claim.<br /><br />The only "people" that the IP-everywhere! crowd helps are the multinational companies like IBM and MS who can afford to keep lawyers on retainer. Patents like "one click" that Jeff Bezeos of Amazon has exist solely to make sure that no small company can challenge them. So also wth MS patents on FAT file system and IBMs 6000 or whatever software patents. They function as a barrier to entry into the market place for small companies and individuals. <br /><br />Since it was just such small companies and individuals who made the tech revolution possible BEFORE there were software and so called "method" patents, (a patent on the way of doing something, we can expect computers and the internet to start experience the stifling effects of the IP-everywhere! crowd has had on telcom (think Vonage vs Verizon here) industry.<br /><br />Look, the author of this piece surely is well acquainted with these facts about the cost of patents . It's not hard to see what the fate of individual developers is under the IP-everywhere! regime. They get snuffed. This is what MS and IBm need in order to continue to dominate the marketplace. Oh, and by the way, that's just who pays the bills at CNET. <br /><br />See, beliefs aren't REALLY about rational arguments- they're about who's paying for your lunch.. whose party you're being invited to and who's paying for your kids college. <br /><br />For any piece of software, no matter how trivial, there are literally thousands of patents that are violated. If you're big enough, or you matter, IBM and MS will come knocking... it's a joke. We can't innovate and create in an atmosphere of terror from the IP-everywhere! crowd. Copyright protection is the right level of protection for software.You can't just rip off my code without working. <br /><br />IP true-believers other Kool-Aid drinkers talk like business didn't happen before method patents and the Western world is going to go back to the Dark Ages if Jeffy at Amazon can't patent his one-click BS. Just the opposite is true. We'll go back to the bad old days of pre-software patents circa 1980 to 1998.. yeah... those were the Dark Ages.... <br /><br />Give me a break.

[Cyrus_K]

Couldn't agree more

You hit it right on the nail: that is all articles appearing in Big US media (of which CNet, Yahoo, Google, etc. are just more parts) are driven by this fact that you highlighted:<br />"beliefs aren't REALLY about rational arguments- they're about who's paying for your lunch.. whose party you're being invited to......"<br /><br />A very example is that there is this search engine called Anoox, but do u<br />see big media (Such as Cnet) ever cover them? NO. Why because Anoox<br />is a search engine by the people for the people and not not part of the right party.

[billmosby]

All you say is true

One example- patent number 6573903, filed 7/9/01, issued <br />6/3/03.<br /><br />Claims: moving an object around on another object in a 3-D <br />graphics CAD system, orienting it in a determined way on the <br />other object, and considering lights and cameras to be objects <br />manipulable in this way.<br /><br />Prior Art:<br />Snap-Dragging, Eric Allan Bier and Maureen C. Stone<br />Computer Graphics 20(4), SIGGRAPH 86<br /><br />More fully detailed in<br /><br />Snap-Dragging: Interactive Geometric Design in Two and Three <br />Dimensions<br />Doctoral Dissertation<br />Eric A. Bier<br />May 19, 1988<br /><br />These two references describe a 3-D graphics system which was <br />implemented around 1986, the features of which included <br />interactively dragging objects around on other objects, orienting <br />them in a predetermined way, and which considered a camera <br />viewpoint as being manipulable in the same way as other <br />objects.<br /><br />I think an ACM SIGGRAPH paper would have been accessible to <br />the patent examiners in 2001, 15 years later, even if serches <br />were a bit less convenient than they are today.

[fredblotnic]

one other thing to add

Fat was patented after ntfs file system was being wildly used in NT and in Windows 2000. the whole reason for the patent existence is to stop its use outside of Microsoft's doors without a hefty licensing fee from Microsoft. Prior art should exist when the file system was being used back as far as DOS if i remember correctly. there never was a patent for it when it was first initiated in the software that used it.

[Russell McOrmond]

Silly binary article

The real world doesn't work as something that is binary. Very few extremists are of the love/hate for PCT (Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, etc <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://wsis-pct.org/ipr-disclaimer.html" target="_newWindow">http://wsis-pct.org/ipr-disclaimer.html</a> -- IP stands for Internet Protocol ;-) , and most people are going to agree for the need for these laws to exist but disagree on their current contours.<br /><br />I started a discussion on my own forum on this topic. <br /><br />Copyright is not a binary yes/no question. What should it look like?<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3932" target="_newWindow">http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3932</a><br /><br />Patents? Patents should only be for manipulations of nature which are legitimately inventions, and shouldn't apply to information/mental processes. Pretty easy distinction to me.

[pjianwei]

Make me think back to the "Hamas hijack Mickie Mouse".

What is so special about a mouse with butterfly ears wearing striped clothes? Maybe Disney copyrighted it to stop others from competing with it. If a MM shirt cost $1 to make, we shall only pay 10c. Anything else is corporate greed and capitalist excess. <br />And before patents, copyright and trademark, man solve things through fists, blades and gunpowder.

[J. Blow]

Agreed

The founding Fathers of our country loved them too. They were considered then, and now, as a key driver of our economy.

[m.meister]

stifling innovation 101

This guys misses the purpose behind patents and copyrights. <br />The reason they exist is to promote new ideas that will flow back <br />into society.<br /><br />The problem with both patents and copyrights today is that they <br />extend for such a long time that the intellectual property is <br />essentially hijacked from society. In the software world, patents <br />last for at least 17 years. So society is getting 1990s technology <br />given to it. Joy! Think about how far we have come in terms of <br />software since 1990 (think System 6 on Mac, Windows 3.0 on <br />PCs).<br /><br />Now copyrights, think Mickey Mouse. I wasn't even born when <br />Mickey Mouse was copyrighted, yet it the copyright not only <br />exists, it will exist well past my own death.<br /><br />So when does society benefit from these ideas? Apparently <br />never. Companies like Disney have insured copyrights lock up <br />works indefinitely. Software Patents are used as weapons to <br />destroy competition, weapons which will be around for another <br />8-9 generations of computers.<br /><br />Software patents are not a tool to inspire innovation. Copyrights <br />have been stretched so far as to lose their value in society. Some <br />even claim to have copyrights over NUMBERS.<br /><br />Both tools were originally intended to encourage innovation, yet <br />today's fast pace of ideas means that these tools (as they exist <br />today) actually stifle innovation more than encourage it.<br /><br />The only winners in this battle are lawyers, either as the filers for <br />companies or as litigators.

[jwwjr47]

Mr. Kanellos - Read This Book, Then Resubmit Your Article

Mr. Kanellos, <br /><br />Read this book, then review and resubmit your article. Your article in its current form, it is so poorly constructed as to be dangerous.<br /><br />jwwjr47<br /><br /><br />Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software - <br /><br />by Ben Klemens (Author) "The foremost economic question surrounding patents and copyright is how much territory they should cover. <br /><br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749422/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5951443-8901651?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1178812828&#38;sr=1-1" target="_newWindow">http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749422/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5951443-8901651?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1178812828&#38;sr=1-1</a>

[p40tomahawk]

Math You Cant Use

Thanks for the book recommendation. More knowledge = Always Good

[rcsteiner]

What an innovative approach...

You mean someone can actually read materials on a given subject before posting online, thus informing themselves about a given issue before spouting off?<br /> <br />Imagine the intelligent discussions that could take place were even a small percentage of participants online to engage in such an approach. <br /> <br />I think you should patent this idea right away! :-)

[dwreid]

Ignore the man behind the curtain

I don't think that anyone is saying that patents and copyrights are bad. What is broken is the current system that grants patents on literally anything that doesn't already have a patent, such as the genes in your own body, or perhaps the color green. Patents are supposed to allow someone to profit from their INVENTION. They were never intended to provide profit to people who simply file patents in the hope that some stick. On the copyright issue, copyrights were supposed to provide a protected period of time for an author to profit before the work passed into the public domain for the good of society. Today, copyrights last far longer than the life span of the author and exist to remove millions of publications and works from the public domain. No one profits. The companies that own them don't publish them anymore. Eveyone looses since these works never enter the public domain.

[rcsteiner]

Excellent points.

Patents obviously work quite well in some contexts, like in the world of mechanical devices. <br /><br />The issue with software patents is (IMO) the lack of ability or incentive for the current USPO to properly determine prior art, as well as a serious lack of enforcement of existing applicability standards. <br /><br />It should take more for a software patent to be granted than taking any existing business process and appending the words "on the web" to it...

[michaelo1966]

Patent defending patents

I think I'll write a patent on how to defend otherwise indefensible patents. I'll bet nobody's ever patented that again and it can't possibly be obvious because nobody's written a book saying so. After it's awarded I can sue patent trolls and their defenders.

[Travis Ernst]

Mixed bag

For TRUE innovation and those that invent I support the system <br />and how it is structered to work. However, we have people and <br />companies that ABUSE the patent system and file false claims on <br />items they had no hand in the development of, in an attempt to <br />squash the marketing of devices, or control the field with their <br />poor quality devices.<br /><br />These cases are where I call fowl.<br /><br />The sad downside of filing your patent, is you just opened the <br />book on your invention showing the entire world what you <br />designed, now allowing people to COPY your device. It is now <br />on your side of the tennis court to DEFEND any copy cats at <br />YOUR expense in court costs, lawyer fees, time away from work, <br />lost revenue, lost sales to those frauds.<br /><br />If by some miricle you DO win the case, years down the road, <br />that invention may be outdated in what it was used for. Was it <br />worth it filing the paperwork? Going through all the hassle of <br />court just to chase after some copy cat who just had to do a web <br />search and pull up public records to see how you made your <br />product? Where before filing, it was only in your company <br />records; and you STILL had legal recourse with a history of using <br />that method and a history of using that.

[PzkwVIb]

You mean "foul"

not Fowl

[hackingbear]

The human nature is to be blamed

The problem is that if we have an enforcible patent system, someone will abuse it to max; if we don't, someone will abuse it to the max. The former is currently happening in the US and the developed countries while the later occurs in India, China and all other un-developed or developing world.<br /><br />Keeping the current system intact simply prolongs the abuses. Reforming the patent system will only likely to make lawyers richer. Getting rid of it will indeed stifle innovation as this author claims.<br /><br />In any way, the humanity is bound to doom. So doesn't matter.

[cnetispathetic]

Why I am taking CNet's RSS Feed of My Homepage

Because of uniformed morons like this guy are running it. You need INTELLIGENT people to report technology news; clearly CNet's recruiting standards have fallen over the years, and this editorial is proof.<br /><br />It's really rather sad: CNet used to be THE best site on the web for technology news; now it can't even compete enough with the five other tech news sources on my homepage to stay on it.

[jeffguevin]

Why this sounds like trolling

"And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?"<br /><br />That's such a clearly false (not to mention insulting) statement that I'd say it deserves a retraction. Add to that the snide tone, non sequiturs, and arguments from anecdote and I'd say this article deserves the savaging it's getting.

[mathCoder]

I guess you're the expert with 0 patents ?

So you laugh at the opinion of the man who actually has three patents ... it's called playing the game. One thing you should know about software is that it compiles into a machine code which is pretty much irreversable for complex algorithms. So for algorithms which are actually not obvious, you've already got full protection through copyright (of the machine code) alone. Thus - and this is my company's strategy - we patent only obvious ideas in order to block competitors.

[batavier]

The Adder in the Grass

I understand that in Europe SOFTWARE, although protected by copyright, is not patentable. <br /><br />This is to avoid the practice in the US of patenting programming steps without actually producing product, and then waiting to pounce on the first opportunity to rake in the bucks.