Amazon Founder Calls For End of Patent Wars

[zakislam]

Patent spending stemming from the smartphone industry exceeded $20 billion last year.

Amazon Founder Calls For End of Patent Wars : Read more

 

[bavman]

Amen

 

[aoneone]

Why bother? Any investigation regarding patent violations just results in more backlogging and more years of headache and confusion. This system was never good in the first place and now it is just a pathetic mess.

How much more of a headache you say? Well a formal investigation requires 5 years for both parties to respond, additional 3 years for Law improvement, and another 2 years for underwriting, and up to 10 years for adjustments/upkeeps / and effective results.

Is it worth it? No. Thank you~ ^_^

 

[ivanto]

sounds too good to be true for tech giants to stop suing each other. What would law and troll firms do?

 

[michaelssw]

Surprised nobody tried to patent patenting

 

[Guest]

It's totally out of control. Patent protection should never have been extended to software in the first place. The vast majority of software patents are for incandescently obvious things, but the clueless dufuses in our federal judiciary are too dense to understand that.

 

[EDVINASM]

Courts don't do justice - courts do law. Every rule has its own twists. While patenting is trying to protect real innovators from copycats it is also in a way covering patent trolls and allowing them to to do justice. Its just like rights - too little hurts people, too many makes the whole system look like everybody is on drugs. Be careful what you wish

 

[ddpruitt]

I'm amazed that a CEO has come out against this, I guess it would have to be Amazon. At least they spend money on innovation not litigation.

 

[svdb]

Unfortunately, patent trolls understood before anyone else that it was pointless to actually make products. When Apple or Google spend more on lawyers than on R&D it leads to think that they're slowly but surely going the same way...

 

[john_4]

I blame the government who are the enablers of this with stupid laws.

 

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]ivanto[/nom]sounds too good to be true for tech giants to stop suing each other. What would law and troll firms do?[/citation]
Place a lot of people out of a job..........
The patent industry has spawned its' own job sector - it's that profitable, The consumer picks up that tab in the end anyway.

 

[stingstang]

[citation][nom]matt_b[/nom]Place a lot of people out of a job..........The patent industry has spawned its' own job sector - it's that profitable, The consumer picks up that tab in the end anyway.[/citation]
This same industry is also destroying developing companies from adding exponentially more jobs to the market. You have to look at the issue past the first step.

However, as soon as I saw the "Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified..." I knew that the majority of voters are going to see this as the government (that mean old facist government of ours) is just going to use this as excuse to implement more laws to regulate the people to benefit themselves instead.

Of course, this may or may not happen, but something DOES need to happen.

 

[frombehind]

good luck bro. you have my respect, but honestly you may have an easier time ending world hunger, or curing cancer.

 

[Guest]

Time to completely abolish patents!! end it. no more patents!!! Null and void them all right now.

 

[devBunny]

[citation][nom]Chuck Cardiff[/nom]The vast majority of software patents are for incandescently obvious things[/citation]

I agree. I'd bet good money that several of the GUI features that I created back in the early '80s were ahead of current patent owners and I'd bet even more money that other programmers back then were busy inventing the same techniques in their programs.

For instance, I had hyperlinked help pages which incorporated live data and settings from the program. Things like that are obvious (although, thanks MS Help, I've never seen it again, ever since you separated the help system from the programs themselves :-/). Anyway, they should never be patented (and I'm looking at you, BT, with your hyperlink patent)

 

[ddpruitt]

[citation][nom]cybernet[/nom]Time to completely abolish patents!! end it. no more patents!!! Null and void them all right now.[/citation]

Patents have a place in society. Most companies wouldn't be willing to spend the R&D money on a product if they wouldn't make any money off of it. Imagine if AMD could use all of Intel's designs without spending the R&D money, you could spend half the price for the same chip. Intel would stop innovating and the entire market would stagnate.

The reason for patents is to "promote the progress of the sciences and arts", however some companies abuse the system because we've let everything become patentable. Patents used to have very stringent standards (fewer patents were issued from 1800-1900 than from 1901-1910 same for 1900-2000 and 2000-2010), now you could patent toilet paper. We just need to have reasonable laws that make sense.

 

[chomlee]

Since software technology becomes obsolete in a matter of a couple of years software patents should be limited to a shelf life of 3 years. Of course there still needs to be some protection so that someone couldn't just rip off a particular code word for word and then sell it as their own.

As for the system. I don't think it will ever be fixed. Because our system is such a free market system (here in the US) it is based on the fundamental nature of humans. The ones that want to create things are less concerned about money but really drive the innovation. Unfortunately the ones that don't create things figure out ways to make money off of the people who do so they become lawyers/businessmen and make laws/deals to maximize the amount of opportunity to them. Its kinda like the entertainment industry. There are plenty of cases where the bands/artists where platinum album award winning artists and in the end, they were broke meanwhile their managers/record lables walked away with millions.

 

[jhansonxi]

Amazon is whining because their 1-Click patent trolling didn't amount to much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click

 

[gm0n3y]

both Apple and Google on patents exceeded its spending on research and development of new products, representing the first time that has occurred in both company's history.

That is truly a sad statistic.

The system is broken. I personally am a proponent of keeping the system largely the same, but drastically reducing the time that patents are valid. This, combined with more strictness on what is considered new and innovative, should help get rid of most of the patent trolls.

 

[abbadon_34]

tell that to RAMBUS

 

[dextermat]

The only winners in all that are the blood sucking layers...

 

[basketcase87]

spending by both Apple and Google on patents exceeded its spending on research and development of new products

And Bezos thinks this might stifle innovation? Can't imagine what would give that idea.

 

[Guest]

This from the guy that uses Android without giving credit to Google and hiding the fact by putting a GUI that hides Android

 

[JamesSneed]

If they start by changing the law by making software a copywrite item(i.e. prevent source code theft) and not allowed as a patent that would do wonders. So your source code implements special algorithms etc those algorithms should get covered by a patent. I have never understood why its been allowed to patent an end result of software instead of the means to get there. What needs to stop is patents that cover the end result that many companies can come to by very different means like WYSIWYG printing of a web page(Google holds a patent on that).

 

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]stingstang[/nom]This same industry is also destroying developing companies from adding exponentially more jobs to the market. You have to look at the issue past the first step.[/citation]
My comment about the patent industry having to lose jobs was sarcastic. This is an industry that needs to shed a chunk of its' workforce as there are too many frivolous and other time-wasting lawsuits appearing everyday.