Tag Archives: Patents

Entitlement for copyright owners

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Business Insider had an article today about Reddit’s FIA. In my article in the Urban Times last week I addressed some of these issues before he wrote this article. However, he raises points that I don’t mention there and I feel that it’s extremely important to discuss them.

First he says that the law would make the internet “Hugely Difficult to monitor.” This raises a few questions. What does he mean by the internet? I helped define that in FIA, which I defined it as any data network including the web, social networks, FTP, peer to peer, email and a slew of other things. If he means this; then do we want the web to be easy to monitor? He trots out the case against it as child pornography of course, which I addressed in my Urban Times article. It’s a powerful argument because it hits upon two competing sets of social norms, rights of privacy and abhorrence to child abuse.

The use of child porn is a technique that is designed to end the conversation and shut down dissent. It places supporters of privacy in a position that is not congruent with their belief system. Additionally, the connection between copyright and child porn mixes different issues and seriously different belief systems. This difference is extremely important as there have become two different competing sets of norms. The incumbent belief that copyright is stealing, and the one new that has been developed by Web Kids.I strongly suggest reading the previous link as it provides powerful arguments for the changing sets of norms that my generation and younger entail. (I’d be on the rather old side of that generation).

Using a somewhat bad analogy, we’re using the “internet superhighway” and like the real highway people don’t want everyone driving by to know what you have in your car. Even if you aren’t doing anything illegal, do you want the cops to know that you have 5 cases of beer in the back and are going to be floating down a river all day? Probably not, cause they have no reason to know what you’re doing. Now, our data is similar to those cases of beer. Using encryption puts that into the back of the trunk where a cop is required to have justifiable cause (in the US) to inspect it’s contents. The person looking at the data would know the general direction your going and some of the ways you’re getting there, but nothing more. Yes, it makes it more difficult to identify bad stuff, but it’s difficult to do that on a real highway too. Just ask boarder patrol, and they have the right to inspect whatever they want.

Second, he essentially argues that copyright owners should have their content monitored by others. This is a huge subsidy for the copyright industry that will be paid for by other services. I’m going to use a physical world comparison, it doesn’t work perfectly but it works reasonably well. Let’s say that YouTube is similar to a Wal-Mart, or even Amazon.com. The author is arguing that YouTube needs to monitor as soon as the video is put on the web to ensure it is not infringing on copyrighted material. This would be similar to requiring Wal-Mart or Amazon.com to search for patent infringing technologies.

Why does this analogy work? In both cases these rights are state sanctioned monopolies. In both cases they are protecting a manifestation of an idea. Something that needs protection because it is extremely easy to protect. However, in Patent suits things are extremely different. The owners of the patent are required to sue companies that infringe on the patent. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are both protected from the suit.

If Apple was allowed to sue Wal-Mart for the fact that an infringing technology is being sold there, Wal-Mart would have to bear the cost of policing their inventories for infringing material. In addition it would be in their benefit to be overly caution and remove potentially infringing products before anyone can see them. Part of the cost of owning a patent is the cost of policing products that may be infringing. By removing that burden from the copyright industry we are reducing the cost of the ownership of copyright and placing it on services like YouTube. This stifles innovation in services like YouTube because they have to include the extra cost of policy copyrighted material. A competitor to YouTube has a huge hurdle to overcome before they can even open.

Finally, he argues that the bill supports file sharing. I don’t think that it does other than being based off of a different set of norms. I’d argue that the bill supports innovation over old business models. You can disagree with me on this, however it’s been shown in several studies and some anecdotal evidence that increasing legal access to copyrighted content reduces pirating. If it is easier for a company to create interesting ways to provide access to content while paying the copyright industry then everyone wins. However, as Falkvinge puts it, “I don’t care about industry profits.” Realistically, I don’t care about most companies profits, because I’m only dealing with the company to buy a product or service I want at a price that I believe is reasonable. If all the legal sources that are available to me to watch a show or listen to a song when a person wants to, it is not unreasonable for them to look for it elsewhere and then try to find it legally later if they liked it.

If the company is making bad choices for their business, why should the law change to improve their business model’s chances of surviving? Anyone that supports free market capitalism should be horrified by this sort of industrial policy making. Essentially, these companies are being faced with disruptive technologies and working to push the government to protect them. It’s similar to what has happened with the auto industry in the US.

In closing, FIA represents a dramatic change from the current norms and aligns more directly with a younger generation. This generation does not understand why companies prevent them from viewing content that they want to see. While being an open generation on Facebook, they also understand the importance of protecting the data that has been given to companies. They choose what information they share and with whom. They want an open internet so they have the ability to innovate like their parents generation. They believe that it should be a fundamental human right to have access to data and communicate with whoever they want. An industry that is not innovating should not have the ability to destroy the internet.

Are patents going to impact how doctors treat a patient?

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Today Ars Technica reported on a case before the US Supreme Court and how the court is assuming that the usage of scientific data, which has been publish, is a valid patent. This is a pretty scary scenario. What do you mean? Well, the patent is related to how the levels of some chemical impact the dosage of a drug. That’s it. If you have level X in your blood you should have dosage Y. The patent holder created a device to test the level of the chemical in your blood which then suggests a dosage level. The Mayo clinic developed their own test and  have been administering the test on their own without paying anything to the company. The arguments in the court essentially assume that this is a valid patent.

Should this patent be valid though? Seems like something that could be patented. Based on what is considered patentable, this should fall under mathematical formulas. Essentially, this is a matter of correlation and basic regression analysis. During a drug trial you can determine a correlation between the impact of a dosage of a drug on the current level resulting in a lower level of the chemical. This is really how all medicine works. If you can reduce costs by creating your own tests and administering it yourself then that’s great. Hospitals should be encouraged to do this if they are large enough.

This is what Doctors do. They read literature about the medicine the condition it’s supposed to impact and what sort of connection there is with the dosage levels and the response rate within the patients. Every doctor has to use a test to determine the level of a chemical or some condition. This can be the pulse (irregular heartbeats), blood pressure (pressure cuffs), blood sugar (A1 test) and the list goes on. In each case the doctor is able to assign a proper dosage prescription based on the study of patients. If a doctor was required to pay a licensing fee for each and every case of this our currently exorbitant costs of health care will seem cheap. Like when we used to complain about $1.50/gallon for gas.

The other problem with patenting something like this is that it’s likely to be highly unenforceable except for when a large institution like the Mayo Clinic. Individual practitioners will be safer than large clinics, but they could be impacted as well. If they are required to use an extremely expensive proprietary testing methodology rather than have the ability to use any testing method it will drive up prices and may put doctors out of business.

If the court rules on this as if these types of patents are valid, we will need to push to have patent law changed again. The last change moved things in general, in the right direction but a lot more work needs to be done.

Technology Theft

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Apparently in the Steve Jobs bio there’s discussion about how he plans on destroying Android because he thought Google stole his idea. Well, yea, a phone operating system is genius, it’s just difficult to get a critical mass for a given operating system. There’s the problem of lock-in and network effects, which impact the likelihood of a given person adopting a new technology. That’s also why Google followed Apple’s lead with creating the Android Market. It’s also why Apple is suing every single major Android phone manufacturer. However, Jobs shouldn’t have been that upset there have been a lot of dead cell phone operating systems like Palm’s, many mobile windows and most recently the beautiful MeeGoo from Nokia.

Cell phones aren’t the only place where this sort of “theft” happens. Typically, it’s more considered technological borrowing by taking from one technology type and applying it to another. This happens when some technological limit is hit on a technology. This technological theft basically allows the engineer/designer to overcome some inherent limitation in a technology. An example of this was the effort that allowed proper planes to compete with jets for an extended period of time. They use super chargers and similar technology to allow the plane to fly at heights and speeds they shouldn’t normally be able to fly at.

However, this borrowing can lead to major legal issues. Which is why it’s fairly common to see licensing agreements between major firms that involve thousands of seemingly unrelated patents. This is so they can avoid any sort of legal issues if they have to use a technology the other company owns.

Other types of theft are really common, such as in software. Look at how much Facebook has taken from both twitter and google+.

What should we do about technology theft? Well, we need to deal with the patent problem first. However if we address that issue I think that technology theft is one of the best things that can happen. It’s a way that drives improvements of subtechnologies that make the larger technologies more efficient. It’s a way that technology evolves through selection process.

On a side note, I get to see my wife tomorrow, so I’m probably not going to be blogging much for the next week or so.

Innovation, Science and Money II

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In my last blog I discussed some of the budgetary cuts occurring in the US and how these cuts are going to impact the future of science. I want to spend some time explaining why this is the case. I mentioned something called Path Dependency, what do I mean by this? Well it’s a pretty simple concept, once you start down a policy path your choices are constrained by your previous choices and the results based on those choices.

This type of path dependency can be seen in scientific and technological changes. For example, if a piece of technology has three parts each one can be improved independently. If each one can be changed in one direction, from a 0 to a 1 each change could impact how likely a specific technology would be selected by consumers. Each change could lead to a local optimal, and could prevent the technology from becoming a global optimal. Additionally, these changes over time, with further research, could lead to radical different technologies. This happening from changing a single feature from on or off. Basically, it’s an evolutionary process.

Policy works the same way. There’s a paper written by Mustar et al (2008) that discusses the policy choices in France and the UK. The objective of the paper was to investigate the impact of policy choices on the creating of academic spin-offs. Some of the results lead to additional technology incubators in the UK and in France. However, the number of academic spin-offs in France actually decreased, however in the UK they increased significantly.

These differences came about because of previous policy choices. For example, France has laws related to civil servants and starting a new company. In France all professors are considered civil servants, so there is a history of professors not starting companies. There’s a lack of culture for entrepreneurship in France for increasing the number of academic spin-offs.

This is what I meant by path dependencies. Decreasing the amount of money going into meaningful academic research will have an impact in other ways. In the US there has been an increased push for increasing the number of companies being started. Scientific research can be turned into new companies through academic spin-offs. Decreasing the funding at two of the biggest funding agencies will decrease the number of academic spin-offs.

References:
Mustar et al 2008 http://www.springerlink.com/content/68282r1460889062/

Innovation, Science and Money

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The death of Steve Jobs has really shaken the technology community. It has really made people do a lot of thinking about innovation and the impact of technology based companies on the economy. The Economist notes that the American work force is on the decline and the high tech companies aren’t making up enough jobs. That now companies like Apple and Google employ less than a third of what companies like GM used to employ. These high tech companies don’t need as many employees. Additionally, it’s a different type of work force that are required in the US. Apple outsources manufacturing because they are really concerned with driving down the cost of manufacturing and maximize profits. This is good business.

In a long article by Peter Thiel, co-founder of Pay Pal and a venture capitalist, he discusses what he calls the end of the future. Where he claims that we’ve been in an innovation slow down since the 70’s. He also argues that scientists and technologists aren’t living up to the claims they are making. He argues that in a lot of ways we’ve been technologically stagnant. Politicians have been making the same promises on energy since the 70’s and that we’ve been slowing down are rate of increase of production for food barely keeping up with population growth. I think that he does make some good points, but he definitely goes a bit over the top with his statements. He’s looking at things only within the national and regional context and is ignoring the fact that there have been cultural changes that have driven a change in how companies innovate.

Historically, companies don’t find value in doing basic research. If you look at the history of research labs within industry, they hire researchers to do incremental and radical innovation. However, this research is carried out within a scientific paradigm which was created in basic research.

In fact we’ve seen a decrease in the amount of R&D being spent by companies. This has lead to some of the stagnation in innovation that Thiel mentions. To combat this and to reduce the risk borne by the company they have been doing more and more contract research with universities and have increase the amount of money they spend with universities.

Thiel also mentions that the government might be able to help but doesn’t see it ever going to happen when you have to justify the expense by cutting something else. Since he’s a libertarian he feels that the budget must be balanced. However, our politicians are cutting budgets to the largest scientific funding agencies in the US. My wife sent me an email with some of the funding cuts, National Science Foundation is getting cut by 2.3%, in fact it’s 14% below the budget requested by the administration. The National Institute for Standards and Technology’s budget is getting cut by 9.3%. Both of these agencies create a large number of jobs. It’s been shown that one research job creates several other jobs. Cutting these budgets will reduce the amount of research which can be conducted. This will impact the number of researchers, impact the quality of education at universities and slow down the ability for universities and firms to exploit new research.

It typically takes 10 years for research to be monetizable. Cutting funding now impacts employment now and future employment. In fact, these changes will have a long term lasting impact. These choices create a path dependency within our society. Without proper funding we’ll be passed by some one that feels research is paramount.