IP Democracy: The Problem with Patents

Tech Liberation Front’s Tim Lee has landed primo op-ed space in the New York Times for this short essay on patents and how they stifle innovation.

Tim points out that gaining patents in the software business is akin to an arms race. If an innovator doesn’t immediately file for a patent, even for obvious things, then somebody else will and the pioneer is bound to get bombed with lawsuits. The upshot: everybody files patents for everything.

Tim points to Microsoft, which, according to a memo from Bill Gates, feared the advent of the software patent craze in 1991 and its impact on the robust development of the industry. Today, Microsoft holds more than 6,000 patents.

Of course Vonage is the corporate cautionary tale of the failure to get a patent fast enough. Verizon has successfully sued the pants off Vonage for a simple technology that it patented, one that Vonage claims to have derived on its own.

Yet, as the Vonage case demonstrates, participating in the patent system is not optional. Independent invention is not a defense to patent infringement, and large software companies now hold so many patents that it is almost impossible to create useful software without infringing some of them. Therefore, the only means of self-defense is the one Mr. Gates identified 16 years ago: stockpile patents to use as bargaining chips in litigation. Vonage didn’t do that, and it’s now paying a very high price

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 9, 2007 9:04 AM to IP Democracy