[ExI] Gene Patents: Good or Bad?

David Lubkin lubkin at unreasonable.com
Wed May 26 16:55:33 UTC 2010


Sondre wrote:

>Company X and Y are in the business of developing CRM software. 
>Company X is first on the market and patent-protects some of it's 
>innovations. This means Company Y is under the constant treat of 
>being in violation of Company Y's patents as patents are generally 
>very broad in their descriptions.

Hyggelig a treffe deg.

I have a software patent myself, for something that was genuinely
difficult to invent. One of my insights is now central to the functioning
of many billions of dollars of e-commerce. (The patent is owned by
HP which, as far as I know, has made little effort to reap any benefit
from it. I got a $100 dinner for two.)

That particular insight is obvious in hindsight, and there are very
few alternatives to it.

My biggest problems with software patents are that sometimes they
cover really obvious ideas that have a century of prior art (as do
several of Amazon's patents), that it's a nightmare to figure out if
there's a patent that covers what you want to do, and it's tedious and
expensive to license.

(I asked about patents at a software presidents meeting once. Whether
you should patent anything or whether you should investigate whether
your product infringes on an existing patent. The unanimous advice
for struggling entrepreneurs was to ignore both questions. Focus on
getting product out the door and sales. If your product makes a bundle,
you can worry about patents then. If it flops, you'll never have to.)


-- David.




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