[ExI] Gene Patents: Good or Bad?

[Sondre Bjellås]

Hyggelig å treffe likesinnede ;-)

Thanks for your comment, it's valuable and interesting. It's also an
important distinction as you mention, that many inventions in the digital
technology space are rapidly deployed and widely spread in very short time.
What is obvious today might not have been just a year ago.

Everyone else I've heard from says the same thing, it's impossible to care
about patent litigations upfront, but it represents
very dangerous consequences if you step wrong. Microsoft was a few months
back court ordered to stop selling Microsoft Office, obviously still in
court with appeals, but having a patent, even though you where not the first
guy to invent it, gives you the power to stop competitors.


- Sondre

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 6:55 PM, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com>wrote:

> 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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-- 
Sondre Bjellås | Senior Solutions Architect | Steria
http://www.sondreb.com/
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