"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of all Google Android phones and tablets."
Yawn Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this tripe yet?
As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or settling).
Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything.
Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the results of your theory, and it's not pretty.
> Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price?
No.
To be worth while, investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even produced by the same factory) matching quality.
Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original or copy.
(A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100% of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are relatively rare.)
> doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the streets during the original marketing push.
"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important.
Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws.
Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable.
For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.
Your points are valid and should not be down voted! Come on guys, that isn't how this community works. :(
I completely agree with you in regards to how things /should/ be. But it goes without saying, we aren't living in that perfect world.
I don't think the ultimate impact of this ruling is going to be the banning of "all Google Android phones and tablets." I imagine in the worst case scenario HTC, et al, have to fork over some money to license the patents.
Comments
"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of all Google Android phones and tablets."
Yawn Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this tripe yet?
As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or settling).
Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything.
Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the results of your theory, and it's not pretty.
> Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price?
No.
To be worth while, investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even produced by the same factory) matching quality.
Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original or copy.
(A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100% of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are relatively rare.)
> doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the streets during the original marketing push.
"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important.
Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws.
Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable.
For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME
[2] In a country that the MP3 encoding patents are registered, of course.
>>I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced
Which countries are not innovating because of weak copyright and patent law enforcement?
Your points are valid and should not be down voted! Come on guys, that isn't how this community works. :(
I completely agree with you in regards to how things /should/ be. But it goes without saying, we aren't living in that perfect world.
I don't think the ultimate impact of this ruling is going to be the banning of "all Google Android phones and tablets." I imagine in the worst case scenario HTC, et al, have to fork over some money to license the patents.
Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
Do we care about our karma on a website on the internet?