Each generation of CPU design or gas turbine design or wireless baseband design, drug design, or nuclear power plant design still takes more R&D money than the last. And nobody was working on a competitive open source LTE baseband last I checked.
"Accelerating innovation" is something which, if it exists, touches only a few areas of engineering. In most areas of engineering, innovation has gotten more expensive, not less. Very few things are amenable to a distributed group of hackers working on it. Jet engines are still best designed by a roomful of PhD's. And those cost lots of money.
We can argue about how necessary patents ever were, but I don't think they're any less necessary today.
The question, in my opinion, isn't whether patents are still relevant. Its whether we can draw lines better to leave out less useful ones while keeping that exception from swallowing the patent system. E.g. if a power control module for an LTE radio is patentable if implemented in an ASIC, should it become unpatentable when you implement it in a DSP? If not: how do you allow those patents while invalidating Amazon's One Click shopping patent? To a certain extent, its tempting to just say: "its too hard to draw the lines, its not worth the trouble." That's easy to say if you're not Qualcomm and don't have a dozen companies who'd love to use your work for free.
a power control module for an LTE radio is patentable
It's worth drawing a line between "a particular solution to the problem of power control on LTE radios" and "any method of doing power control on LTE radios". Far too many software patents seem to cover any solution to the same problem, not just a particular implementation.
(Note that the software in the DSP also gets the benefits of copyright protection)
I'm sceptical that patents are an essential part of the ASIC business either. Hardware designs would still be covered by copyright law, so a competitor would still have to reimplement it from scratch. Which is actually more work than doing so for software because hardware languages use a lower level of abstraction, and the design needs to be tested much more thoroughly because you can't fix bugs post-hoc. Also, giant SoCs present a natural barrier to entry to new companies because a new company needs to have all the blocks, not just one or two. There may be a dozen companies trying to make LTE basebands today, but that situation is unsustainable and we are already seeing exits. In short: ASIC innovation would be profitable even without patents.
Also, we seem the same kind of behavior in the hw sector: Qualcomm was found to be abusing its patents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Inc._v._Broadcom_Corp.
Jet engines are still best designed by a roomful of PhD's. And those cost lots of money.
Possibly the wrong example for your argument :) Jet engines can now be designed by a team at SpaceX rather than at NASA, and the team can 3D-print them. That seems like reduced-cost innovation compared to decades past.
SpaceX is very neat, but I'm not sure they represent a change in the pace of design. Scaled Composites has been operating with a lean team for decades now. And arguably, Scaled Composites has been more willing to tread unproven ground with novel technology. SpaceX has been sticking more to proven concepts, which mitigates one of the big risks of this sort of R&D.
Yes, I'm aware they aren't delegating the rocket design to the marketers. Smaller team, faster to market, cheaper. The discussion is around accelerating innovation and SpaceX perfectly demonstrates this, despite "rocket engines" being the earlier example given for how it's not true.
Comments
Each generation of CPU design or gas turbine design or wireless baseband design, drug design, or nuclear power plant design still takes more R&D money than the last. And nobody was working on a competitive open source LTE baseband last I checked.
"Accelerating innovation" is something which, if it exists, touches only a few areas of engineering. In most areas of engineering, innovation has gotten more expensive, not less. Very few things are amenable to a distributed group of hackers working on it. Jet engines are still best designed by a roomful of PhD's. And those cost lots of money.
We can argue about how necessary patents ever were, but I don't think they're any less necessary today.
The question, in my opinion, isn't whether patents are still relevant. Its whether we can draw lines better to leave out less useful ones while keeping that exception from swallowing the patent system. E.g. if a power control module for an LTE radio is patentable if implemented in an ASIC, should it become unpatentable when you implement it in a DSP? If not: how do you allow those patents while invalidating Amazon's One Click shopping patent? To a certain extent, its tempting to just say: "its too hard to draw the lines, its not worth the trouble." That's easy to say if you're not Qualcomm and don't have a dozen companies who'd love to use your work for free.
a power control module for an LTE radio is patentable
It's worth drawing a line between "a particular solution to the problem of power control on LTE radios" and "any method of doing power control on LTE radios". Far too many software patents seem to cover any solution to the same problem, not just a particular implementation.
(Note that the software in the DSP also gets the benefits of copyright protection)
I'm sceptical that patents are an essential part of the ASIC business either. Hardware designs would still be covered by copyright law, so a competitor would still have to reimplement it from scratch. Which is actually more work than doing so for software because hardware languages use a lower level of abstraction, and the design needs to be tested much more thoroughly because you can't fix bugs post-hoc. Also, giant SoCs present a natural barrier to entry to new companies because a new company needs to have all the blocks, not just one or two. There may be a dozen companies trying to make LTE basebands today, but that situation is unsustainable and we are already seeing exits. In short: ASIC innovation would be profitable even without patents. Also, we seem the same kind of behavior in the hw sector: Qualcomm was found to be abusing its patents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Inc._v._Broadcom_Corp.
Jet engines are still best designed by a roomful of PhD's. And those cost lots of money.
Possibly the wrong example for your argument :) Jet engines can now be designed by a team at SpaceX rather than at NASA, and the team can 3D-print them. That seems like reduced-cost innovation compared to decades past.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/02/elon-musk-m...
(PS - I definitely don't disagree with your general point, but it might be becoming harder to know which areas need patents and which don't.)
SpaceX is very neat, but I'm not sure they represent a change in the pace of design. Scaled Composites has been operating with a lean team for decades now. And arguably, Scaled Composites has been more willing to tread unproven ground with novel technology. SpaceX has been sticking more to proven concepts, which mitigates one of the big risks of this sort of R&D.
I'm not quite sure what difference you're pointing out. Why does is matter if the PhDs are at SpaceX or NASA?
Yes, I'm aware they aren't delegating the rocket design to the marketers. Smaller team, faster to market, cheaper. The discussion is around accelerating innovation and SpaceX perfectly demonstrates this, despite "rocket engines" being the earlier example given for how it's not true.