Nickname: Wim

Review: I found the closing sentence about "a strike against innovation that set so many IT giants in motion." absurd. It is well known that IT giants like Microsoft reached their position virtually without patents.

Date reviewed: Apr 18, 2006 8:54 PM

Nickname: fizteh

Review: Mike wrote: "We can protect those with NDAs and copyright." Young fella, you seem to have a poor understanding of scientific progress. Progress is not promoted when you release some code, even open source code. It only gets promoted when you openly publish all the underlying ideas. Patents do promote progress, at least the good ones do. The RSA patent is a standard example, but there are many others.

Date reviewed: Apr 2, 2006 1:50 AM

Nickname: Mike

Review: Software patents stifle innovation. Anyone who says otherwise really means, "I don't want to work anymore, but I still want to get paid." Years ago, people laughed about the free software movement. No one is laughing anymore. World profits increase because companies produce more at a lower cost. Only the "dead wood" companies are complaining because they have to work again. Free knowledge and software is the fuel for the new economy. The real value is in processes, applied knowledge, and workflow, and we can protect those with NDAs and copyright. Litigation promotes selfish behavior. Let's put away our legal baseball bats, and make the world a better place. No software patents! Copyright is a good enough buffer between a great idea and an innovative product. If someone can reverse engineer a software application cheaper than buying it from me, then they should be able to do that. I should spend my time developing software and ideas that are more complicated and add more value.

Date reviewed: Mar 31, 2006 9:40 PM

Nickname: Steve

Review: Strong patent rights have been the engine driving the U.S. economic growth -- putting strong IP laws in place is what the less-developed world is moving towards as a way of emulating our econmic engine. Any tinkering with these laws comes at great peril. Also, the "troll" argument is a misleading one. What VC would finance a startup (it's the startup scene that drives innovation, not the behemoths) whose ideas are not patentable?

Date reviewed: Mar 31, 2006 1:45 AM

Nickname: John

Review: Stronger patent rights are necessary in order to faciliate contemporary models of innovation. If innovation still occurred in large corporate R&D silos, then there would be little need to equalize the competitive position of small innovators and large firms. However, if innovation is going to take place in an environemnt where there are arms-length transactions - either to secure venture capital funding or to license ideas - then stronger property rights for innovators will be necessary to foster those transactions.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 8:56 PM

Nickname: Anna

Review: There is a big difference between patents of companies that intend to make products, like IBM or pharmaceutical companies, and trolls that patent things that others can also invent on their own, with no intention of producing anything except lawsuits and penalties to their advantage. Here, the patent office says that Merc should have never ben awarded patents. This may end up the most important thing, and where eBay may fare better than Blackberry.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 6:38 PM

Nickname: Ken

Review: Bad patents = huge threat of infringement penalites ($600+ million for RIM) on new technologies = low incentive to take risks = low innovation = poor economic growth. Remember that PTO later invalidated the MercExchange patent. So the Court is being asked to enforce a non-property right. The only incentive it the system is to file as many bogus patents, threaten to sue everyone and anyone, and collect my money before I'm found out.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 4:35 PM

Nickname: Shakes

Review: A patent is an exchange of full information to the government for the exclusive right to that particular patent over a period of time. The purpose of patents were to spur innovation by giving others access to technological improvements. The problem nowadays is that this view has been lost. Many patents today are of no net value to society as they contain no actual follow through other then a generic and widespread idea such as buying electronically with the click of a button. The real change has to be done with the patent process.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 3:27 PM

Nickname: Dmitry

Review: In my opinion, the system must allow only truly inovative ideas to be patented. Otherwise we may find ourselves in a situation when almost all seemingly simple and trivial business processes are owned by someone, which is surely not something that the business community would like to see happening. Allowing patents on every single thing is just as damaging as not having a patent protection sytem at all.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 1:01 PM

Nickname: Linux user

Review: "eBay v. MercExchange pits Big Tech against the Little Innovator." In this case, it's the "little innovator" that's causing the problem, as they're a patent hoarder.

Date reviewed: Mar 30, 2006 1:00 PM