Since I gave this talk at TED in Long Beach back in the first week of March, a few new items have come to my attention.
My buddy Ray Fisman (badass Columbia professor) wrote a Slate article about the costs to innovation due to patent trolling. Short version: it brings innovation to a complete halt.
But wait, there's more...
I've recently talked with several folks in the high-tech industry who informed me that part of the reason large companies have been stocking up on patents lately is because they view them like nuclear weapons -- they're a deterrent. No one ever plans to use them. The idea is that you hold them in reserve to prevent patent trolls from suing you.
Well guess what folks -- it's not working. Check this out:
Scroll down for the graphic: Smartphone Competitor Patent Suits
The war has already started folks. Companies are already using their patent arsenals on each other.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this bullshit. People are actually dying as a result.
Hey Congress -- where do you think this ends exactly?
Twitter takes a preemptive, common-sense stance on patents
Now we are removing "first to invent" which only hurts the individual inventor.
With this approach, anyone who noticed that metal glows when it has electricity forced through it could have patented the light bulb *long* before Edison's company ran through all the various configurations that resulted in an actual working light bulb. As a result there wouldn't have been any guarantee that the person who owned the patent would license it at all, let alone for a practical fee; and Edison's company would never have considered investing in trying to create it.
This has changed the Edison's definition of genius from:
"1% inspiration, 99% perspiration"
to
"1% inspiration, 99% *litigation*".
At some point, all those "idea" patents need to be invalidated before anything which could conceivably be invented is treated as if it is already "owned" by someone else. And we need to do this soon, while enough of these patents are just owned by smarmy lawyers trying to extort money from corporations; because before too long the corporations will have invested far too many billions of dollars in buying up patent portfolio's to risk having them overturned.
But don't expect *any* of that to happen if the 5-to-4 Conservative "Corporations Uber Alles" majority on the Supreme Court is strengthen by either a Republican president, or a Republican Congress with the power to force a Democratic one to.
People just don't realize how much damage patents do in this age.
Now the stacked judiciary is being used as the glue to hold these regressive, crushing patent lawsuits together with new interpretations and precedents, designed to stifle any innovation, eliminating all competition.
The beginning of each century has been riddled with those that hang on to old technology.. create wars, and foster political upheaval while the profiteers steal the gold out of the teeth of corpses.... Why would 2012 be any different.
LETS BREAK OUT OF THE CYCLE.. VOTE IN NOVEMBER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF HUMANITY AND THE REPUBLIC. Vote for the betterment of the Middle class. Remember, sometimes the one has to sacrifice for the good of the many. Vote for candidates that believe in and open internet and the review of copyrights and patents.
In other words, we must dismantle globally, while renewing locally by managing your resource base in harmony with the biosphere of living systems which become self-perpetuating because we have reduced our footprint in a way nature can sustain us.
The classical political economy put into practice several centuries before is wholly self-destructive unto itself and only serves to create violence down the social hierarchy to maintain the primitive accumulation of wealth for only the small elitist group at the top leaving billions of people in whole groups of human societies without the resources they need to survive-Social Darwinist Genocide if you will.