Buy Office 2007 Key Why We Need To Abolish Softwar

During my tech days, I co-authored 4 software program patents. Each value my startup about $15,000鈥攚hich seemed like a lot of money in individuals days. I didn鈥檛 actually count on these to give me any advantage; all things considered if my opponents had half a brain,Buy Office 2007 Key, they would merely understand all they might from my patent filing and do issues greater. But I essential to boost funding, and VCs wouldn鈥檛 give me time of day unless of course I could inform a convincing tale about how we,Cheap Office Standard 2007, by yourself, owned the intellectual residence for our key sauce.聽聽 We acquired the funding, along with the plaques from the patents looked great within our reception region, so the expense was well worth it. But there was certainly no competitive benefit.
Patents create a good deal of sense in several industries; they can be essential to safeguard the designs of industrial devices, pharmaceutical formulations, biotechnology goods and methods,Office Enterprise 2007 Sale, biomedical units, customer goods (toothpaste, shampoo, speak to lenses, etc.), advanced resources & composites, and of course, widgets (lighting fixtures & elements, batteries, toys, tools, and so forth.). But in software these are just nuclear weapons in an arms race. They don鈥檛 foster innovation, they inhibit it. That鈥檚 because things change rapidly in this industry. Speed and technological obsolescence are the only protections that matter. Fledgling startups have to worry more about some big player or patent troll pulling out a big gun and bankrupting them with a frivolous lawsuit than they do about someone stealing their ideas.
New research by Berkeley professors Stuart J.H. Graham, Robert P. Merges, Pam Samuelson, and Ted Sichelman highlights the extent of this problem. They surveyed 1332 early-stage technology companies founded since 1998, of which 700 were in the software/internet space. Here is what they found:
In software, only 24% of startups even bothered to file a patent. In medical gadgets, this proportion was 76%; and in biotech, 75%.聽 Far more venture-backed companies file patents: 聽in application, 67%; in medical gadgets, 94%; and in biotech, 97%.
Venture-backed companies also file more patents than others that file patents. They file, on average, 5.9 patents as against the all-company average of 1.7. In medical units and biotech, this is 25.2 vs. fifteen.0 and 34.6 vs. 9.7, respectively.
Software executives consider patents to be the least important factor for competitiveness. They perceive gaining first-mover advantage to be the most important factor, followed by acquisition of complementary assets; copyrights; trademarks; secrecy; and making software difficult to reverse-engineer.
Companies file patents to prevent competition from copying their products, to improve their chances of securing an investment or liquidity event (IPO,office standard 2007 sale, acquisition, and many others.), improving the company鈥檚 reputation, and to gain bargaining power against others. Surprisingly, companies that held patents鈥攅ven venture backed鈥攄idn鈥檛 believe that patents made them more likely to innovate. Even more surprising, a quarter of companies that licensed technology from others said they did this to avoid lawsuits鈥攏ot to gain technology or knowledge. In other words, the patent constituted a weapon or a trophy rather than a way to obtain revenues from others’ commercial adoption of their technology.
Pam Samuelson, one from the co-authors of the report, says that her conclusion from the research is that the world may be far better off without software program patents; that the biggest beneficiaries of application patents are patent lawyers and patent trolls, not entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, the U.S. patent system is clogged and dysfunctional. John Schmid, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, analyzed U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data and found that as of 2009, there were more than 1.2 million patents awaiting approval鈥攏early triple the number a decade earlier.聽 In 2009, the patent agency took an average 3.5 years to deal with a patent request鈥攎ore than twice the 18-month target. What is most alarming is that the patent office automatically publishes applications on line following the 18 months鈥攐utlining every single innovation in detail regardless of whether an examiner has begun considering the application. Rivals anywhere in the world can steal ideas. This effectively undermines the entire purpose with the patent system: the patent office is charging applicants serious money for giving it the privilege of giving away their commercial secrets.
To make matters worse, the patent office is rejecting applications at an unprecedented pace鈥攚ith fewer than 50% being approved, compared to 70% a decade ago. One estimate is that this costs entrepreneurs at least $6.4鈥俠illion every single year in “forgone innovation”: legitimate technologies that cannot get licensed and start-ups that cannot get funded. So the agency charged with protecting U.S. intellectual residence and aiding innovation is often doing the exact opposite.
Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group, says that we should merely abolish software patents.聽 He believes that the system has spun completely out of control, with the vast majority of filings not passing the fundamental tests of a patent (that it be non-obvious, novel, and unique innovation).聽 Copyright and trade secrets have historically been the primary protection mechanisms for software intellectual home, and they may be still the best solutions.聽 Feld notes that technology companies are now forced to divert huge resources to defend themselves from patent trolls rather than advance their innovations.
The founders from the United States considered intellectual home worthy of a special place in the Constitution鈥斺�淭o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,Cheap Office Standard 2007, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.鈥� They had the concept right, but they surely never conceived of Amazon.com patenting clicks in an online shopping cart and strategies for having an online discussion, or Microsoft patenting strategies for activating double click applications with a single click. It鈥檚 time to do as Brad Feld suggests: just abolish these abominations.
Editor鈥檚 note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.