Tag Archives: patents

Eric Schmidt on Innovation: Patents, Self-Driving Cars and Education

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Last night I attended the AllThingsD interview with Eric Schmidt. Yesterday’s post focused on smartphones, this post will go through the second half of his discussion.

Patents
While Schmidt wasn’t willing to discuss specific patent fights, he did emphasize one point: The patent fights harm little companies the most since they don’t have the resources to fight patent claims. Small companies have created the most jobs and innovation and so patent disputes can cause great harm by harming them.

This seems true, though patent trolls probably only sue companies that have enough money to be able to pay them. Though perhaps large competitors could sue small companies out of existence, but I don’t know if that is too common. No matter what,he current patent system is pretty ridiculous.

Google and Self-Driving Cars
Swisher felt bothered that Google was involved in everything instead of just focusing on organizing information and called Google a Borg. She also said Google Glass is ugly and wasn’t so in to self-driving cars. Schmidt replied that they want to be in the center of the information revolution. But he said they should be celebrating innovation instead of dissing it.
He said that people shouldn’t really be driving cars and that self-driving cars will save many lives. Car companies will be able to implement components of Google’s technology in a few years, but their will still be a driver behind the wheel and a big red button to turn off automated driving. Also, Google Glass will provide new opportunities and experiences for people.

Clearly Google no longer just focuses on making information accessible  but now does all things software. I don’t see any reason to be bothered by that, as they seem to be doing a good job and provide basically everything or free.
Schmidt seemed to imply that humans will need to be monitoring the driving. People have a hard-enough time staying focused on the road now when they are driving, so I doubt they will be able to when the computer is doing it. Though maybe the computer will be able to pause the YouTube video when there’s an issue that require’s human attention.

Innovation & Education
Schmidt said there’s low morale in the US, which is a demographic problem, a global problem, and an automation problem. He seemed to be saying there was low unemployment because software and globalization are taking over jobs, but he felt that more innovation was the solution. He said the platforms created by Google and their competitors can create many job opportunities in the US.
The solution is also to improve education to help innovation. Currently, the gap between the elite and everyone else has widened, but it needs to be closed. Mossberg asked if he things online MOOCs like Udacity are the future even for the elite. Schmidt replied that these new initiatives are just version 1 and that they glimmer with possibility, i.e. yes. He said there has been very little innovation and real competition in education but these new online offering are changing that.

If technology is part of the problem of low-employment, perhaps increased innovation will just make things worse? However, improving technology has not caused long-term unemployment, since it has always created new markets for people to spend their money on. So the online platforms may provide many more new jobs. This type of work is not for everyone though, and better education won’t necessarily help. However, I don’t think there’s an immediate risk of widespread unemployment.
I think Schmidt hit the nail on the head about the potential of online education. Who more than the head of Google recognizes the power of software to revolutionize industries? He stressed often how competition drives innovation and lowers prices. This is something the government-backed system of education sorely lacks, but there is now potential for change.

The overall theme that emerged from this discussion was the power of innovation. By allowing competition that isn’t restricted by unfair patents or over-reaching unions, great things can be developed that will benefit everyone.

Brain, Patents and Trading

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extremetech.com/extreme/136446-darpa-combines-human-brains-and-120-megapixel-cameras-for-the-ultimate-military-threat-detection-system
Humans are still better than computers at interpreting images, but they’re too slow. So it makes for the Army’s threat-detection system to to use a computer to filter the images to only show the human possible threats.One would think the job would then be for the human to press a button when a threat is detected. However, that’s too slow for the computers, so instead they just use an EEG to read the human’s brain and sense when a threat is detected. So the human is like an advanced motion detector for the machine.

blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/09/askpatents-com-a-stack-exchange-to-prevent-bad-patents/
The Patent office came to StackExchange to ask for help in detecting prior art so patents can be invalidated. If this catches on, it can help reduce some of the rampant patent lawsuit that have been going on. Maybe one day they’ll consider crowd-sourcing the actual granting of patents.

blogmaverick.com/2012/09/21/what-business-is-wall-street-in-3/
Another attack on high-frequency trading, pointing out that they’re just ‘hacking’ the system without providing any benefit to society.

 

Prominent Judge on Patent Reform

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Since I’ve discussed this topic before, I have to link to this article in the Atlantic by the Judge who recently dismissed an Apple-Motorola case:

theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/why-there-are-too-many-patents-in-america/259725

He gives a very clear description of the problems in the patent system, and then suggests a few ways to fix it, such as eliminating patents in certain industries, eliminating court trial or requiring the patentee to produce the item within a specified time. See also my suggestion here for fixing the system with crowd-sourcing:

zappable.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-the-patent-system

Apple’s Patent Lawsuits, Big 3 Revenue

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Apple faces setback in Europe over their fight with Motorola: apple-on-motorola-ip-claims-in-germany-this-old-pager-patent-is-invalid

Basically, Apple is waging a worldwide patent war against many other phone-makers, which seems strange. Patents are supposed to be used like nukes – Don’t sue me, or I’ll sue you, and we’ll both lose tons of money. What is Apple’s strategy? Probably they figure they have enough money that lawsuits cannot threaten them too much, but other companies might run out and be forced to give in to Apple.

Also, in case you were wondering where Apple, Google, and Microsoft get all their revenue, here’s some simple charts: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-apple-and-google-where-does-the-money-come-from/4469.
Google makes all of their money from advertising, one wonders if maybe they should diversify. It’s also interesting how much Apple makes from the iPhone and how Microsoft makes a significant chunk from server software, which most people haven’t heard of.

Link of the Day

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Another post relating to patents, but this deserves to be linked to:

 Like patents, I see unions as incredibly well-intentioned and at one time vital to America’s development. But let’s face it: Mismanaged unions are also at the root of a lot of our capitalistic problems today. It’s hard to see what’s happened with the airline industry, the automobile industry, public education and feel that unions are a totally benign force in the corporate world.

Workers may have been exploited in the past, but does anyone really think that's what would be happening  with teachers and auto-workers today? Instead, education causes crazy debt with poor results, while the U.S. auto companies need the government to bail them out.

How to Fix the Patent System

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Why do patents exist? A person does not inherently own the rights to his ideas. The patent is an artificial construct to encourage innovation in areas that otherwise would be under-developed. For example, certain companies invest millions of dollars in R&D and only get a return on their investment if they own exclusive rights to their inventions for a certain period. In this way, the patent system can encourage innovation.

However, in many areas, the current patent laws end up causing the exact opposite. Software patents are often given as the prime example where patents end up stifling innovation. Frequently, patents are granted for ideas that are not really that innovative. Often the patents are granted when similar ideas had been floating around before. In other cases, many people can come up with the idea independently, but once company manages to patent it first and exclude others from using it. In fact, even if a person is only later able to come up with he idea on his own, why should the initial patent prevent him from using the idea? He was able to discover it without their help, what economic good is served by preventing him from using it? It would be difficult to prove he didn’t see the original patent, but the system should be adjusted so only extremely innovative patents are granted.

 

Another issue with the patent system is the inefficiencies and costs involved. It costs many thousands of dollars to apply for a patent, and then it can take the government years to process the patent. The whole system is slow and inefficient. Patents should have a much higher bar to be granted, but they should also be a quicker, cheaper process.

Recently, some have begun trying out to crowd-sourcing some of the patent review process. Instead of just having inefficient government clerks reviewing the patents, some have begun opening the process to the wider public. This way many people can review the patents to see if they involve any “prior art”. This is a good step, but the very definition of the patent needs to change. Even if a patent does not involve prior art, who says the idea is so innovative that others couldn’t have thought of it on their own?

Instead of just checking the patents for prior art, I suggest a more radical move. If an idea truly deserves to be patented, then no one else should be able to think of the same idea on their own. To apply for a patent, a person or company would have to submit the problem they are trying to solve, and the general area of the solution they have in mind, which would all be posted to a public site. Their actual solution would be posted privately to the patent site. If no one can suggest the same solution, than the patent is truly innovative and will be granted. But if people can come up with the same solution on their own, then no patent would be granted. Why should there be a patent, when others were able to figure out the same idea?

This would greatly reduce the number of patents that are actually granted, but it would fit with the way ideas are actually discovered. In a recent paper, “The Myth of the Sole Inventor“, Mark Lemley demonstrates that most inventions are invented simultaneously by different groups of people working independently of each other. There is little reason why one group should be granted exclusive rights to something that would have been invented anyways. In my proposed solution, they would both be able to submit to one site, and instead of a patent being granted, the idea would become open to the public. The companies would still be encouraged to submit their ideas, whether to get their patent, or to prevent their competitors from patenting the idea.

By having the general public review the patents, people will suggest different ideas, and this will lead to even more innovation. Of course, this will lead to large numbers of submissions, and new methods will be needed to categorize and process all the patent data. In the current system, the patent-reviewers do not even have access to the internet when reviewing patents. In the new system, all patent applications will be well categorized and tagged and have clear semantic data that could be processed by computers. This way, it will be much easier to find related patents, and perhaps even to discover what areas are ripe for new ideas.

 

The entire patent process would be much quicker and cheaper. Instead of payinggovernment clerks to review the patents, the process would be open to the public. People will compete with each other to suggest solutions to the problems or to find related patents. They’re could be some financial incentives, or there could be certain opportunities for suggested ideas to be patented themselves. But people would likely partake in the process without even getting any money, as they do on sites like Wikipedia and StackOverflow.com. However it is done, the whole process will be much faster and cheaper than the current system.Many details of such a system would still need to be worked out. Perhaps it could then be tried out in a small area of software patents. If such an idea succeeds, it could lead to greater innovation, a greater spread of ideas, reduced legal costs, and a true stimulus for the economy.

NPR on Intellectual Ventures

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NPR recently ran a full story on Intellectual Ventures and patent trolling. Most software patents are pretty ridiculous, and clearly the system needs some fixing. More on that in the future… 

At the same time Crawford's patent was being prosecuted, more than 5,000 other patents were issued for "the same thing," Martin says.
Crawford's patent was for "an online backup system." Another patent from the same time was for "efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems." Yet another was for "mirroring data in a remote data storage system."
And then there were three different patents with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title: "System and method for backing up computer files over a wide area computer network."
Martin says about 30 percent of U.S. patents are essentially on things that have already been invented. In 2000, for example, the patent office granted a patent on making toast — patent number 6080436, "Bread Refreshing Method."