Great to see companies looking for solutions to the patent systems mess. It gets really frustrating when the system that protects IP causes more trouble than good.
I still cant believe amazon were able to patent the one click sales process they offer on their website. Maybe one of the car makers will patent their air conditioning button? =(
This is how it should be with both patents and copyrights anyway. Corporations should not get to own them, ever - only to manage them for fixed periods of time decided in contracts with the owners. And if say the owner of a patent actually wants to sue someone, then they should be able to get a company to fight on their behalf (and share the gains). I think this would at least prevent most of the abuses for both patents and copyrights.
Disagree. Ideas are not property. Patents and copyrights are violations of my ability to freely associate and contract.
There's nothing wrong with entering into an agreement where you agree not to share something or republish it. But that agreement is between you and the other party - not me.
Such agreements are entirely different than patents and copyright, which forces the absurdity that something I legitimately acquired is not my own.
People today might not be aware but Robert Fripp (of King Crimson) championed this back in the 90s and set up his record label (Discipline) to enforce it.
The notice that he put on the CDs was eloquent:
The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline Records on behalf of the artists, with whom it resides. Discipline accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their
work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible.
> The Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a nice sentiment, but the loophole potential is simply too great, and it doesn’t (and can’t) address the fundamental problems and dysfunction in the patent system. A patented “invention”, even when patented under these terms, is still patented. It’s not free for anyone to use, and willfully infringing upon it is still dangerous and unwise ... The Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a well-intentioned gesture. But that’s all it is.
What happens if an employee becomes disgruntled and leaves the company? If they take their patents, wouldn't the company have to stop using the patents the employee owns?
No, the company still owns the patent. However, the company now has responsibilities back to the inventor. So while the inventor still doesn't own the patent, they do have some control over it's ability to be used for evil.
What stops the employee and the inventors from just agreeing to use the patent offensively? And if they can do that then what stops the company from just compelling the employee to agree?
I know the IPA says they have to obtain the permission "without additional consideration or threat," but I don't get how that's practical when companies can fire employees for any damn reason they like in practice.
It creates barriers to use patents offensively. I'd guess that relatively few offensive patent litigations are initiated by the company that created them. Of those, very few of the inventors would agree to offensive usage. The only way that I can see to convince inventors to use patents offensively would be if they got a significant cut from the litigation proceeds. This cuts down on the appeal of an offensive litigation.
So no, it's not perfect. It uses incentives to control abuses. Even though it's not perfect, I still like it's simplicity.
Couldn't the defendant offer to pay off the employee at, presumably, a lower amount than the company is asking (particularly if they pull the import embargo stunt).
This thing again? Every patent expert I've talked to has told me this is just a bait to lure developers to Twitter: the language is so broad that Twitter's IPA is no different than others. If you look at GitHub you can see that the relevant commits and issues raised have been ignored or dismissed with "it's your opinion against mine". No wonder the repo has been silent for months.
I really like the idea but, at patent law teaches us, ideas are worth nothing without execution.
I've had a number of jobs over the years, both at public universities and private companies. Each time there was this nasty sounding piece of legal paper presented to me about patents and copyrights "You agree that every good idea you ever have is property of..." I've never signed one. Sometimes they'd counter with a much more reasonable agreement, and in a couple of cases they didn't seem to have any idea what to do so they just blew it off, after having a few attempts at pestering me to sign it. A couple times the HR people involved seemed quite annoyed that anyone would be different and told me that nobody else ever had any issue with their agreement and why won't I just sign it so we can move forward? If that's really true, then I wish more people would read things before they sign them.
How is this different than Twitter just choosing not to use their patents aggressively? Why all the complexity? And why do they assume that the employee hates patents?
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadI still cant believe amazon were able to patent the one click sales process they offer on their website. Maybe one of the car makers will patent their air conditioning button? =(
For instance: "Control device for motor vehicle air conditioning, with driver preferences settings"
http://www.google.com/patents/EP0908338A1?cl=en&dq=car+d...
There's nothing wrong with entering into an agreement where you agree not to share something or republish it. But that agreement is between you and the other party - not me.
Such agreements are entirely different than patents and copyright, which forces the absurdity that something I legitimately acquired is not my own.
The notice that he put on the CDs was eloquent:
The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline Records on behalf of the artists, with whom it resides. Discipline accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible.
> The Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a nice sentiment, but the loophole potential is simply too great, and it doesn’t (and can’t) address the fundamental problems and dysfunction in the patent system. A patented “invention”, even when patented under these terms, is still patented. It’s not free for anyone to use, and willfully infringing upon it is still dangerous and unwise ... The Innovator’s Patent Agreement is a well-intentioned gesture. But that’s all it is.
http://www.marco.org/2012/04/18/twitter-patent-agreement
I know the IPA says they have to obtain the permission "without additional consideration or threat," but I don't get how that's practical when companies can fire employees for any damn reason they like in practice.
So no, it's not perfect. It uses incentives to control abuses. Even though it's not perfect, I still like it's simplicity.