<div dir="ltr">Geoff<br><br>Indeed the paper from Groklaw talks about the problems with the US Federal Circuit court. <br><br>They later wrote a full length 323 page book - which I got after reading the paper (which was a teaser I guess...)<br>
<br>The book deals with fundamental problems of patents - fuzzy, unpredictable boundaries, possession and scope of rights, patent flood (software/way of doing business patents are relatively new...) The empirical evidence is that patents don't behave like property.<br>
<br>They spend an entire chapter bringing empirical data regarding how much patents are worth to their owners -relating market value of public firms to their assets including their patent portfolio.<br><br>For example - IBM began listing IP and licensing royalties in their annual financial reports beginning in 2000 - about $1.5billion +/- per year. The majority of the $1.5BN is value of IP sold off by IBM including IP held by divisions they sold off as well as custom-development revenue. The actual amount of revenue from their patent licensing program is far less - about $125M gross the cost of IBM's several hundred patent lawyers.<br>
<br>The $1.,5BN figure is an urban legend.<br><br>I was not predisposed one way or another. I just like to rely on the empirical data.<br><br>D<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:31 PM, geoffrey mendelson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:geoffreymendelson@gmail.com">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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On Aug 13, 2009, at 2:05 PM, Danny Lieberman wrote:<br>
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Geoff<br>
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I'm sorry. Did you actually read Besson and Meurer?<br>
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I did and I think they did an excellent job of making their case that software patents do not have economic benefit for the industry<br>
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I did. You can download the paper from GROKLAW. In this case, I think it's something you agree with because you agree with it. I don't and was not further convinced by them. If anything, I found that the only thing that they made a convincing argument for is that the US needs better judges.<br>
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In any case, what I have not seen, although it keeps being asserted is that there is no case where total gain of software patents has ever exceeded the total cost. In specific, Microsoft.<br>
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I will say, since you said "the industry" instead of "a company", that's hard to disagree with. The industry, as it were, includes all of those people that make their living taking other people's work, making a profit on it, and giving them no return. This is the exact thing that patents were intended to prevent.<div>
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Geoff.<br>
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-- <br>
geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM<br>
Jerusalem Israel <a href="mailto:geoffreymendelson@gmail.com" target="_blank">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a><br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Danny Lieberman<br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Protect your data: <a href="http://www.software.co.il">http://www.software.co.il</a><br>
Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/onlyjazz">http://twitter.com/onlyjazz</a><br>Skype: dannyl50<br>Warsaw:+48-79-609-5964<br>Israel: +972 8 9701485<br>Mobile: +972 - 54 447 1114<br>
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