[YBA] i4i vs MS?

[Danny Lieberman]

Geoff

Indeed the paper from Groklaw talks about the problems with the US Federal
Circuit court.

They later wrote a full length 323 page book - which I got after reading the
paper (which was a teaser I guess...)

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.

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.

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.

The $1.,5BN figure is an urban legend.

I was not predisposed one way or another.   I just like to rely on the
empirical data.

D



On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:31 PM, geoffrey mendelson <
geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Aug 13, 2009, at 2:05 PM, Danny Lieberman wrote:
>
>  Geoff
>>
>> I'm sorry. Did you actually read Besson and Meurer?
>>
>> 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
>>
>
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> Geoff.
>
> --
> geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
> Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendelson at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Danny Lieberman
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