Centerfield

Two years is really too short to be of any real use. The purpose of a patent (from the point of view of the government), after all, is to provide an incentive which will avoid having too much innovation hidden in trade secrets. And if the protection is too short, nobody will make their process patent.

Something in the 5-7 year range might be more like it.

China and others like Nokia, Texas Instruments, Motorola would love to break Qualcom's patents. Doesn't seem fair however. Would you like someone telling you, your house belonged to the neighbor's after a few years? I'm sure your family (stockholders) would love that.

Needless to say I had stock in Qualcom, which eventually plummeted (which helped spur the tech crash) because the competition bet they could never hold on to their patents. AT&T even told the world they had better technology. That was just before they fell apart. Qualcom's still holding, but under the same threats as China would love to make CDMA theirs. They spend millions each year fighting attempts to steal their patents while providing the best phone chip in the world.

> Two years is really too short to be of any real use.

On the contrary, in the computer industry you can make a LOT of money in two years. In fact, that's largely the window you have for any given generation of product.

If it's longer, then the patent will be used to slow/stop the next generation of product (which is what happens today, see Vonage).

We see patents mostly accumulating and being used by two kinds of noninnovating companies: big, no longer leading-edge companies like the telco that sued Vonage, or pre-Gerstner IBM; the other kind is the patent troll, that funds no research himself, but just buys patents from dying companies and sues to collect royalties (one of those sued Blackberry).

Max said:
> Would you like someone telling you, your house belonged to the neighbor's after a few years?

It's not the same thing atall - it's more like having the right to build all houses.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm

A better analogy would be that it would be like licensing one of three types of houses.

That would be unfair because we can easily imagine many other types of houses. Can you imagine another type of cell phone chip? How do you think Qualcomm could continue to innovate without a royalty stream? Shall we just let China steal CDMA? They promised Clinton to honor their contracts, but then they tried to steal CDMA. Motorola and Erricson were partners who spent more time trying to steal patents than building out a system. AT&T told the world they had a better technology that would crush Qualcomm. I guess Armstrong meant porn cable.

I know you were talking about software, so our debate isn't relevant. In the 90s everyone said that no company could ever command such a global royalty. Why not? I don't think there are many companies that can even make a CDMA chip. Had the world not spent a decade trying to crush the upstart, we would all be enjoying real time picture phones. I would argue that the attack on Qualcomm helped crash NASDAQ and prevented innovation in telecommunications. Short term patents on hardware would hurt high tech nations (which is about all we have left). Yes patent limits on AIDS DRUGS and national security hardware. It cost so much to roll out high tech and innovate it, it would be mistake to unduly curb patent licensing and the necessary revenue stream that furthers a company's continued innovation. Want a better house? Build a better house. Motorola worked with the military to discover CDMA and then dropped it saying, it could never be built. Now they want it back. How about Texas Instruments building a different chip or playing by the rules as a partner, not like China or Nokia. The effort to destroy Qualcomm by it competotors that offered nothing but promises cost me a small fortune. Lies, attacks, deceit and business practices that hurt them and our economic growth starting in 2000.

Anyway, this is a different debate because it is about hardware and software, Qualcomm pays others to develop with them.

Patents serve a very important and usefull purpose. The problem with patents today is the standards by which they are granted are far too lax. This is PARTICULARY true for the software industry. The patterns that tend to be granted are VASTLY over broad... and often for concepts that are neither truely origional, nor often even developed by the patenter.

It's one thing for the Patent office to grant a patent for a Browning Automatic Rifle or a Model T Ford..... we can all see the value of doing that. The kind of patent, the patent office seems to grant today however are the equivalent of pantents for the CONCEPT of "A weapon that kills at a distance" or "A ground conveyance device that doesn't use horses". That is ridiculous, and frankly the people at the patent office are NOT doing thier job when they grant such patents.

Good point, and my take on Qualcomm is about hardware, not ideas or software. On that issue, it seems Jon has a good point. I won't even go into the service and service costs Verizon bills me for every month. Just look at how much Gates made by owning someone else's software patent. G4 and HD DVDs are taking far too long because of patent warfare. Again, I didn't mean Jon had missed his mark. When it comes to real innovation of hardware, patents play a critical role. There is an acception: genes and biomedical engineering.

The difficulty for vonage, going forward is that they need more than hindsight, they need reversible error... I have an open promise that I'll buy lunch for anyone who knows sh*t about IP litigation who wants to go to the oral argument and write us a guest post at SF. ;)

You aren't going to be buying me lunch on that account Simon. However, I saw this today...

"Car versus Computer Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up
with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had
developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a
new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would
have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For
some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case u would have to
reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh! would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the
same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off. Please share this with your friends who love - but sometimes hate - their computer."

From Yahoo...