Patent Uncertainty: Another Step Backwards for Innovation?
July 17, 2011
I am not a legal eagle. In fact, when one circles, casting a shadow on the goose pond, I head for the leafy glade and kick back. I read the disturbing article “App Developers Withdraw from US as Patent Fears Reach ‘Tipping Point’”, 2hich appeared in the UK newspaper the Guardian on July 15, 2011. (With the UK newspaper sector in a tizzy over the News Corp. dust up, I am not sure if the information flowing from the UK is spot on. Nevertheless, I did find the story suggestive.)
The Guardian’s point is that litigation in the US related to intellectual property drops ice cubes down the jumpers of some programmers and coders. I noted this passage:
App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the US versions of Apple‘s App Store and Google’s Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents – just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent. Software patent owners in the US have latched onto potential revenue streams to be earned from independent developers by suing over perceived infringements of their intellectual property – which can be expensive for developers to defend even if they are successful. Now developers in Europe are retreating from the US to avoid the expense and concern such “patent trolls” are causing.
What I find interesting is that I learned in Hong Kong earlier this year, that some executives no longer travel to the US. There is no “fear”, but the hassle of getting through the security, the time required to do simple things like get from the airport to a meeting, and the frantic business climate have kept some sharp folks out of the Estados Unidos de América
My view is that a number of important business processes are succumbing to friction. I think travel and patent issues are now working like stuck brake on my ratty 1973 Pontiac Grandville. The auto can go, but it does not make the trip particularly relaxing. When business related systems fail to work, there are some interesting effects.
When I lived in Brazil many years ago, well before the present business renascence, I noted the need to “tip” for certain services. I remember watching a man jump the auto registration line because he had folded a “conto” around the form which had to be stamped. I also observed extra curricular deals from a wide range of business services. The only way to get the systems to work was to freelance. Little wonder my father suffered some headaches trying to open the Tratores do Brasil plant in Campinas, near São Paulo.
What does “snafu” mean? Image source: http://goo.gl/BAXng
If the Guardian is correct, there are some issues that appear to point to pulling the US backwards, not forwards.
So what’s this got to do with search. Three points:
First, with consolidation of certain findability functions, there is literally zero way to determine if the information displayed is shaped, or, in my lingo, weaponized. Think about. Do you know the provenance of the information displayed? I try to figure out what’s what, but I must admit that verification is getting downright difficult. Even the social revolution moves forward without users remembering the New Yorker cartoon, “On the Internet no ones knows if you are a dog.”
Second, the stultification of research or the shifting of innovation outside the US spells trouble for high technology and other sectors. Some of the most innovative approaches to content processing that I have reveiwed so far this year come from Russia, Scotland, Denmark, and other far flung points of the compass. If I were graduating from university this year at age 21 or 22, I would high tail it to Shanghai, Paris, or Moscow, where there is tech action in content processing.
Third, the dysfunctionality of certain systems is getting tough for me to ignore from my polluted pond filled with mine drainage runoff. There’s the budget thing. There’s the patent thing. There’s the carmageddon thing. (My hunch is that the patent situation is going to generate big growth for companies like ArticleOnePartners.com, which specializes in crowdsourced patent expertise.)
Net net: The Guardian is going to be writing about more than apps getting pulled from US vendors.
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, Oslo, Norway, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search.
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