In a market for innovation, the innovator needs to be protected from having his or her ideas stolen during negotiation..
Sep 27th, 2006 by jimmoore
Patent protection for early-stage ideas is simple and easy for the individual inventor. The reason it seems expensive is that big companies and big law firms want you to experience it that way.
Protection is afforded by having filed provisional patents–which are not expensive. This protection can be solidified by filing a complete patent application for those ideas subsequently.
An inventor can wait for a year after the filing of the provisional application to file a complete application. This means that good ideas can be invested in. Ideas that in retrospect seem less valuable can simply be dropped.
The advantage of this process, for an individual or small company, is that if they enter into a negotiation with IBM or Microsoft or Google or Yahoo their ideas are protected.
One of the dilemmas of selling big ideas is that in order to market the idea one must disclose it, and once one has disclosed it there is often little barrier to the prospective buyer deciding to simply steal the idea.
One of the only reliable barriers to idea theft is that the individual or small business is engaged in the patenting process.
Even saying to a prospective buyer that one has filed provisionals can often radically change the nature of the discussion, for the benefit of the inventor.
Finally, there is no reason that an inventor can’t license an idea to many players, for a nominal percentage of the value created by the idea. This will help create a market for the service or solution, while at the same time rewarding fairly the original inventor.
Within a few months of the introduction of the spreadsheet invented by Dan Bricklin, (Dan tells me) there were more than 20 clones. Eventually the market was taken by Lotus 123, created by Mitch Kapor after working for the company that marketed Bricklin’s original.
In an absense of software patents, which had not been developed, Bricklin got not a penny for his ideas from these companies.
If you want to experience a world without software patents, go back and look at the history of the computer industry. What you will find is quite ugly.
This is similar in my mind to people who want to make abortion illegal, but choose not to face what life was like when abortion was illegal. Women were scarred, were rendered infertile, and bled to death. Women were traumatized.
A global technology community without software patents would be a lawless, hobbsian world. You would hold your ideas close. You would close your code.
And you would probably end up working as an employee of a large company.
Just something to consider..