As noted on Techdirt, Yahoo Going Patent Troll: Threatens Facebook Over Patent Infringement. On TechCrunch TV, former patent examiner and democrat/Obama advisor (but not a patent lawyer) Erin-Michael Gill opines on this: The Man Who Predicted the Yahoo/Facebook IP War on Why Patents Still Matter [TCTV].
Gill is right that patents still “matter.” Hey, taxes “matter” too. I guess if your house is being taken by a state government to give it to Walmart, eminent domain “matters” too. But this doesn’t mean these statist polices are justified, or are anything more than a hindrance to human life and freedom and commerce.
Even though patent “reform” is needed, Gill implies that we need a patent system nonetheless, so big companies can’t just “take” your idea. Newsflash: big companies already have oligopolistic and anti-competitive advantages because of patents.1 And if someone competes with you by emulating you, they are not “taking” your idea from you. Gill also naively implies that there are ways to reform the patent system, as in the recent Obama patent reform–which is a joke (see The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly).
- The Microsoft-Apple Gesture Oligopoly; Controls breed controls, Monopolies breed monopolies; The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling; Are Patents Needed to Make Up for FDA Kneecapping?; Nortel Patents Sold for $4.5 Billion to Consortium Which Includes Apple; Apple vs. Microsoft: Which Benefits more from Intellectual Property?; Patent Cross-Licensing Creates Barriers to Entry. [↩]
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