13 thoughts on “Bill Gates on the patent system: It works well”
said Rapunzel from atop her isolated tower.
Says Microsoft who is making more on Android then Windows Phone.
said long-time friend of Paul Allen, professional patent troll…
seriously — the super-wealthy are living in their own world. they are not to be trusted. oops, theyre running the country.
If anybody actually heads over to the original story you’ll see that Gates isn’t talking about Microsoft. In this context Gates is talking about how technology is helping those in third world countries and that these corporations are only able to afford to do this because of the protection that patents bring.
Patents remove the risk of innovation and in this context allow that innovation to be used in countries that could never dream of coming up with such innovations.
His view is that Windows works “very well” too.
i never assumed he was talking about MS. just the patent system… and it isnt working well. thats great that its working well in pharma, but there are plenty of problems with the patent system that arent working well.
Nathan Myrhvold, actually.
It works well FOR MICROSOFT, who is an entrenched actor, and can use it to keep competition out.
Please explain further. How is the patent system removing the risk of innovation? Because as far as I can tell, it does the exact opposite, unless you’re a multinational global player who already owns thousands and thousands of patents, and can crush any competition with them.
It is working well for the big guys. The rest gets screwed, but who cares (politicians are payed by the big guys, not only in the U.S. of A.).
I’ve seen no proof there’s much wrong with patents.
What has been made clear from recent events is that the justice system is a slow and ineffective abomination driven by lazy judges that try as hard as they can to avoid making any actual judgements.
If each case took less than a week and cost in the four digit range would anyone complain about patents?
want proof? fine — patenting vague business ideas (one-click shopping, amazon), rather than actual implementation, is proof that there is much wrong with patents. with code, protecting the implementation is already covered — under copyright law. thus there is no reason to issue software patents…they only serve as tools for trolls and anti-competitive lawsuits.
That’s BS.
Patents are meant to protect novel ways to solve problems. It’s stupid to discriminate between hardware and software implementations of the solution.
said Rapunzel from atop her isolated tower.
Says Microsoft who is making more on Android then Windows Phone.
said long-time friend of Paul Allen, professional patent troll…
seriously — the super-wealthy are living in their own world. they are not to be trusted. oops, theyre running the country.
If anybody actually heads over to the original story you’ll see that Gates isn’t talking about Microsoft. In this context Gates is talking about how technology is helping those in third world countries and that these corporations are only able to afford to do this because of the protection that patents bring.
Patents remove the risk of innovation and in this context allow that innovation to be used in countries that could never dream of coming up with such innovations.
His view is that Windows works “very well” too.
i never assumed he was talking about MS. just the patent system… and it isnt working well. thats great that its working well in pharma, but there are plenty of problems with the patent system that arent working well.
Nathan Myrhvold, actually.
It works well FOR MICROSOFT, who is an entrenched actor, and can use it to keep competition out.
Please explain further. How is the patent system removing the risk of innovation? Because as far as I can tell, it does the exact opposite, unless you’re a multinational global player who already owns thousands and thousands of patents, and can crush any competition with them.
It is working well for the big guys. The rest gets screwed, but who cares (politicians are payed by the big guys, not only in the U.S. of A.).
I’ve seen no proof there’s much wrong with patents.
What has been made clear from recent events is that the justice system is a slow and ineffective abomination driven by lazy judges that try as hard as they can to avoid making any actual judgements.
If each case took less than a week and cost in the four digit range would anyone complain about patents?
want proof? fine — patenting vague business ideas (one-click shopping, amazon), rather than actual implementation, is proof that there is much wrong with patents. with code, protecting the implementation is already covered — under copyright law. thus there is no reason to issue software patents…they only serve as tools for trolls and anti-competitive lawsuits.
That’s BS.
Patents are meant to protect novel ways to solve problems. It’s stupid to discriminate between hardware and software implementations of the solution.