This. This is what we need. These are the kind of steps from which we all benefit. Google has just announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge: the company promises not to sue any users, distributors, or developers of open source products based on the patents it owns (unless first attacked).
As we all know, patents are busy tearing the very fabric of this industry apart. Whether it’s small patent trolls attacking small startups, or large corporations like Apple and Microsoft attacking their competitors with dubious software patents, they are a huge damper on innovation, and lead to an unequal distribution of power from which we all suffer through reduced innovation, less competition, and higher prices.
I’ve already detailed a few ways in which the patent system ought to be improved, while also explaining that such changes will simply never occur because intellectual property law exists outside of the democratic process. Luckily, there is a second, perhaps more practical way of solving this mess: companies pledging to simply not use their patents offensively, even when infringed.
This is exactly what Google has announced today. “We pledge not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked”, the company promises. Good news, but as you can see, there is a catch (we’re talking corporations, after all): specified patents.
For now, Google states in the FAQ that it wants to test the waters for the OPN, and as such, it’s pledging only 10 patents first. They are all related to Google’s MapReduce; these patents are widely used in open source projects, according to Google, so they’re good candidates for the company to get its feet wet. More patents will be added over time, but each and every pledged patent probably requires detailed legal assessment.
There are a few interesting aspects to the OPN that really make a huge difference. First, it covers projects under any OSI or FSF-approved license (so no specific licenses only), and projects from the past, present and future. Better yet, the pledge even remains in force if Google were to transfer the patents, i.e., sell them. In addition, unlike patents covered by, say, the Open Invention Network (of which Google is also a member), there’s no need for inter-company patent licensing – the pledge covers it all.
The OPN itself is also open, and Google invites other companies to adopt the pledge for patents of their own. Cloudera, IBM and the OIN “agree and endorse” the pledge. I wouldn’t be surprised to see prominent open source companies like e.g. Red Hat to join in soon as well.
It is also reminiscent of Microsoft’s Community Promise regarding C#, but that one is tailored entirely to one subject, and won’t expand to cover other areas as well. In addition, the community promise has a dubious wiggle in that only full implementations of the covered specifications are safe; partial implementations or improvements are not.
For now, the OPN Pledge is nothing more than a small start, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s quite inconsequential. However, in today’s litigious patent climate, I’ll take anything over the status quo, no matter how small. This might only cover 10 patents, but a world with a gazillion-minus-10 patents is still better than a world with a gazillion patents.
Rubbish. Patents are an irritant at most, and are very entertaining and enthralling for some tech observers, but they seem to have almost zero impact on anything real in the tech industry. What major innovation, product or service has been seriously impacted by patents, what hasn’t happened that would have if there were no patents? How different would the tech world be and in what specific ways if there were no patents?
It seems to me that any outsider looking at the tech industry, and the IP and patent landscape, would come to the conclusion that IP protection and patents are actually very ineffective. Almost no product or innovation does not get copied and emulated. About the only area where the law seem to very effective is around brand names and to a less extent branding. Market a phone that’s called an iPhone and you will almost certainly end up being blocked by the law, make a phone that looks just like an iPhone (or a Galaxy S4, or any other handset) and most likely it will go on sale and remain on sale largely unencumbered by legal restraint.
There is way too much hysteria and over excitement around the patent issue, it’s boring and and in the real world mostly unimportant. The only people it makes a real difference to are lawyers who get a lot of high paid work from it.
Sometimes sarcasm and utter ignorance are so hard to tell apart…
This can seem only to those who really have zero idea about the industry. To pick one example out of many – Jolla is hesitant to enter US market (initially) precisely because of the patent mess or “minefield” in their language. So here you have it – idiotic patentability on software and design affects the industry, i.e. US users not being able to get Jolla devices with warranty after the launch (but only through gray market).
And don’t say that you don’t know about the problem of patent trolling, because if you don’t – what are you doing trying to claim that patents have zero impact on the industry?
Edited 2013-03-29 00:32 UTC
Its all moot anyway, Apple is gonna ram through DRM into the HTML spec and MPEG-LA is gonna patent troll the living hell out of anybody that doesn’t pay their license fees. MPEG-LA has so many patents there pretty much isn’t any way other than bandwidth sucking raw video or MPEG-1 (Which IIRC recently fell out of patents) to do squat on the web with video without violating MPEG-LA patents and as Moz found out they don’t play well with others.
Nice gesture Google but unless you are willing to buy out MPEG-LA I have a feeling within 3 years its gonna be a 2 way race, 3 way if Google uses the TiVo trick to lock down Android, otherwise it’ll be Apple on the high end and MSFT scraping by on the scraps.
Did you not read the terms of the agreement between Google & MPEG-LA?
Uhh…MPEG-LA has already said VERY plainly that “There will be NO downstream agreements” which is exactly why Mozilla wasn’t able to just buy the right to use H.264 in their browser, because they would have had to either pack it as a separate download or made a non GPL compatible license for their H.264 version.
Believe me, even though I prefer Windows on my desktop and laptop i do NOT think the web should be proprietary just on common sense grounds. i mean look at how bad things were with “This site is designed for IE” making the web a mess, allowing the web to be locked down with paywalls and DRM is just…its a bad idea. I mean would Android have even come to be if all video required IE or Safari? probably not.
Believe me Vanders i do NOT think this is in any way a good thing but sadly as we have seen Apple has become a nastier 800 pound gorilla than MSFT, see how they rammed through H.264 instead of WebM or Vorbis for an example, to see why I think this is inevitable. Does Google have money? Yes but how many senators use iPhone?
They WILL end up getting this through and MPEG-LA isn’t gonna make a GPL compatible version, not to mention I don’t see how one could even MAKE a GPL compatible DRM since the whole point of GPL is to give the rights to the user and DRM to take it away, and lets face it no video, no stupid FB games? The consumers just won’t buy it. So either Google does the “TiVo Trick” which since they have made GPL V3 verbotten is possible, or they won’t have video because they won’t have the DRM.
This is the first time since I got my first PC in 1981 that I don’t think the future is gonna be better than before. Sadly I don’t see any way around it, all the major companies want that iMoney which they think means locked down OSes and appstores, see how many billions that MSFT has thrown away trying to force a cellphone UI onto Windows 8, but if they get their way? Its gonna be locked down game consoles all the way down, you won’t be able to fix or upgrade, the corps can force you to buy new just by no longer supporting your device, its gonna suck for everyone but the shareholders.
So “No”, then?
I think I get what you are driving at, and the Google agreement is in fact a form of downstream agreement – so you are technically right…
But the tricky part is that the agreement between Google and MPEGLA only applies to VP8. It is, in effect, granting license to any MPEGLA patents that VP8 may be exercising, but only when applied to actual implementations of VP8. It does not grant Google blanket rights to the patents, and subsequently does not apply to downstream agreements, unless that are specifically implementations of VP8. More importantly, it does not give Google patent protection for h.264 implementations or anything related to DRM, or the right to sublicense them.
In light of this (and I am pretty sure I am right here), what does that agreement have to do with Mozilla and implementing DRM for HTML5? The previous poster is right – it has no bearing at all… Mozilla is in exactly the same boat they were always in as far as h.264 and DRM patents go…
So you did not read it either?
Its ONLY about GOOGLE OWN IMPLEMENTATION of VP8. BUT everybody using it is covered.
So VP8 is safe choice for The Web.
H.264 is not so.
(When considering just patents from MPEG-LA H.264 patent pool)
Thank you for that totally content free post! Feel free to post nothing again soon…
http://www.teknoids.net/content/patent-trolls-new-study-and-survey
Bolding mine… Yes, nothing but a minor irritant.
Is seems to me your issue is that you are disgusted with the patent system because you feel it rarely protects inventions. I agree – it rarely does… The problem is it costs thousands of companies billions of dollars every year while being almost totally ineffective…
That is the problem. No one wins but the lawyers…
Can you get your head any further up your ass?
Open web standards have been rife with patent problems and has stalled development immensely, giving rise to the proprietary flash plugin’s dominance.
Attempts to create competing flash players have been quashed (including my own effort), attempts to create a standard open video codec, audio codec, etc…
The list goes on and on and on…
–The loon
Admit it. You were ‘camping’ here for hours just so your comment would be first, weren’t you?
I am yet to see anyone actually point at some area of tech that has been stalled or even significantly slowed down by patent problems. When I look across the tech industries what I see is rapid innovation everywhere and when a major new approach or idea emerges it seems to spread rapidly across the industry.
I am sure that individual IP legal actions have affected individual firms adversely but I was responding to the proposition that patent litigation was ‘tearing the very fabric of this industry apart’. That’s an absurd hyperbolic statement and I cannot see how anybody can believe such a silly thing.
Just because something is irritating, or unjust or sometimes quite bad does not make it armageddon or catastrophic. It’s just a bit bad, but mostly the tech industry is in pretty good shape. IP litigation is just a negative but trivial aspect of the industry. It’s not even unusual. All industrial sectors when going through paradigm shifting technical change throw up IP related legal activity, it’s perfectly normal and utterly transient. And not that important in the big scheme of things.
As for the notion that
I don’t know where to begin. What specific web developments were stalled immensely by IP related issues? Web development was slowed for a while by one company who was not interested in the development of the web semi controlling the browser market but that had nothing to do with IP law and was anyway swept away by the open source webkit. The rise and fall of Flash had nothing to do with IP law. I cannot think of any major area where innovation on the web is being held back by IP law.
It’s the breathless hysteria that’ so hard to stomach. Some things may be bad, some things may be irritating but it’s not the end of the world.
As for Google’s empty gesture, it’s just a PR stunt by a company engaged in widespread but mostly ineffectual legal action based on the misuse of standards based FRAND patents.
Back when PCs and desktop OS environment was the centre of the industry and of innovation it too was the arena for a raft of IP legal actions. What were the long term consequences of those actions. Nothing. Where was PC or PC OS tech significantly held back or slowed by those actions. Nowhere. It’s the same with mobile tech, IP legal actions will have almost no impact on the roll out of mobile devices or technologies. People need to calm down and learn how to discuss interesting but not very important issues in a rational way without endless and tedious exaggeration.
Let’s put your hate of Google by side for a while…
There is one little problem with the question you’ve asked a few times over your rants
Just one iteration of it:
You want as a proof for you point that we show you how many developments were blocked or even abandoned because of of IP related issues.
+1 for the semantic trick
How do you want us to point namely on products that don’t exist because of these issues??? It’s like asking the names of kids that aren’t on this planet because of contraception.
The very few public cases we hear about are (probably) an infinitely small portion of those really affected.
novad,
Your exactly right about not being able to name those that never materialized due to the state of the patent system.
In the 90’s I was doing video editing with consumer software and became disappointed that none of the commodity consumer products on the market offered surround sound encoding for DVDs. So I took it upon myself to see what I could do to bring it to the market myself. I was serious about going through with it until I learned about the reason that other software did not do surround sound encoding: software patents. The encoder patent license fees from Thomson, Dolby, MPEG LA, etc, added up to way more than than the price I felt consumers would bare for my software.
For me, it was the moment I acquired a strong distaste of software patents. Not everyone will experience this kind of personal revelation, but I find it incredibly insincere when anybody like the OP talk as though they don’t understand how patents can be harmful.
Edited 2013-03-29 14:03 UTC
Wrong thread. Sorry.
Comment deleted
Edited 2013-03-29 14:11 UTC
Thank you for sharing your experience Alfman,
You’re (With all due respect) “only” one example of how IP has negative effects on innovation.
It’s very interesting to hear about those who can’t align an army of lawyers to defend (or enforce) their rights. You’re already the second one (Only in this thread) that experienced that. The situation is even worse than I thought 🙁
Edited 2013-03-29 14:14 UTC
‘hate of Google’ really? I bit of cynicism about this patent initiative I grant you but ‘hate’? There is nothing factually wrong about the statement that Google is engaged in several legal actions in which it has deployed FRAND standard based patents. That may be a good or bad thing depending on your opinions but it is unquestionably true. Hence my cynicism.
As to your waffle about unknown and hidden damage done to to the tech industry by IP litigation what can one say to vacuous fact free speculation? It’s conceivable that IP litigation has done all sorts of hidden damage to the tech industry just as it’s conceivable that Elvis is alive and well and in hiding somewhere. But there is not the slightest shred of evidence to support either proposition. There is however the evidence of many large tech companies making mobile devices and several different mobile operating platforms in play in the market, and I cannot for the life of me see any significant feature or technical aspect of any of those devices or operating systems that is present on one but not the others as a result of IP litigation. Sure occasionally some relatively minor feature, such as ‘rubber banding’ in the UI say, gets restricted by IP litigation but that hardly amounts to much and it certainly is not ‘tearing the industry apart’.
I am not saying that IP litigation is not real or that it does not have real world repercussions it’s just that it is so often discussed in a such an overblown, hysterical and doom laden way that rational discourse becomes impossible. IP litigation is a bit of problem, but not a very big one and certainly not one that will decide the fate or direction of the industry or of any remotely major aspect of technical innovation.
This patent initiative by Google will grab some headlines but it is utterly trivial and will change nothing. Google has plenty of IP it will ruthlessly defend just like any other company. All companies tend to think that the IP critical to their operation must be defended but that the IP that is only critical to their competitors should not be defended. So what? That’s just the way the real world works and as I say the whole IP litigation road show is just trivia.
Yes really… If you take only your posts in this thread out of the general context there could be a doubt. But your history on OSnews speaks by itself
You’re right but… Where did I state something else, or where did I say Google is a philantropic company? I appreaciate THIS move. I think it’s positive START and should be extended to show a real advance with the IP “problem”
I hope this is part of your “cynicism” or you just lost any credibility.
Each of these not so many companies is engaged in numerous legal actions which cost insane amouts of money that are taken from R&D and our own pockets when we pay the “legal tax” on each device. How many smaller companies without an army of lawyers were sued to hell??? Not being able to name them doesn’t mean the didn’t exist.
You must admit that your “style” is not exactly the best example for non overblown or hysterical discussion.
Google vs Oracle / Samsung vs Apple / VP8 / Preventive sell Ban of devices in Germany and many many others…
Well… I would say this is a major problem and that it touches major aspects of technical innovation.
I don’t think it is but what if??? It doesn’t hurt; nobody gets sued; nobody must pay anything for it; maybe some can even use these few patents.
With a bit of luck it “could” evolve to something really usefull for innovation
No they don’t. The total cost of all legal costs associated with IP litigation is a tiny, tiny fraction of the costs of the big tech players and contributes almost nothing to the final costs of the products in the market place. Total legal fees for for Apple and Samsung in one of the biggest cases last year is estimated to have been a maximum $20 million each (probably smaller). That would represent one hundredth of one percent of Apple’s revenues in a year. Get a sense of proportion.
No but not being able to point to any real world examples or any real actual evidence does not help build a convincing counter argument to mine. I say I can see very little evidence of any real innovation being significantly slowed or blocked by IP litigation but I may not have looked in the right place for that evidence, perhaps someone who does think IP litigation is disrupting the industry could offer up some links to evidence supporting that proposition
I am sure that smaller firms find legal threats more intimidating than larger companies but remember the thesis I am arguing against was the proposition that ‘patents are busy tearing the very fabric of this industry apart’. Disrupting some small player does not constitute ‘tearing the very fabric of this industry apart’. Like I have said IP litigation may be an irritating problem but it’s not a very big problem.
I would just ask people to step back and look at the operating systems and platforms that are available, and look at all the various devices that are available, and notice how there are almost no features of any significance that are only present on one platform, one OS or one devices.
99% of the features on any OS or device or platform are present on all others. Nothing of substance appears to have been blocked by IP litigation. Product bans arising from IP litigation appear to be short lived, small in number and transitory in effect. They are fluff in the system. This whole thing is just a storm in a teacup.
Ill take those figures at your word, since I have never seen them. So lets just speculate that since it costs Samsung $20 million to defend in such a case it probably costs a smaller company faced by a lawsuit at least what, a quarter to half a million in legal fees (being generous)?
When 50% of the cases that go to trial are being defended by companies with a mean annual revenue of $12 million dollars (see my first post), you don’t thing 5%-10% of their annual revenue is substantial?
And that is JUST legal fees. It ignores the far larger problem – out of court settlements. No one really knows what that number amounts to, but it is vastly larger that what is spent on legal fees – all research I have seen shows that less than 1% of patent lawsuit threats end up in court, about half of the other 99% are just paid outright and the other half are ignored and never followed through.
If less than 1% of cases end up with actual court filings, and of those that do it costs the economy $29 billion a year – how much do you think that other 49% that are settled before filing costs?
Almost ALL of the REAL innovation in technology comes from small players… Siri? Apple bought it. OSX? Apple bought it from NeXT. Apple’s ARM design? Bought from PA Semi. The new Apple maps? Bought.
All of these were acquired from relatively small players… Apple, Google, Microsoft – true innovation from them is fairly rare. They BUY it from the kinds of companies you don’t seem to give a sh*t about…
The system was built to protect the small players from the big ones. Suits like Apple vs Samsung do not matter in the grand scheme of things.
Who gives a shit about protecting Apple or Samsung? They don’t need protection – they have more money than most countries do… The point is protecting all those thousands of smaller companies that are doing all the REAL innovation in technology. They are the ones getting kicked in the teeth regularly by the patent system.
To you, that may be evidence that the system isn’t working the way you think it should. Thats fine – I don’t look at it that way but whatever. It is ignoring the real problem though… The real problem is that the system is extremely expensive and no one really benefits from it other than lawyers.
Again. That is the problem. If it actually did work they way you seem to think it should, it would be even more of a problem – because on top of costing everyone tons of money it would ALSO be stifling real competition.
The patent system is a giant leech on the technology sector – at least it isn’t killing the patient…
Don’t forget to add the fine(s) to the legal fees… That makes (taking your own numbers) 0.5% of Apple’s revenues in a Year… This for one and only case in one country compared to a company with one of the highest revenue in the US. Well yes… This IS a lot. I don’t even speak about all the time that is lost during these trials. I’m not sure it’s me who should get a sense of proportion.
I don’t see what is so complicated to understand in what I already said. But OK… Once again.
I can’t point a precise product that has been blocked because, by definition, this product doesn’t exist.
You want examples??? You can simply re-read the other posts in this thread and there are 2 examples.
And please don’t take me wrong, but I won’t lose my time searching Google to prove something that is an evidence but that is hard to “demonstrate”.
Or let’s make a little exercise… I want the proof from you that this planet would have been a better place if Stalin hasn’t existed. An absolute, irrevocable proof of that. Good luck.
Well. You have a personal opinion as I have. I think we will have to agree that we disagree. It’s maybe not a very big problem, but certainly not as trivial as you say.
You are really locked on that… It is not possible to tell what is absent of a system because of IP simply because you can’t list by name products that haven’t been developed, have been blocked in an early stage or have been developed by a small company and then blocked by fear of IP. But hey. I understand that without this argument you’re screwed. Feel free to continue with it.
For my part I’m done with this subject
Edited 2013-03-29 23:13 UTC
I don’t want to extend this thread too far but I do want to respond to this point.
What you seem to be implying is that various significant technologies or innovations have been blocked by IP laws from ever appearing in the market and moreover that the existence and blocking of those technologies has in itself also been kept secret.
I find that to be a deeply implausible scenario.
First of all why would companies that had such a lock over the IP of a significant innovation that it could block others deploying not deploy it themselves in their own products in order to gain an advantage in the market?
Secondly if companies had been blocked from using a significant particular technology by another company, which was keeping said technology secret and not themselves deploying it, why would the companies that had been blocked not announce it to the world, if only to embarrass their competitors?
Finally I find that arguments based on saying that something must be happening, or is almost certainly happening, even though there is no actual evidence to even suggest it is happening, is a profoundly weak argument. Using such a logic it is possible to argue anything, 9/11 was a US plot, the Lunar landings were faked, whatever. The fact that such silly reasoning can be deployed in discussion of IP law and not immediately mocked into oblivion just shows how hyperbolic and absurdly overblown discussions of this topic have become. I repeat IP litigation is a problem for the tech industry but only a small one. It just not that important.
Pointing weakneses for law IS WRONG APPROACH.
Having law just because it do not harm is extremely stupid.
First show positive effects of patents, than prove cause-effect relation between patents and innovation, and than you can smash others with “Show harm!!”..
> what hasn’t happened that would have if there were no patents?
Red Hat products can’t ship ECDSA or MP3 or H.264 because of patents, which makes things like embedded or security much more likely to use another distribution, or another OS entirely.
Yes they can ship those things they just have to pay for them like any other company. If the products they are shipping are operating at such a marginal cost/price ratio that they cannot afford the license fees then the problem is in their business not in the IP system. And anyway Red Hat and it’s products are marginal and tiny players in the tech markets and not because they are limited by IP but because their products are low volume marginal products. The limitations of Red Hat as a business and the imitations of the tech they sell has nothing to do with IP. Using Red Hat as an example does not support the thesis that the tech industry is in any way significantly impacted by IP litigation because with or without IP litigation and restrictions Red Hat would remain a small bit player.
I won’t bother to start to argue with you as you’ve multiple times in the past already shown how much you’re pro-patents and whatnot, but I’ll just point out that you’re saying that Red Hat’s products are low-volume, marginal products because they’re low-volume, marginal products. You might have to re-think the argument here.
Yes, RH is a real marginal player in the server space. Fo’ sure!
I don’t particularly like their product but saying they are a marginal player shows a certain lack of knowledge.
Red Hat revenues were just $348 million dollars in the last year. That’s a very small player in the tech markets. Add together the PC industry and the mobile device industry and you get an industry worth probably in excess of a trillion dollars. Remember the thesis I am arguing against was the proposition that ‘patents are busy tearing the very fabric of this industry apart’. I cannot see how inconveniencing a tiny player like Red Hat in the vast tech markets amounts to ‘tearing the tech markets apart’. In fact those tech markets are functioning extremely well and have hardly been disrupted, or indeed changed, by IP litigation.
Sorry I mistyped, that should be $348 million dollars revenues for the quarter. That changes nothing in what I am arguing.
Being a player is not determined by gross company profits alone. RH may only have made $386 millions but they’re still a more influential player in the server tech market than, say, Apple.
Tony Swash,
“And anyway Red Hat and it’s products are marginal and tiny players in the tech markets and not because they are limited by IP but because their products are low volume marginal products.”
This is astonishingly ignorant of the magnitudes of small businesses in the market. Red Hat, as small as they are still have 1500 employees, which is still above the top 0.3 percentile of all companies in the US. If you disregard redhat’s interests in the patent system due to their “tiny” size, you’d also have to disregard 99.7+% of other companies in existence as well. Of course, none of that matters to you right?
The numbers can be broken down by specific industries as well, for instance: software publishers, where Red Hat is above the top 4 percentile. So this implies that 96+% of software publishers don’t matter in your argument because they’re “marginal”.
Don’t let the RDF make you oblivious to the fact that the patent system affects many more people & technology companies than exist in your mind.
http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/
http://www.computerworld.com/spring/bp/detail/794
I made up a graph to put it into perspective.
http://i.imgur.com/7gQjA4D.png
Edit: Not all companies are negatively affected by patents, but by snobbishly brushing aside the needs of companies that are more representative of the industry, you’ll end up with policy that is terribly skewed and harmful to the majority of the industry. I guess I’m naive to suppose you’d care.
Edited 2013-03-30 04:04 UTC
Google has almost 20,000 patents and they are only willing to share 10?
Even super suer Microsoft did better with its patent pledge.
PR stunt. But Google lovers will fall for it. Of course if you step on any of the other 20,000 plus Google patents you are screwed! Lol.
They’re trying it out.
I wouldn’t call it a PR stunt but I don’t think they mind any good press from it.
Regardless, it’s an interesting experiment.
The REAL question is, is this ‘pledge’ legally binding? If not, I’d say it holds about as much weight as the neighborhood pedophile who promises to take good care of your children if you let him babysit for awhile.
It stand at least in the eye of prosecutors checking given company against anti competitive behaviour.
As for other situations, text of this pledge is public so some layers will quickly analyse it to see if its sound.
A public pledge is legally binding unless facts change.
Its interesting how quick some people are to accept a legally binding promise from Google, then to contrast it when Microsoft made their legally binding promise.
Or in the case of politics, till you get elected.
Earlier in the week, orfanum equated Google with husbands who beat their wives; and you’re now comparing them to child molesters? What, is there some kind of contest to see who can come with the most infantile & desperate-sounding condemnation of Google?
Google has actually filed for and received less than 300 patents… The other 19,700 or so were acquired through accusations since 2008 (17,000 of them from Motorolla).
Not that it matters here, just saying its not like they have been building up a war chest of them through filings…
IF you miltiply patents by POSSIBLE applications….
Than you get more of value from Google pledge!
Also they made it IMMORTAL.
Too many companies pledge some behaviour in regard to specific patents and then sell them to trolls with contracts that force such troll to even more agresive behaviour. (Case Study: Nokia..)
What part of “first” did you not understand?
I agree, this is splitting hairs. Google can have the promise cover 1 patent or 10,000 patents, they’re Google’s property.
Amen.
I wonder if this is all the map reduce patents they have? Maybe the press release should have said they are pledging map reduce.
I agree that 10 patents (only) is a bit cheap…
Actually it’s only a PR “Coup”
But!!!
If this gets extended to a fait amount of other patents then it’s really a positive move. Not every major evolution starts with a revolution.
For those (or the always same one) criticizing this move. Could you tell me in which way it is negative? I know Tony has a hate relation to Google (or Samsung) that comes close to insanity but please, answer the question. In which way is it negative? The worst that could happen is… Nothing.
I would love to see other companies following this example, even if it’s only PR it would benefit to everyone.
Edited 2013-03-29 07:19 UTC
It is negative because it only serves open source. If this takes off, we’ll see less demand for real change because half (or what ever number) the people affected will now be free of the patent headache.
Woopti doo for them, but the rest of the industry is still knee deep in sh…patents.
So yeah, if this works, we’re less likely to ever see any improvements (unless you are an OSS fanatic, of course, in which case this is probably fantastic news you think).
/Uni
Hey… No need to be so aggressive. Who’s the fanatic here 😉
It would be the perfect outcome if the whole patent system would be reworked.
Or better… It shouldn’t be applied to software. Some fine-tuning of copyright laws would do the trick. I think most people here agree with that.
The problem is that this has very little chance to happen. The Non-Assertion pledge, if not only a PR coup, is a pragmatic way to start somewhere. It’s clear it shouldn’t stop at that point.
FRAND isn’t a solution to the IP problem either, but it has been useful in many cases.
Edited 2013-03-29 07:42 UTC
Your logic fails you:
1) You assume that Industry is not FLOSS. That is that app/code that is FLOSS can NOT be significant part of Industry.
2) You assume that relevant patents are mostly used in proprietary code. While most of “Industry” that use it may be FLOSS already. (I do not know it, but just poining out weakness)
3) You assume that part of Industry that embrace FLOSS can NOT see and/or voice their disagreement about patents during patent law forming processes.
In other words you treat FLOSS using/based/centered part of Industry as insignificant without giving data proving it.
They were the ones who squatted on the floor and created that pile in the first place, so why shouldn’t they wallow in it?
I’m gonna go ahead and call this nothing but a disaster (if it takes off).
Let me explain. By freeing open source from patent issues, Google is defusing the patent bubble just enough for some people (OSS fanatics) to be satisfied with what they get, i.e. we get fewer people pushing for change.
Why should open source get a free ride, while the rest of us devs still have to walk this minefield?
Lets piss on these scraps they are throwing us, and call for real change!
/Uni
No it actually would increase pressure for a change from small/middle sized companies that produce/use proprietary solutions.
Since they would see benefits of NO-PATENTS-ALLOWED ™, clearly.
You don’t understand them at all. They don’t create any bubble. They say: “You can ignore our patents in open source projects. By the way, if you decide to go commercial you’re SCREWED unless you join Google. No one will buy your project anyway, because of patents violation and you have 0 of them to cross license.”
If anyone will ignore patents in open source will never be able to gain profit from it.
Maybe I missed it, but I can’t find anywhere in the pledge any requirement about OSS projects being non commercial.
I do have to admit that I like this step, it’s a great thing for OSS – developers to have ever so slightly lesser burden from software patents, but as others have mentioned, it only serves OSS. It’s the small-time developers that don’t do OSS that are at the most dangerous a position wrt. software patents and this move still doesn’t protect them in any way or form, yet that’s where we most need protection so as to encourage innovation and growth!
I’m a small company owner (we’re three partners and one employee), developing a software for Android (and iOS, soon WP8 too) which has small market, but enough to be important for our company. We’re not getting enough money to be rich, but we sustain a almost normal living standard. Yesterday, Google announced a feature of a competing product (the offline translation in Google Translate) which directly hits our sales. No Evil? By using their sheer market size and subsidizing (offering) a free product directly competing with (not only) ours, we’re going to take a huge hit.
The problem is that Google is already big enough to threaten almost any software company in the world… And when there is no more competition, all will suffer from high prices, limited choice and stalled development. Monopoly is bad.
And on top of that, they (Google) try to present themselves as a nice guys… I can’t see them as nice guys, they are destroying business with alarmingly high rate. I hope that regulators (esp. in EU) will soon take a measures to regulate their shady business practices.
I’m not fen of either Apple or Microsoft, but they are much more mature companies which (somewhat) respect more the other people’s business.
That sounds like normal competition, not evilness. I mean, what do you expect? Them to never, ever release new features for their own software just in the hopes of not stepping on someone else’s toes? I mean, yes, it sucks to be put in that position, but chalking it up to evilness sounds childish at best.
The problem is that they are releasing the said product for free, and the development is funded by income made using their other services where they have a market size advantage (which is an abuse). Doesn’t seems to me as fair competition.
Like the only shop selling cakes in the town, and starting to give free breads… When bakeries close, there is no choice and no competition, well… and then your bread will become expensive and with bad quality. And nobody will try to open new bakery in that town, because this can happen again.
>>Them to never, ever release new features for their own software just in the hopes of not stepping on someone else’s toes?
Just to charge a fair price, or limit the free use at least
Edited 2013-03-29 10:38 UTC
You clearly have no idea how naive that makes you sound. Are you seriously saying that Google should comb through every single god damn app on the whole planet and not release anything for free if some other app/game that is not free has a similar feature? Would YOU be prepared to do that?
No. That blocks progress. Stuff always become cheaper as time goes by -especially in the technology industry. It’s a core aspect of this industry. If Google doesn’t do it, someone else will. It’s how this business works. Virtually every piece of software has a free counterpart – some better, some worse. This is a risk that you should be aware of if you work in this industry, and you should have accounted for it.
Imagine if Netscape had forced its competitors to never release a free browser. We’d all be fucked.
So what you’re saying is that they behave exactly like how Microsoft and Apple has done for a long time?
Wow, that sure makes Google a lot worse….
Google is currently one of the most active litigators in the tech field via it’s Motorola Division. I cannot see how in any way that Google’s position on IP or IP litigation is in any way superior or more moral or more ethical than any other big tech company.
I never said they where more ethical or superior. The OP made the argument that Google is worse than MS and Apple because they released a product that directly competed with one from a small company. However, both MS and Apple has done this very exact same thing countless of times so clearly it’s not a good measurement for Google being worse.
Not being worse does not mean you’re better.
I’m sorry for your business (Really) and hope you’ll soon find a way out of this problem.
I also understand that you’re pissed off but I fail to see where Google behaved badly there.
They continuously enhance their platform. Enhancing the platform doesn’t only mean correcting bugs but also adding functionalities. This is why people chose to buy an Android phone/tablet/coffee machine and in the end give, you and your company customers.
If they had to compare each new functionality they implement with the ~800’000 apps that exist now to avoid any similarity in function, they could as well throw their platform to trash… It wouldn’t evolve anymore.
They didn’t sue you, block your app or whatever of this kind. You’re free to make it better and include additional functionalities that will make it a best seller (I hope you’ll achieve this)
Edited 2013-03-29 10:33 UTC
Im sorry about that, but you should chalk it down as a learning experience and move on to the next thing. The fact is Google probably doesn’t know you even exist – they have been working on translation software since before Android even existed – you tried to play in THEIR pool, not the other way around…
That is not to say there is anything at all wrong with that – but don’t cry about it being unfair. Do it better or do something else better, but don’t expect to be “protected” form competition – competition is the whole damn point.
Sorry to be so brutal about it, but that is just the truth. You had a niche product and Google noticed a gab in their offering and filled it. That is the way it goes.
Move on. Come up with a new idea, or make your product better than theirs. I really do feel for you, but blaming Google for competing with you is simply sour grapes.
Isn’t this very similair to OIN ?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
Or maybe I just don’t understand the difference just now.
Edited 2013-03-29 15:21 UTC
The Motorola patents are useless, so Google could not sue with them anyway. Companies with valuable patent arsenals could not do this.
If Google is so generous, why don’t they open source their search algorithms? LOL.