patents [was: Re: [ox-en] robotics]
- From: Graham Seaman <graham opencollector.org>
- Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 19:11:12 -0500 (EST)
Hi Rich,
First, I should say that although I think this is an interesting topic to
discuss/argue over, please don't understand me as criticising what you're
doing with your company - because I don't have a practical alternative!
On 13 Mar 2003, Rich Walker wrote:
Your argument implies that manufacture is only possible if there is
monopoly? If that is true, then there is really no hope for any
free/opensource development of anything that can be manufactured... :-(
No; rather that if you want to, under present economic structures, begin
to manufacture something novel, for which a large investment will ahve
to be made before a return starts, the investor will need to be
convinced that such a return is possible. The presence of patents on the
device is one way to make that case;
True. I wonder what other ways you're thinking of?
it also makes the *other* case,
that no-one else is going to torpedo the process with a patent when the
investment has been made.
I don't think this is quite so true: if enough money is involved, patents
get challenged, or other patents on unexpected aspects of the process are
suddenly discovered.. In any case, isn't well-established prior art just
as good a counter? (and something that would allow open-source development
of the process).
Otherwise, you could never persuade anyone to set up a manufacturing
outfit again.
This is not true in general. Today I bought a new toilet and a plastic
mini-greenhouse. I don't believe either of these items is likely to be
patented, but they were certainly manufactured. Competition does not
make manufacturing impossible.
Look at them closely - you'll probably be surprised by the list of
patents on them. Also, there will be design rights, copyrights and other
such IPR residing in them.
Sure. But design rights IMO are not a problem - there is no reason why
open source developers would want to copy design in that sense. Copyright
is no problem either - partly because it covers only expression, which is
similar to design, partly because copyright makes copyleft possible.
Patents are different - someone is allowed to own an idea. Which to me
just sounds ludicrous.
The issue applies most severely, I think, with a completely new product, where a
large investment is necessary to start the process.
Yes. Although if it is a completely new product, you also have an inherent
advantage in being first to market, which partially substitutes for the
patent. As well as studies that show that patent law has historically
actually reduced innovation, there are arguments by 'orthodox' economists
that the first-to-market effect is enough to substitute for patents in a
conventional capitalist economy, eg
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/intellectual.htm
If you see a piece of robot hardware your organisation can produce and
sell, and you make it compatible with the open software, then you can do
so. We have no interest in stopping you doing that. We see producing
software as a material expense, like coffee, steel or rubber.
I don't understand what you mean by a 'material expense' - you mean like
the cost of buying raw materials?
I don't have any particular iterest in robotics, but have been interested
in development of free IC designs where there are similar issues.
Worse, I'd think, given the spiralling cost of IC masks, the number of
them needed, the verification difficulties and the limited number of
process plants...
But there are actually a growing number of free IC designs in manufacture
(one full design, the rest as far as I know all sub-parts, and all
high-level designs, not free as far down as the mask level).
To my knowledge they are all fairly standard parts, not involving
new patents.
If you distribute a free design which implements something patented, it
seems so far the patenting companies have accepted that this is not a
breach of the patent - it's only at the point of manufacture that it
becomes so. So the actual manufacturer pays the licensing costs, rather
than the designer.
The very small number of people who make a living doing this do so by
providing expertise (they know the design best, since they created it)-
they are service companies, rather than companies selling a product. This
is pretty much like the situation with free software companies; I don't
see why this shouldn't become more general in the hardware world too.
What it doesn't work so well for is the really innovative idea where
there's doubt over whether it would actually be useful/saleable.
The problem is in reconciling the first part of your reply - that patents
are necessary to prevent clones in order to persuade manufacturers to
make devices - with the second part - that the design process can be made
more open. I don't have an answer to this either.
74 series TTL.
If you and I both sell a 74x181, the differences between my FUNNY
process and your SHOOTING process manifest themselves in different
fan-in and fan-out numbers, different propagation delays, and different
power draw and ground bounce. But the *logic* is the same. A designer
who wants a 32-bit adder can synthesise it out of either chip; possibly
leaving the final selection to the purchasing department (that needs a
very tolerant design, but you know what I mean).
I don't see the relevance. Where does the open design come in in this
example? Last time I looked (a couple of years ago) Texas still owned
all the patents on TTL, which is how many years old now? There's that
marvellous american patent system where if something makes money you can
extend the patent life to infinity simply by claiming improvements on the
original every time the patent is due to run out. So AFAIK, whatever
process I use to manufacture TTL I need to pay royalties to TI.
Or are you talking about the design which includes the adder? In which
case your argument that to get the board made (assuming it's complex and
innovative enough) you'll need to patent it, still stands.
Or are you saying that for free designs people need to restrict themselves
to the oldest and most commoditized technologues?
Quite - and that's a reasonable response. But, if they are going to take
out patents, then they had better *not* be software patents. (I
assume).
I have never understood why software patents are so much worse than other
patents. It seems to me patents are bad, so extending patents to any new
area is bad too. But extending patents to cover life-forms actually seems
worse to me than extending them to software. The patent system for
medicine actually kills people. (People are going to misunderstand those
statements and assume I have no objection to software patents. But that's
not what I mean; I just get pissed off with people who tell you how
terrible software patents are and then say 'of course patents are fine in
all other areas')
Look - I want to build robots. I also want to eat. There are no people
paying for the development of robots. Therefore, I sink my time at
minimal cost into the development of robots, hoping to make the money
back later, or at least to have benefitted the commons in the process.
If our organisation makes a physical object and wants to sell it, then
we are entitled to do so. (Pending replacement of the current economic
system in a broader way. Tell me when that is going to happen, so I can
plan for it).
Sarky... But since this mailing list is partly to discuss that, or even to
help it happen, however unreal it seems at the moment, I don't intend to
be put off.. ;-)
Anyway, the discussion was about patents, not about the right to sell
things. As far as I'm concerned that right should always be there. I just
hope that one day it will become less important or even irrelevant.
In order that we don't get SonICo coming round and issuing
a cease-and-desist order, we need patents to say "we did it first". If
you want to use those patents, you should talk to us about our licensing
terms. If you want to copy the thing we have designed, when our design
contains patentable novelty, then you are exploiting us.
If the only need for patents is defensive, is it not possible to use a
time-stamped, notarized document showing the design in full and posted in
a public place?
If we make a virtual object, and do not issue it under the GPL, and do
not attempt to use "fatuous" patents to prevent innovation in the field,
and sell the virtual object for money, then we would be a "good"
software house or music publisher.
If we make a virtual object and issue it under the GPL, then you have
the usual GPL rights.
If we can reach a situation where no designer solving useful problems
need s to be paid for their work, then we can talk about the removal of
patents on physical objects.
I think you're shifting position through this mail - you started from the
position that the only way to get novel things manufactured is to patent
them, which I suspect is largely true, and ended up with 'designers need
to be paid for their work' which is not an identical issue. It's exactly
the same argument as used against free software - 'if software writers
can't sell their programs they will starve' - which isn't true. Designers
can solve useful problems and be paid to do so without patenting anything,
just as programmers can be paid to program without selling programs, and
can live from their expertise in programs they have created and which are
free.
Maybe that's unreasonably selfish, but I can't believe it's an unusual
reaction.
In the context it was in, it was a perfect reaction. No-one should
contribute for free to someone else's product. The problem I have is
that, if no-one uses the same or similar hardware, then no-one has an
interest in the software; conversely, if people *do* use the software,
then my selling the hardware looks like taking advantage of them. Like,
I suppose, every time another hacker buys an intel or amd cpu, intel or
amd are taking advantage of the linux-kernel hackers.
I don't have any problem with paying for free (livre) things, or working
for free on something somebody else will make, sell, and make a profit on.
The only point I have a problem with is that other person patenting the
idea.
The essential problem is simply that patents, unlike copyright, cost
money. If patents were free then there would be no reason not to have a
gpl-like patent license (not as impossible as it sounds - Russian law used
to allow you to take out a cheap-rate patent provided you guaranteed not
to use the patent to block anyone else manufacturing; it would just be an
extension of that, though it would take a (very unlikely) change in the
law to allow it). If there were such a 'patent-left' then I couldn't care
less if someone manufactured and sold my design at a profit to them, the
same way as hardly anyone feels that RedHat making money from Linux is a
problem. It's someone owning our ideas I find obnoxious.
It's a hard problem.
Really, it comes to this, for me:
in order to change the world by creating the things we are trying to
create, we need to both draw in traditional industry, and find money to
fill in the gaps. At present, this hybrid "open interfaces and software,
IPR'd physical objects" solution is as far as we've got. If you have a
way of advancing it *without* telling us to work for no money, please
tell me.>
PS I also believe that patents are in general a bad thing, so I'm starting
from a biased viewpoint - but I've put this in a 'ps' instead of the body
of the mail because I think it's a separate argument...
No, it's all part of the same argument. Patents now are a black sucking
hole. There are some interesting ideas in the area they came
from. Gerald Winstanley proposed (in one of his Digger rants) that each
district (I can't remember the size of a district) have two postmasters;
amongst their jobs was the distribution of innovation to other districts
for use by the people. But, he'd taken care of the basics of life prior
to that.
In the mid-19th century there was quite a large movement across Europe
coming mainly from smaller manufacturers to abolish patents completely.
They were actually abolished completely in Holland for 15 years or so till
they were forced back into line. No-one seems to have suffered by it, and
there's nothing to show there was a lower rate of innovation.
Bucky Fuller suggested that, if you give people the means to
live, and the time and space to do so, they will innovate at a furious
rate and that innovation will repay the costs tenfold.
From my (utopian) point of view, if people could get things for
free ('taking instead of buying', to use Stefan's phrase) so that there
was no compulsion to do monotonous, uninteresting jobs, there would
necessarily be a huge increase in innovation, particularly of automation,
to get all those boring jobs done.
At present,
though, we have to cover basic costs for the duration of innovative
projects, and we have to cover the capital investments necessary for
production.
The worst thing about the last sentence above is that one of the things
that falls out of robotics in due course is a transformation of the
economics of production so that mass production need not be the
corollary of industrialisation.
When this idea has come up before (ie. discussion of 'fabbers' on this
list/the german one) I've argued it was science fiction fantasy, and
would be ecologically disastrous. Guess I'm finally going to have to
admit I was wrong :-)
best wishes
Graham
cheers, Rich.
p.s.: if anyone *has* the money, we can do this with solely-defensive
patents with automatic licensing at nominal-to-0 cost. But it needs the
investment to cover wages, materials and manufacturing.
Money-where-mouth-is-time?
Fraid you're out of luck - unless there's someone new here, I'm the only
person writing on this list with strong feelings about non-software
patents, and I'm broke :-(
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