In a market-based democracy, the government implements checks on the power of wealthy corporations to protect the common man. These checks include anti-trust laws, monopoly dissolution, and most importantly, intellectual property protection. However, in this day and age, IP protection is being wielded as a weapon by large multinational corporations to manipulate the market and grab a larger share. This is exactly the opposite reason for why patents are granted, and this system needs to change.
Some of the litigation put forth by Apple clearly exists only to kill competition and further sway the market in their favor. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, "The technology giant has secured two key U.S. patents on slide-to-unlock—a technology that lets users wake a dormant phone with a finger-swipe across the screen. And it is wielding those patents like swords against rivals around the world. In recent months, Apple has sued HTC Corp. in Delaware and Germany over one of those patents and others. It has used the patents to fight back against suits Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. filed against it in Miami and Germany. And it has invoked them in lawsuits against Samsung Electronics Co. in Australia, the Netherlands, and San Jose, Calif." This is definitely not what intellectual property protection was meant to protect, and as such, I think strict measures need to be put into place to ensure that IP protects the common man, rather than hurting him.
While intellectual property laws were made to protect inventors and encourage innovation, I think we've come to an era when big companies are willing and able to weaponize their patents through litigation. Although the principle of IP law is still valid, we should find better ways of putting it into practice in the US.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on how patents are now used by big companies to kill competition by delaying their production processes. I feel that one way to mitigate the situation might be to differentiate between software patents and hardware patents, since current litigation cases mostly deals with either physical design or software. Given how technological advances as so fast now, the duration of software patents should be reduced to perhaps five years, before they are considered "open-source". While the big companies fight it out with their different smart phone models, the software side which includes many small to medium sized enterprises may be spared from the mayhem.
ReplyDeleteInteresting ideas!
Delete"Strict measures" such as?
ReplyDelete