the fair idea
There is a big difference between coming up with an idea and making it happen. Sadly, the emphasis today on intellectual property is beginning to rob the technology industry of the will to actually make real things and do real things. I don’t really have a lot of proof for a statement like that one, but I see it coming: litigation as the most important aspect of innovation. If NTP prevails over RIM I think the users of Blackberrys are going to get a taste of future innovation as controlled by litigation.
There’s a tremendous amount of innovation and hard work that goes into taking an idea and realizing it and then making it into a product. There are 16 million lines of code in BlackBerry. Sixteen million. It’s hard to imagine 16 million lines of code. They all have to work in harmony and perfection to make this thing do its job. Are you trying to tell me that one little concept is more important than another little concept, and that it didn’t take man-years and man-years of effort to make all that stuff work?
- Mike Lazaridis, Research In Motion
You have to wonder if what is happening to RIM — any tech company faced with a submarine patent lawsuit — is a fair or reasonable thing to happen. NTP didn’t design the Blackberry, RIM did. NTP didn’t make the Blackberry a success, RIM did. NTP didn’t take the risk, RIM did. Even if NTP did come up with the idea, how is it fair that they should be allowed to destroy another company for carrying out something they didn’t have the chops to take to market themselves (after a decade)?
U.S. patent law… so much for the land of opportunity. One has to wonder if the American way is still about the doing, or is it now all about the talking? Someone had better work that one through before everybody gives up on the doing.
[part 2]
The idea of ultimate ownership of an idea is, in my honest opinion, absurd. If I come up with an idea, I should be allowed to create, market, and sell it. If someone else has the same idea, then by all means, let them go ahead with it as well. Let the consumer decide what they want to buy.
I, as a consumer, shouldn’t be limited to an Ipod if I want a large capacity mp3 player that has a pressure sensitive dial interface and a sleek design. What if I want the exact same thing, but without the software. I want to be able to just drop my media files into the mass storage device and play them.
You were right when you said “the emphasis today on intellectual property is beginning to rob the technology industry…”. The worst part is not being able to improve an already existing idea without paying fees to the original creator. Improving existing products can prevent pollution, conserve energy, reduce production cost, increase ease of use/usefulness, and many other good things.
Anyways, I could probably ramble on for quite a while, so I’ll just stop here.
Comment by Jordan Burkhart — 2006/1/31 @ 13:36