Microsoft atomic number 27 - founder Paul Allen has plunge a volley of litigation over disputed patents , targeting Apple , Google , AOL , and Netflix , among others . None of the patents involve technology Allen was responsible for creating , but were licensed through his Silicon Valley brooder .
A spokesman for Allen say “ Paul thinks this is significant , not just to him but to the researchers at Interval who created this technology … We recognize that excogitation has a time value , and letters patent are the means to protect that . ” But the inquiry of what should be deemed an “ innovation ” stay an open , hotly - repugn one . Google and Facebook havealready swornto defend the suit .
In aNY Times op - ed last year , administrator and Harvard Business School lecturer Robert Pozen argued for a serious ( and desperately needed ) overhaul of the US letters patent organisation . “ The character of American letters patent has been deteriorate for years , ” Pozen laments , claiming “ they are progressively issued for products and processes that are not truly modern . ” In the letters patent organization , creation is primal . The criteria for a patent of invention are that a new technology must be non - obvious to someone condition in that field , useful , and new .
The decision of which patents have those properties and which do n’t is up to the varying phalanxes of examiner , litigators , and jurist , but an more and more outspoken faction guess the integral system is burst . Patents — monopolies on mind — aren’t being dished out deservedly , they say . Pozen thinks of the essence reform are require to increase the storey of expertise involved in the lotion process , boost transparentness , and turn out down on uncalled-for lawsuits . Patent law requires a stupefying level of technical noesis and shrewd analysis , but it seems that when ownership of ideas and not undecomposed ideas themselves are making people money , something has gone awry . [ WSJ ]
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