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Over at InfoWorld, David Kline, author of Rembrandts in the Attic: Unlocking the Hidden Value of Patents (HBS Press 1999), makes some basic points on innovation. It would be nice if people who claim that intellectual property laws are stifling innovation actually cited any evidence -- any evidence at all! -- to support that view.
Everywhere I look, I see innovation racing ahead in industries where patenting is common. This includes the software industry, where studies consistently show that after more than ten years of patenting, the industry itself remains less concentrated than the average U.S. industry, new startups are emerging in even greater numbers than before patenting got underway in software, and innovation keeps going at an amazing pace. Of course, the anti-IP crowd wants innovation to be stifled so as to prove their case against copyrights/patents. Obviously, innovation is doing fine, the FOSS market, well, thats another story...
Kline also says some excellent things about FOSS: Open source as a business model would not survive 15 minutes were it not for the extensive financial support of huge patent-holding firms such as IBM. As a recent study at the University of Texas School of Law noted (May 2007), "The commercially-successful open source programs all share the salient characteristic that they benefit from extensive financial support of large incumbent firms."
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…some critics of the IP system are still living mentally in the industrial age, where patents really were the weapon of choice against competitors. Today, in the knowledge economy, they are far more commonly used as vehicles for collaboration between firms, as in Open Innovation co-development deals. Right on...
posted by Noel Le @ 7:45 AM | Patents
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