Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Wed Mar 27 09:56:22 CDT 2013
Hi All: There has been some concern of late as to how the obsession of patents could destroy the computer industry or any industry for that matter. In 1991, Bill Gates wrote the following: In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Mr. Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use the patent to "take as much of our profits as they want. " ...very prophetic Consider the following: "In the smartphone industry alone, according to a Stanford University analysis, as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years -- an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings." http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130325/11085322454/crazy- idea-month-allowing-patents-mathematics.shtml Jim