Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth Predicts That Countries Who Limit Patents Will Have More Innovation
from the but-of-course dept
The BBC has an interesting article about Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu, and some of the innovations Canonical is working on. There’s some good stuff in there, but what caught my attention was the bit at the end about patents:
“We know that we are sort of dancing naked through a minefield and there are much bigger institutions driving tanks through,” Mr Shuttleworth says.
“It’s basically impossible to ship any kind of working software without potentially trampling on some patent somewhere in the world, and it’s completely impossible to do anything to prevent that.
“The patents system is being used to slow down a lot of healthy competition and that’s a real problem. I think that the countries that have essentially figured that out and put hard limits on what you can patent will in fact do better.”
Of course, this is the exact opposite of what the patent system is supposed to do — but pretty much everyone who’s actually innovating these days seems to recognize the same thing. What amazes me is that we haven’t seen more of what Mark hints at towards the very end: countries providing explicit safe havens around patents. We have examples of this in the past — perhaps most famously, the Netherlands and Switzerland in the latter half of the 19th century. The Netherlands dumped patents entirely, while the Swiss limited what was patentable massively (to the point that very little was considered patentable at all). And both countries saw economic growth as a result — where industry and innovation flocked to both countries because they weren’t being held back by patent disputes.
It does seem that perhaps some folks in the Netherlands remember this. There’s an ongoing effort called the Appsterdam Foundation (in Amsterdam, of course), where part of the goal is to help protect app makers from crazy patent lawsuits. But I’m waiting for even more recognition from countries that this is a real growth opportunity. Assuming that countries have the nerves to withstand having the US taunt them each year with placement on the Special 301 list, there’s a real opportunity for a developed nation to have innovation show up in droves by massively limiting patents.
Filed Under: appsterdam, mark shuttleworth, netherlands, special 301 list, switzerland
Companies: canonical, ubuntu
Comments on “Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth Predicts That Countries Who Limit Patents Will Have More Innovation”
Maybe the world could hold a Special 301 awards ceremony every year (giving out the golden mousetrap award), where every country on the list would have a chance to stand up and say, “This is how we made the world a better place without patents“.
Well duh!
Everything stated in article seems super obvious–but then, I code-smith for a living so I guess that’s a natural extension of my own point of view.
Perhaps, to those people who have trouble with logic, the whole patent-minefield analogy might be confusing…
It would certainly be interesting if one or a few countries actually did try abandoning patents in the modern age. If they genuinely did foster more innovation and development, then other countries might also be inspired to compete with them, or face losing their engineers to emigration.
It would be nice to have some empirical data to counter the “IP enforcement benefits me, so it must be benefitting everyone” crowd, who seem to have the greater influence over IP policy at the moment.
Re: "Competition"
If by “compete with them” you mean “bully them into using patents again my any means necessary short of outright warfare” then yes! I agree completely.
Re: Re: "Competition"
I think this would get them attacked before Iran get attacked for developing a nuke
Re: Re: Re: "Competition"
Ugh. I’m sad now. Thanks guys.
Realpolitik FTL.
But innovation without patents can only be theft!
Hmmm.
First, let’s assume that he’s not talking about the US which puts time limits on patents. Then let’s also assume that he could care less about the procedural limits the US puts on what can be patented because he would lump that together with all of the red tape associated with patents. This is tech dirt and letting people protect intellectual property is bad .
Alas, we’ve already done this experiment. India wasn’t enforcing patents for the longest time. They were making copies of western drugs. India is a huge country with a great education system. Kids coming out of the IITs are as smart as anyone in the world. The country may have plenty of poverty, but it also has many, many members of the middle-class.
So how well did their experiment with no patents work out? What great innovation came out of India during that time? What great drugs? Alas, not so many. Many of the smart kids left the country as soon as they could because they could make more money and enjoy a better standard of living if they worked for western companies that nurtured intellectual property.
Did the people left in India take the Western inventions and just remix them? Nah. They mainly just churned out dirt cheap versions of the old Western standards. This may have been an acceptable social policy because the drugs were cheap but it did not nurture “more innovation.”
So go on dreaming guys. As the old joke goes about Libertarians, the no government intervention experiment is alive and well in Somalia. How’s the innovation going there? Are they inventing all kinds of great new pirate weapons with which to attack passing ships? Nah. They can’t even remix those. They just steal old guns from Western countries that protect IP.
Re: Hmmm.
They did quite well in the software industry. You know, the industry that is always complaining about how patents are hindering innovation.
Re: Re: Hmmm.
This began after they started embracing patents again. Plus it’s not a great example. India’s big software companies like Tata, Infosys etc. are best known for building software designed and specified by Western companies.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
“This began after they started embracing patents again. “
[citation needed]
Coming over here and completely making up sentences does not help your case. Software advanced exactly because patents were largely non-existent or unenforced in its early days.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
“India’s big software companies like Tata, Infosys etc. are best known for building software designed and specified by Western companies.”
Now you’re just confusing designed ‘by’ with designed ‘for’. Yes, western countries are the consumers of the software that others produce, doesn’t mean we designed it. We just parasite off of it.
Re: Hmmm.
India is a much more service-intensive economy. A much more interesting and relevant comparison would be China, whose knockoffs of big names (such as Samsung and Apple) have actually caused innovation in places such as the smartphone sector.
Re: Hmmm.
A long post. Well done, Bob. A few questions, though.
1. What was the GNP trend before and after India enacted IP laws?
2. When was there a huge improvement in Idia’s educational system?
3. What products are you refering to which are copies of western products?
4. What new products are made in the West that aren’t remixes of other products?
Thank you for your time. Specifics are important.
Re: Re: Hmmm.
Specifics are not a strength of the pro patent crowd.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
Overblown hyperbole and strawman creation are strengths of the anti-patent crowd, a good many of whom view patents as a nuisance because they force them to actually do their homework and come up with new, non-infringing approaches.
Re: Re: Hmmm.
and now bob won’t be back because he can’t answer these
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
Horse manure. You can answer (1) and (2) yourself with any search engine. You’ll notice that the new patent law in 2005 dovetailed nicely with the boom in the economy.
As for (3), they pretty much cloned everything.
As for (4), there’s much more innovation going on in the West.
Let me turn things around. Can you name one significant drug that was created during India’s period of Innovation when the patent laws were very weak? Any single one? They were cloning AIDS drugs left and right, but all of the news I read talked about people smuggling out generic copies of American and Swiss drugs. I’ve never read any stories about the wonderful AIDS drugs developed in India during this time. Never. Nothing.
Now I may have missed something. Perhaps the terrible corporate Big Content has repressed this news. Here’s your chance. Show me one significant drug that was developed in India when the drug companies operated without patents. I’m guessing there are several because I’ve met lots of smart people in India.
But even if you find one or two, I contend that this experiment still proves the premise here is wrong. The sum total of innovation coming out of Western Pharma far outstripped India’s unshackled pharma.
Re: Re: Re:2 Can you name one significant drug that was created during India's period of Innovation when the patent laws were very weak? Any single one?
Yes. Neem.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
Sure I’m here and I’ll play your game.
You can answer them yourself with a search engine. You’ll see that the return of patent laws in 2005 dovetailed nicely with the latest boom. Is it responsible? I’m not willing to say that. I’m only pointing out that it (1) didn’t kill the boom and (2) there was no great boom during the years when there were no patents.
As for your third question, the pharma companies produced generic copies of pretty much anything with value. The list is much, much too long to go into, but then that’s your game.
As for your fourth, I think it’s waste of time. Of course people learned from each other in the west. The patent system didn’t prevent remixes. And yes, the patents were a pain. But they rewarded the innovators and lured the best minds from India.
The problem is that we’ve done Shuttleworth’s experiment. Both the US and India had oodles of smart people between 1975 and 2005. Both the US and India had to deal with crushing urban poverty during this time. But compare the inventions coming out of each country. Which one brought us the iPhone, the Internet, the PC, and real drugs to combat AIDS?
But let me turn this around. It’s your turn now. Show me one great drug that came out of India during the wonder years when their pharma companies were unshackled from the evil patent system. All of the stories I read told about how people were smuggling out generic versions of AIDS drugs developed in America or Switzerland. I never heard about any wonderdrug built in India.
Now it’s possible that I just wasn’t paying attention or Big Content conspired to keep the news from me.
Where’s your pantheon on drug innovation created when there were no patents?
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
Sure I’m here and I’ll play your game.
You can answer them yourself with a search engine. You’ll see that the return of patent laws in 2005 dovetailed nicely with the latest boom. Is it responsible? I’m not willing to say that. I’m only pointing out that it (1) didn’t kill the boom and (2) there was no great boom during the years when there were no patents.
As for your third question, the pharma companies produced generic copies of pretty much anything with value. The list is much, much too long to go into, but then that’s your game.
As for your fourth, I think it’s waste of time. Of course people learned from each other in the west. The patent system didn’t prevent remixes. And yes, the patents were a pain. But they rewarded the innovators and lured the best minds from India.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
The problem is that we’ve done Shuttleworth’s experiment. Both the US and India had oodles of smart people between 1975 and 2005. Both the US and India had to deal with crushing urban poverty during this time. But compare the inventions coming out of each country. Which one brought us the iPhone, the Internet, the PC, and real drugs to combat AIDS?
But let me turn this around. It’s your turn now. Show me one great drug that came out of India during the wonder years when their pharma companies were unshackled from the evil patent system. All of the stories I read told about how people were smuggling out generic versions of AIDS drugs developed in America or Switzerland. I never heard about any wonderdrug built in India.
Now it’s possible that I just wasn’t paying attention or Big Content conspired to keep the news from me.
Where’s your pantheon on drug innovation created when there were no patents?
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
The problem is that we’ve done Shuttleworth’s experiment. Both the US and India had oodles of smart people between 1975 and 2005. Both the US and India had to deal with crushing urban poverty during this time. But compare the inventions coming out of each country. Which one brought us the iPhone, the Internet, the PC, and real drugs to combat HIV?
But let me turn this around. It’s your turn now. Show me one great drug that came out of India during the wonder years when their pharma companies were unshackled from the evil patent system. All of the stories I read told about how people were smuggling out generic versions of drugs developed in America or Switzerland. I never heard about any wonderdrug built in India.
Now it’s possible that I just wasn’t paying attention or Big Content conspired to keep the news from me.
Where’s your pantheon on drug innovation created when there were no patents?
Re: Re: Re:2 Hmmm.
Bob, you obviously don’t appreciate your history. Americans of the USA variety are very good at “stealing” and then patenting ideas, techniques and processes developed in other countries by non-Americans of the USA variety. Once they succeed in having the patent they then charge the original developers and countries for the priviledge of using the patent.
If you don’t believe me, try the development of penicilin production and application done during World War II in England.
Try looking at the US Dept of Commerce and US Dept of Defence and the actions of the IEEE during the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Try looking at the software research done at Indian Universities or Swiss Universities during the 70’s and 80’s.
Look at the idea’s that came out of Australia over many decades and are attributed to the USA or England.
I don’t know who you are or what your background is, but if we take any information from your writing, you appear to be completely actively and deliberately clueless – I have met people who are like this. I even have some in my own extended family and when it boils down to it, such people usually choose to remain this way irrespective of any facts they may stumble over.
regards to all and a good day to each
PS. My personal view is that you canna steal an idea, and every idea is based on something that already exists. Every device or system I design is based on what I have learned or been shown or what is needed. That is how we advance.
People have called me brilliant at providing solutions and fixing problems but all I do is recombine different ideas and techniques in ways that are appropriate to the problem at hand. This is the same method used by others I work with and I have worked with many exceptionally brilliant men and women over the years.
Re: Re: Re:3 Hmmm.
Let’s try to keep this on target. I’m not naive. I’m sure the the US and everyone else has borrowed or stolen ideas. But we’re talking about about larceny here, we’re trying to guess whether getting rid of patents will nurture innovation.
The one drug you mention is penicillin which came from patent-loving England. So can you answer my question? What kind of innovation came from India during the patent-free years? There must be something notable? It’s a big country filled with smart people. But all we hear about is how they cloned western drugs to save cash.
If you’re a scientist, you’ve got to look at the evidence and the evidence I see here is that we’ve tried Shuttleworth’s theory and the innovation didn’t come. Maybe there were other reasons. Maybe you need some other secret sauce. But around the world in the US where there was plenty of grinding poverty producing scandals like Rodney King, there was also plenty of innovation. Why?
Re: Re: Re:4 Hmmm.
First you are not a scientist and second you don’t know the history of India apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_inventions_and_discoveries
Attributed to them are the creation of the first hospitals, cataract surgery, creation of dentistry, sugar refinement, the creation of zero and the decimal system.
To their credit they are creating a healthcare system that is dirty cheap and everyone can afford which can and probably will displace others forms of treatment that are equal in quality but much, much more costly.
To do that they need to be free from IP law of course or it will never happen there, just like it will never happen in the US ever.
Re: Re: Re:2 Hmmm.
Both the US and India had oodles of smart people between 1975 and 2005. Both the US and India had to deal with crushing urban poverty during this time. Are you serious? America is known in India as, “the land where poor people are fat.” The per capita GDP of the US is 47,000. For India, 1,410. As of 2010. Take a look here to see how ridiculous your argument is.
Looking at the graphs, I see no spikes in India’s GNP, just an upturn in 2001, well before the ip reforms of 2005. That would coincide with a marked upturn in US outsourcing of IT jobs.
And here’s a little suprise for you: there were no software patents enforced in the US until ’94. That was the Unisys gif patent which opened all the doors. That’s right! The PC, cell phones, and even the Internet were brought about without any patents on the software! Can you believe it?
Re: Re: Re:3 Hmmm.
(1) I never claimed that the upturn began with the imposition of patents. I just said that the boom did not stop with arrival of cruel patents.
(2) While there were no pure software patents, there were plenty of patents assigned to “machines” that implemented some feature. That’s why everyone gave up on trying to keep software free of patents. It was so easy to write a patent for a machine that did the same thing. This would apply to software thanks to the doctrine of equivalents.
And here’s a nice compendium of pre-1994 patents:
http://technologizer.com/2009/05/27/1980s-pcs/2/
And here are some of Steve Job’s personal collection of 323. Does anyone here really want to claim that patents stifle innovation?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html
Please. I realize that patents are a hassle. I know that they’re often annoying and even crippling. But the early computing era was far from patent free.
If you really believe the idea that innovation will blossom without patents, I invite you to head to Somalia and prove it to everyone here.
Re: Re: Re:4 Hmmm.
I want to claim, in a world pre-internet patents would have been difficult to enforce or find infringer, in a world pos-internet you get all this easy information lying around and can go after others around the globe without even getting out of the couch, now that is efficiency and it shows why exclusionary powers where always a) severely restricted b) very short term.
Now they are being a problem after those patents got absurd, after a lot of changes that increased their power, after a lot of bad decisions, up until the 80’s nobody gave a fuck about patents, starting then it started to get funny by the year and now it is a bad thing.
Re: Hmmm.
Strawman
Shuttleworth doesn’t code chemicals. No body spent billions of dollars on the code for “swipe to unlock” or “click to buy.”
Re: Re: Hmmm.
Well, somebody might have spent billions of dollars on “swipe to unlock”. For precedence, see: ‘New York Times paywall’.
Re: Hmmm.
Gee now. It’s hard to decide. In one hand we have Mark Shuttleworth. In the other hand we have Bob.
Who is more credible?
Who has accomplished more?
Gee, it’s tough to decide.
You can Google for Shuttleworth’s accomplishments. You can search TechDirt postings for an archive of Bob’s accomplishments.
Re: Re: Hmmm.
(*ahem* Appeal to authority... sorry)
A fact/lie is a still a fact/lie whether spoken by a billionaire or a dullard.
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm.
And technically they weren’t Shuttleworth’s innovations. They were built by the open source community. Shuttleworth just got rich off of them.
Re: Re: Re:2 Hmmm.
Get your facts right. Shuttleworth got rich *before* Ubuntu. Ubuntu was a result of his wealth and accomplishments, not vice versa.
Shuttleworth has more credibility because he has more verifiable non-anonymous life experience than just trolling a message board with a track record of losing arguments, such as the one I am replying to now.
Re: Hmmm.
We have to be careful when comparing things between cultures.
I work with India developers daily, and one of the main differences is that Indian developers generally aren’t looking to stay developers for their entire careers. Being a developer is considered a stepping-stone into management, and if you remain a developer for more than a handful of years, you’re generally viewed as being unsuccessful. In the US, it’s totally acceptable and normal to be a developer for your entire career.
This means that there are a lot fewer deeply experienced developers in India.
Being a open-source user myself (of Debian and Ubuntu), this is an obvious +1 and a view I happen to agree upon.
Also, lol about the Special 301 contest 😉
if you dont stop talking sense, man you’ll be breaking someone’s copyright for sure
Mark Shuttleworth knows what he is talking about and he is someone who is most definitely worth listening to.
Re: Re:
I don’t disagree. I use Ubuntu every day. But if wants to prove us right on this, he should quit talking and just move his business to Somalia and go to town. Innovation will just bloom out of reach of the evil patent lawyers.
Innovate this
“India wasn’t enforcing patents for the longest time. They were making copies of western drugs.”
They figured out how to provide medicine to people who needed but couldn’t afford it. That seems pretty innovative to me. My rich-ass country sure seems to be a having a hard time with that.
“Many of the smart kids left the country as soon as they could because they could make more money and enjoy a better standard of living if they worked for western companies that nurtured intellectual property.”
Strike the last four words from that sentence. They moved to a rich country where they enjoyed a better standard of living. Period. They improved their lot in life.
While we’re on that, how strict has India been about IP in educational materials? Did fascist obeisance to copyright in textbooks help them build that great education system, or was it some other way?
Re: Innovate this
Hey, I have nooo problem with them pirating drugs to help people. As I said, it might be the right social policy.
I’m just pointing out that this patent-free Shangri-La wasn’t a wonderful fountain of the kind of innovation that Mark Shuttleworth promises will appear if we just get rid of patents.
And that lack of innovation is why we put up with the deprivation caused by patents. The new innovations more than make up for the pain.
Re: Re: Innovate this
My main point though is that India was dealing with far more poverty than the U.S. The playing field is steeply slanted in a variety of ways, so it’s unfair to compare their success in inventing with ours. The fact they were able to create a world class education system in spite of economic disadvantages speaks well of whatever they did.
The reason Mark Shuttleworth would have difficulty developing Ubuntu in Somalia has everything to do with the lack of infrastructure, basic security and rampant poverty. The lack of patent laws are not the obstacle.
BTW, still wondering if anyone can comment saliently on how India managed to build such a good education system in spite of their poverty? Did strict copyright laws hurt or hinder that?
Re: Re: Re: Innovate this
I realize that there’s poverty in India, but there’s poverty in the United States too. Yet the patent-encumbered US pharma innovated while the patent-free India largely didn’t.
It’s important to remember that there’s a large and vital middle class in India. They were there during the patent-free days and they had plenty of opportunity to revise and remix inventions from the rest of the world. It didn’t happen.
Re: Re: Re:2 Innovate this
> I realize that there’s poverty in India, but there’s poverty in the United States too.
That’s no kind of point at all. The average American is much better off than the average Indian. You can’t just say “there is poverty” in both countries and then pretend that makes them equivalent. It’s a completely specious line of reasoning.
Re: Re: Re:2 Innovate this
bob, you need to go back to John Steele and ask him to mass-litigate people for supposedly downloading your art, whatever it is. It’s certainly a much more lucrative venture than spending your time here.
Those who can create, those who can’t copyright.
Re: Re:
Those who can innovate, those who can’t patent.
Limiting patents
As an IP attorney (aka “patent” attorney), I wholeheartedly agree and support that viewpoint.
This began after they started embracing patents again.
Available economic studies show no significant correlation between ?intellectual property? enforcement and economic growth.
Hmmm.
Overblown hyperbole and strawman creation are strengths of the anti-patent crowd
I’ve been following all sides of this debate for quite some time, and I would say that neither side has a monopoly on “overblown hyperbole and strawman creation.” However, it appears to be MUCH stronger on the pro-patent side. Much, much stronger.
Switzerland
Actually, Switzerland hadn’t any patent system until 1888. And there was a fight against it.
Primary sources are either in german or french, here’s one against Patents:
http://dlib-pr.mpier.mpg.de/m/kleioc/0010/exec/books/%22160510%22
And here’s the state of the swiss patent system when it was enacted:
http://dlib-pr.mpier.mpg.de/m/kleioc/0010/exec/books/%22171854%22