The last time Techdirt wrote about "pay for delay" deals, whereby a big pharma company essentially buys off manufacturers of generics so that the former can continue to enjoy monopoly pricing long after its patents have expired, things didn't look too good. Back in 2010, the Second Circuit had refused to re-hear a case on the issue after dismissing a lawsuit arguing these deals were anti-competitive. But now things seem very different, and not just in the US.

There the Supreme Court will be examining the practise in the case of Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. As a long and helpful post on the SCOTUS Blog previewing this case explains:

The basic issue before the Court, for all of the complexity of the laws, can be stated simply: does a brand-name manufacturer, faced with a potential generic competitor, act illegally if it pays money -- sometimes a quite sizable sum -- to the generic in a deal that postpones for a period of years the substitute version's marketing. Popularly, this practice is known as "pay for delay." It also has been called a "reverse payment agreement." The FTC has been opposed to such deals for years under antitrust law, but until the Obama administration, the Justice Department did not share its opposition; it now does.

One analyst has suggested that the legality of such deals is "the most important unresolved problem in antitrust policy today."

The rest of the SCOTUS Blog post examines the background to this case, and the arguments made by both sides in their briefs to the court, in great detail. Here's an important point at the end of its analysis, about how the case relates to growing concern over the way the patent system is functioning:

If there is a notable weakness in the industry's side of this case, it is that this Court does have its doubts about the soundness of a patent system that may, perhaps too often, grant monopolies. The briefs of the brand-name company and its settlement partners among the generic makers depend very heavily upon the Justices having a keen desire to protect exclusionary efforts by patent holders, and that simply may not exist.

The pharma industry's problems are not restricted to the US. The European Commission is investigating the negative impact that similar "pay for delay" deals may have had on Dutch consumers:

The European Commission has informed the pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson (J&J, of the USA) and Novartis (of Switzerland) of its objections regarding an agreement concluded between their respective Dutch subsidiaries on fentanyl, a strong pain-killer. The Commission takes the preliminary view that the agreement delayed the market entry of a cheaper generic medicine in the Netherlands, in breach of EU antitrust rules.

Specifically:

Janssen-Cilag, the J&J subsidiary supplying the pain-killer fentanyl in the Netherlands, concluded a so-called "co-promotion agreement" with its close generic competitor Sandoz, a Novartis subsidiary, in July 2005. At the time there were no regulatory barriers to develop and market generic versions of the fentanyl patches and therefore for Sandoz to enter the Dutch market. The agreement foresaw monthly payments from Janssen-Cilag to Sandoz for as long as no generic product was launched in the Dutch market. Consequently, Sandoz abstained from entering the market with generic fentanyl patches for the duration of the agreement from July 2005 until December 2006. This may have delayed the entry of a cheaper generic medicine for seventeen months and kept prices for fentanyl in the Netherlands artificially high.

And as if that weren't enough, the UK's Office of Fair Trading has launched its own investigation into the practice:

GlaxoSmithKline could face a multimillion-pound fine over allegations it paid other drug companies to slow down production of cheaper versions of its most profitable antidepressant, burdening taxpayers with inflated costs for NHS [National Health Service] medicines.

The Office of Fair Trading has launched an investigation into GSK, alleging it abused its market dominance by agreeing so-called "pay for delay" agreements between 2001 and 2004 to protect the position of its drug Seroxat.

The regulator claims Alpharma, Genetics UK and Norton Healthcare were paid by GSK to delay production of cheaper copycat versions of the drug which could have saved the NHS millions.

It looks like authorities around the world are finally waking up to the surprisingly cosy relationships between major pharmaceutical companies and some of their supposed rivals, the manufacturers of generic drugs. That's to be welcomed, since these "pay for delay" deals have allowed pharma companies to charge near-monopoly prices well beyond the expiry of their patents, at great cost to the public. As such, they offer yet another example of greedy corporations failing to keep the basic patent bargain with society.

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Last week you got to see four projects, so hopefully you banked that extra one, because this week we're going with just two. However, they're both projects involving ferrofluid that are perhaps competing with each other. I could only find two live ferrofluid projects, and that made it easy to figure out what was on the list this week....

• First up is the well-named Ferrocious, which not only shows you ferrofluid in action, but it also responds to music and dances around within the device. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I really like this project. The device is cool... but it seems a bit bulky, considering how small the space is where the ferrofluid is. It has that mad scientist vibe, but at over $100, seems a bit steep. They're also selling a simpler version that is just a more standard ferrofluid display with a magnet, rather than the whole "bounces to music" thing. The project is ways past its rather low goal, but it also hasn't taken the Kickstarter community by wildfire yet either.
• The second one is also a ferrofluid display, but the NeoDrop interactive display definitely has a much more polished look to it, even though it (like the simplified Ferrocious device) relies on hand held magnets to make the liquid do its thing. This device is also way overfunded based on a modest initial target. It's worth noting that this device seems a lot cooler looking if you're going for that modernist aesthetic -- plus it's a lot cheaper than the Ferrocious device. Either way, lots of people seem to be snapping up the devices to great fanfare.

Anyway, that's it this week: short and sweet, and letting the ferrofluid do the talking... Until next time, enjoy thinking about ferrofluid.

We recently posted about an absolutely ridiculous NY Times op-ed piece in which Pat Choate argued both that patent laws have been getting weaker, and that if we had today's patent laws in the 1970s that Apple and Microsoft wouldn't have survived since bigger companies would just copy what they were doing and put them out of business. We noted that this was completely laughable to anyone who knew the actual history. A day or so ago, someone (and forgive me, because I can no longer find the tweet) pointed me on Twitter to a 45 minute excerpt from a documentary about the early days of Microsoft and Apple and it's worth watching just to show how laughably wrong Choate obviously is. There are two key themes that stand out incredibly strongly in this: both Microsoft and Apple did an awful lot of what they did by shamelessly copying the work of others, and the big companies floating around the space (mainly IBM and Xerox) clearly had no clue at all about what was going on. The few times they discovered interesting things, they didn't know what to do with them, and let Microsoft and Apple walk all over them to build something better that people wanted. And when they tried to jump into these markets by copying the work of Apple and Microsoft, they tended to do a really bad job of it. On the copying front, while most people are familiar with Apple copying the GUI from Xerox, less well known is the story of Tim Patterson at Seattle Computer Products reverse engineering CP/M based on understanding CP/M's APIs to create the early versions of DOS that Microsoft licensed to IBM.

Also noteworthy: no discussion of patents at all. At the very end of the clip there's a bit of a discussion from former Apple CEO John Sculley concerning Apple's legal fight with Microsoft over the look and feel of the GUI. He mentions there was nothing patentable, but that they felt it was a copyright violation. However, he also notes that Apple's strong belief that they could stop Microsoft via copyright also led to complacency within Apple, and less focus on competing by innovation.

In other words, the claims Choate makes are laughable. There was little to no reliance on patents during the early days, and a very strong culture of copying anything and everything, while competing by trying to out-innovate each other. Furthermore, big companies couldn't figure out what was going on, even if they wanted to copy these successful upstarts. At one point, Larry Ellison jokes about how IBM stupidly ceded the chip market to Intel and the OS/application market to Microsoft when it could have owned it all.

One point about the video. The YouTube link says this is from the "documentary" Pirates of Silicon Valley. That's incorrect. If I remember correctly, Pirates of Silicon Valley was actually a "TV movie" based on the same subject material, with Noah Wylie playing Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall playing Bill Gates. Instead, I'm pretty sure that the clips are actually from the documentary Triumph of the Nerds, put together and narrated by Mark Stephens, who is better known as Robert X. Cringely (there's another interesting historical story about the legal fight over the Cringely name, but that's a totally different tangent). This documentary actually came out in 1996, so it's interesting to see how it mostly predates the internet (though there is some discussion of the internet), Jobs' return to Apple and a variety of other things that happened over the past 15 years. Either way, it should put to rest Choate's silly claims.

Beyond the fact that you are using it to read these words, the Web has undeniably had a major impact on a large part of the world's population. It's certainly one of the greatest inventions of recent times, and as Techdirt has noted before, one of the reasons it has taken off in such an amazing way, and led to so many further innovations, is because Sir Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent it.

Few would argue that the Musical Instrument Digital Interface -- MIDI -- is quite in the same league as the World Wide Web, and yet for musicians it has been hugely important in providing a common standard for playing and composing digital music. As an article in Fortune reminds us, one reason for that success is that like Berners-Lee, MIDI's inventor, Dave Smith, also gave away his brilliant creation:

when Smith collaborated with a handful of Japanese companies -- including Roland and Yamaha -- to bring MIDI into the world 30 years ago, he skipped the licensing fees, instead offering up his idea for the world to steal. "We wanted to be sure we had 100% participation, so we decided not to charge any other companies that wanted to use it," says Smith.

What's noteworthy here -- aside from the ridiculous use of the word "steal" -- is that letting people use the MIDI standard for free was not some accident or oversight: well before the example of Berners-Lee, Smith understood that it was the best way to get his standard widely adopted. That's not to say that he hasn't occasionally hankered after the riches he might have received had he charged for a license, but in the end he recognizes the "obvious" rightness of the move:

Smith at times questions his decision to forgo licensing fees for MIDI, but ultimately comes back to the same conclusion. "It seemed like an obvious thing to do at the time," he says, "and in hindsight, I think it was the right thing to do." In the world of technology, that makes Smith a different kind of legendary.

Indeed: thanks to that far-sighted decision 30 years ago, he joins Berners-Lee as one of the true benefactors of humanity. Let's hope that in the coming years there are many more with vision enough to join them.

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The massive problems of the patent system really started getting renewed attention between 2002 and 2004 or so, highlighted by the publication of the book Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System Is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner. By that point, the combination of two key events in the late 90s was clearly being felt on the patents system. First, and most importantly, was the impact of the State Street decision that announced to the world that the courts considered software and business method patents legal. Also important was the 1999 publication of Rembrandts in the Attic: Unlocking the Hidden Value of Patents by Kevin Rivette and David Kline, which led patent lawyers and tech companies alike to suddenly both ramp up their patenting, but also to look to sell off "unused" patents to companies (lawyers) who did nothing but threaten and sue over them. Suddenly, patent trolls became a big, big issue.

Around the time of the Jaffe and Lerner book, the USPTO seemed to actually take much of the criticism to heart. One big part of Jaffe and Lerner's criticism was the simple fact that patent examiners had significant incentives to approve patents, and almost none to reject patents. That is, the metrics by which they were measured included the rate of how many patent applications they processed. But, since there is no such thing as a truly final rejection of a patent, people would just keep asking the USPTO to look at their application again. Each time an examiner had to do this, their "rate" would decline, since they'd be spending even more time on the same old patent application. But approving a patent got it off your plate and let the court system sort out any mess. However, after the book was published, the USPTO actually seemed to pay attention and changed its internal incentives a bit to push for high quality approvals. Not surprisingly, this meant that the approval rate dropped. But, since there was more demand for bogus patents to sue over, more people appealed the rejections and the backlog grew.

Patent system lovers started whining about the "backlog," but what they were really pissed off about was the fact that their bogus patents weren't getting approved. Unfortunately, their message resonated with the new regime of the Obama administration, mainly Commerce Dept. boss, Gary Locke, and head of the USPTO, David Kappos. Back in 2010, we noted that the USPTO had shifted back to approving "pretty much anything" and had clearly decreased their quality standards in an effort to rush through the backlog. Not surprisingly, in stating this, we were attacked mercilessly by patent system supporters, who insisted that we were crazy, and the truth was that David Kappos had found some magic elixir that made all USPTO agents super efficient (or something like that -- their actual explanations were not much more coherent). No matter what, they insisted that it was entirely possible to massively ramp up the number of approvals, decrease the backlog and not decrease patent quality.

Needless to say, we've been skeptical that this was possible.

And now the data is in, suggesting we were absolutely right all along. A new study done by Chris Cotropia and Cecil Quillen of the University of Richmond and independent researcher Ogden Webster used information obtained via FOIA requests to delve into what was really going on in the patent office (link to a great summary of the research by Tim Lee). The key issue, is (once again) the fact that patents are never truly rejected in full, and the people applying for patents just keep on trying again and again until someone in the USPTO approves it. However, the USPTO, to hide some of this, counts some of those "rejections" that eventually get approved as "rejections" to artificially deflate the actual "approval rate" of patent applications.

When the researchers corrected for all of this, they found that the actual patent approval rate in 2012 was almost 90% of all patents eventually get approved. 90%! That's about where it was in 2004 and 2005 (as discussed above), though in 2001 it actually came close to 100%! However, as noted above, by the second half of 00's corrections had been put in place and the approval rate had declined to under 70% in 2009 -- meaning that the USPTO was actually rejecting bad patents. But over the past three years, we've shot right back up. And it's clear that if the approval rate is much higher, the USPTO is approving many, many more bad patents.

In fact, it's likely that the story is even worse than before. Back in 2004 and 2005 when the approval rates were similar, it was really before the public was aware of just how bad the patent troll problem was, so you had many fewer people trying to get their own bad patents to troll over. In the past five years or so that has changed quite a bit. So the number of applications has shot up massively as well. In 2004 there were 382,139 applications. By 2011 that had shot up by 50% to 576,763.

I don't think anyone thinks that we suddenly became 50% more inventive between 2004 and 2011. No, the truth is that people were suddenly flooding the USPTO with highly questionable patent applications on broad and vague concepts, hoping to get a lottery ticket to shake down actual innovators. And, the USPTO under David Kappos complied, granting nearly all of them. Incredible.

When Thomas Jefferson put together the first patent system -- after being quite skeptical that patents could actually be a good thing -- he was quite careful to note that patents should only be granted in the rarest of circumstances, since such a monopoly could do a lot more harm than good. And yet, today, we encourage tons of people to send in any old bogus idea, and the USPTO has turned into little more than a rubber stamp of approval, allowing patent holders to shake down tons of people and companies, knowing that many will pay up rather than fight, and then leaving the few cases where someone fights back to be handled by the courts (who seem ignorant of the game being played).

The end result is a true disaster for actual innovation and the economy. We should all be able to agree that bad patents are not a good thing. And the USPTO is, undoubtedly, approving tons of awful patents when its true approval rate is hovering around 90%.

Another week, more awesome crowdfunding projects. No need to waste time with the intro, let's get right to it.

• Lasertag has been around for a while but a bunch of students (high school?) have tried reinventing it for the modern era, using infrared devices that are more stealthy and have some advantages over the old game. First, they have a system of LEDs that will light up and show how many hit points you have left when hit, and second is that pretty much any IR device can act as a "gun." I'll be honest that I was never a huge lasertag guy, but a project that involves students building something cool seems pretty awesome. Of course, lasertag has always been misnamed, since I'm pretty sure it's always been IR devices rather than lasers, but it's cool to see how it's being reimagined by some students. The project is definitely still a work in progress and looks fairly crude at the moment, but many of the rewards involve sending you the schematics to build your own out of various household items.
• Okay, you say that's unfair and you want real lasers? How about the Blue Laser Lamp. While they talk about its use for home theaters and outdoors, it really does seem most likely to be useful as a nightlight of some sort. It also has a vibe that suggests that this could be the next lava lamp. Something that stoned college kids think looks awesome, but has little functional practicality. Still, it's a unique design, and I figured some folks out there might appreciate it. The early bird pricing ($35) sold out quickly, and the project has gained a huge amount of support pretty quickly, though it still has a ways to go before reaching its goal. Given the time left, however, I doubt it will have much trouble getting there.
• Finally, perhaps something a bit more useful. The first time I ever got to "play" with a 3D scanner was in 1997 when I took a class with Donald Greenberg (who I later went on to work for and consult with), one of the pioneers in 3D computer graphics and the Director of Cornell's Program for Computer Graphics. He had a massive 3D scanner in his lab, and I got to be the guinea pig in our class, getting my head scanned. Even though I recognize standard technology trends in which products get cheaper as they get much better, it still seemed ridiculous to think that there'd be a day not that far in the future where personal home 3D scanners were possible and reasonably priced. There's been plenty of talk about 3D printers, but less attention has been paid to the scanning side. So it's cool to see the Photon 3D Scanner, which is an attempt to make an affordable home 3D scanner. The early birds sold out at $349 and $399, but everyone else can jump in at the $449 level if you feel the desperate need to scan things in 3D in your home any time soon.

And that's it for this week -- and a special thanks to folks who have started submitting examples of crowdfunded "awesome stuff." It's really helpful, since there are so many interesting projects out there these days.

Most people used to think that patent trolls tended to focus on bigger companies -- those with huge bank accounts who'd rather pay the troll off than deal with a lawsuit. But over the last few years, we've been hearing more and more stories about startups hit by patent trolls, who are taking advantage of the fact that a patent lawsuit -- win or lose -- would almost certainly kill the company. One common tactic? Wait until a startup announces a round of fundraising and then pounce -- knowing that the company (a) has some money and (b) has little time to deal with a lawsuit. Finally, this issue is getting some attention. Crain's recently had a piece on patent trolls going "downmarket" after startups, which has some quotes from startup execs (many who want to remain anonymous to avoid further attacks). One of whom is actually fighting the troll:

"I have more lawyers than I have employees," said the entrepreneur, who asked to remain anonymous for fear he would be the target of even more lawsuits.

That entrepreneur noted that he's stopped paying himself a salary, and his legal bills ($50,000 per month) were rivaling his overall payroll of $63,000 per month. But he's fighting the troll on principle.

But, of course, even if he wins, he's not going to get that money back:

Young companies that are looking for venture capital are most likely to settle, so goes the conventional wisdom, because they have limited cash and worry that a lawsuit will scare off investors. It's cheap to bring a lawsuit, but expensive—$2.5 million on average—to defend against one. Not surprisingly, the majority of patent suits are settled out of court.

"The system is so stacked against me," said the e-commerce entrepreneur. "To prove I'm right, it will cost me more money than I have raised in my company's existence. If I win, I don't get the money back, and if I lose, I owe triple damages."

This is part of the reason why the SHIELD Act would be a useful step. While there are still many, many problems with patent trolling, at least it would make it possible to go after trolls for legal fees when the trolls lose.

Okay, I really thought this week was going to be the one where our awesome stuff posts didn't have a theme. But... because of some last minute finds, you not only get two separate themes, but also four projects, rather than our standard three. First up, we've got two different takes on a computer, and then we've got two projects that help you rethink how you input data into a computer.

• First up, is the MiiPC. It's an Android-powered PC that's designed for family use. From the screenshots/video they show, they at least appear to have done a decent job making Android functional as a desktop OS. Some of the "family" features seem a little hokey and overhyped, but perhaps it appeals to some people. Of course, what struck me as most interesting about this was actually the price. $99 for a simple computer seems like a potentially good deal for people looking to just do simple stuff. This project blew past its funding targets quickly and has already more than doubled it with over a month to go.
• So that's a more modern take on a PC, but how about one that's a bit more retro? The the X500 is a modern computer case, but which takes its design cues from classic early 1980s gaming consoles like the Amiga, Atari and Sinclair. My first computer was an Atari 800, so I've got a soft spot for this style of design, even if it's probably not that practical these days. It's just a case, so you'll have to want to do some DIY computer building to get an actual computer in there. Also, if this one interests you, don't wait too long. The project ends tomorrow. It's already just barely squeaked over its target, so it will definitely be funded.
• Since we're talking about DIY, howzabout the DUO, the world's first DIY 3D sensor. If you've been living under a rock for a while, you may have missed all the buzzy and hype about the Leap Motion controller for gesture recognition on your computer. The DUO, conceptually, is pretty similar to the Leap, except that this not about fancy shiny locked up boxes, but about making your own damn fancy gesture controller. Basically, the different levels get you started at different points along the process of making your own such device (though, yes, you can also purchase fully assembled ones, but they're much more expensive than the Leap). The DUO is still only about 1/3 of the way to its target, but with nearly a month left, it seems like it will probably get there. Might not be as fancy as the Leap, but how much cooler is it to show off that you made our own?
• And since we're on the subject of gesture recognition for computers, how about the the NUIA eyeCharm, which is an add on to the Kinect (which we'll assume you already know about...), to make it so you can control your computer via eye movements. There were rumors that Samsung was working on something like this to be built into phones and tablets, but these guys are doing it as a simple add on to the Kinect. This one has just a week to go and is hovering right near its target, and should easily pass it soon (if it hasn't already by the time you read it).

Well, that's it for this week. Bonus points figuring out how many times Fruit Ninja appears in the Kickstarter videos above. I had no idea that that game had become such a "must show" in any such demo.

Even though I was never a big Google Reader user, its death has got me thinking about online services quite a bit lately -- and really reminded me that we've done the cloud wrong. Rather than build true cloud computing, we've built a bunch of lockboxes.

The cloud was supposed to free us, not lock us in

"Cloud computing" went by a variety of other terms in the past before this marketing term stuck, but the key part of it was that it was supposed to free us of worrying about the location of our data. Rather than having to have things stored locally, the data could be anywhere, and we could access it via any machine or device. That sort of happened, and there definitely are benefits to data being stored in the cloud, rather than locally. But... what came with today's "cloud" was a totally different kind of lock: a lock to the service.

I can point many apps to data stored locally

I wrote something related to this a few years ago, concerning music in the cloud. If I have a bunch of MP3s stored locally, I can point any number of music apps at my music folder, and they can all play that music. As long as the data is not in a proprietary format, I can find the app that works best for me and the data is separate from the app. Even when you have proprietary formats like Microsoft's .doc, other apps can often make use of them as well -- so, for example, I can get by with Libre Office, and I don't lose access to all of my old Microsoft Word docs.

This is really useful, because it helps us avoid vendor lock-in in many cases. Even when, say, Microsoft or Apple dominates the market. It's still possible to come in and be compatible. The competition then focuses on building better services, rather than reinventing the data model. That's much more useful to consumers, because the innovation is focused on making their lives better, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Today's cloud brings us back to walled gardens

For the most part, today, however, "cloud" applications bundle the storage and the service as one, and the two are linked inseparably. You check your data into a new cloud service, but the application layer and the data are both held by the same company. Yes, you can often transfer data from one service to the other -- such as Google's "data liberation front" effort, which is fantastic (and goes beyond many other companies' efforts), but just the fact that data needs to be liberated suggests we're taking the wrong approach altogether. Rather than having to "export" all of your feeds from Google Reader and then waiting patiently for 50,000 other people who are trying to upload them to the few small Reader competitors out there, why shouldn't we have each had an OPML file stored somewhere that we control, and that we could easily point any reader application, whether its local or "in the cloud." And, yes, there are some services that attempt to do this, but it's not where the whole "cloud" space has gone.

Separate and liberate the data from the infrastructure

What the cloud should be about is both freeing us from being locked to local data, and also freeing us from having that data locked to a particular service. I should be able to keep my data in one spot and then access it via a variety of cloud clients -- and the clients and the data shouldn't necessarily be directly connected or held by the same party. If I don't want to listen to my music via one app, I can just connect a different app to my personal data cloud and off we go. If Google Reader shuts down, no problem, just point a different app at my RSS data. No extraction, no uploading. Just go.

There are, of course, plenty of players around which sort of do this. DropBox, Box, Amazon's S3 and even Google Drive are setting themselves up as personal data clouds, and there are a growing number of apps that run across them. Projects like the Locker Project are thinking about how we store personal data separated from apps as well. And I know there are a bunch of other projects either around today or quickly approaching release, that also seek to do something in this space.

But, for the most part, all of the stories that people talk about concerning "cloud" computing almost always involve services that tie together the app and the data and all you're really doing is trading the former limitations of local data for the limitations of a single service provider controlling your data. Many service providers want this, of course. It's a form of lock-in. Plus, having some sort of access to your data and your usage can enable them to do other things, such as more accurately data mine you and your usage.

But, as users, we really should be pushing more towards embracing the apps that separate the app from the data and that let you point their "cloud" app at any particular place you store your "cloud" data. Some of this may involve standardizing certain data formats, but that makes sense anyway, as, once again, that's an area where there are tremendous benefits to not reinventing the wheel, so that the innovation and competition can focus on the service level. While some vendors may fear losing lock-in, if they truly believe in their own ability to provide great services, it shouldn't be a problem. At the same time, they should also realize that embracing this kind of world means that it's easier for others to jump in and test their services as well.

The death of Google Reader raised a lot of issues around trust, and while you could "export" the data, that process is still messy and archaic when you think about it. The future of cloud computing should be much more focused on separating the data from the service. That would remove the fear that many are now talking about concerning adopting new cloud services that might not last very long. If the data is stored elsewhere, and entirely in the control of the user, then you don't need to trust the service provider nearly as much, but can dip in and test out different apps operating on the same data, and switch with ease.

If we're going to see the real promise of "the cloud" take place, that's where things need to head. We should be increasingly skeptical of "cloud" apps that also control the data.

Having just seen cases where legacy players have felt threatened by more innovative startups that take advantage of more distributed "peer-production" rather than top-down centralized systems of old, it's interesting to see a counter example. Apparently, Wal-Mart is considering a plan in which it tries to get in-store shoppers to help deliver packages to online buyers.

"I see a path to where this is crowd-sourced," Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Wal-Mart has millions of customers visiting its stores each week. Some of these shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route back home, Anderson explained.

Wal-Mart would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, effectively covering the cost of their gas in return for the delivery of packages, he added.

The company admits that it's just brainstorming the idea at this point, but it's always interesting to see big established companies recognizing that others have been disrupting parts of their core business, and rather than freak out about it, try to take the disruption even further. Of course, this might serve to disrupt other legacy providers, such as UPS and FedEx. Hopefully they won't freak out about it, but who wouldn't be surprised to start seeing stories raising moral panics about how "dangerous" this new plan will be since the drivers won't be wearing uniforms any more?