Because no new products can be released these days without getting sued for patent infringement, Google has been sued by EMG Technology -- yet another patent holder that isn't actually competing or innovating suing companies that are. The issue is Google's recently released Chrome browser for the mobile phone, which EMG claims violates its patent, 7,441,196 on an "apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content." EMG points out that Apple sought to have this patent re-examined and it survived. Despite the fact that the inventors of the patent all appear to reside in Southern California, EMG is located in Southern California and Google is based in Northern California, take one guess where this lawsuit was filed... Why East Texas, of course. Because that makes no sense at all. And people wonder why we say that the patent system has become a tax on innovation.

Tim Lee points us to a really interesting blog post by Dave Alpert, which looks at the Uber dispute in Washington DC as the conflict of two modes of thinking: the permission model favored by lawyers and politicians vs. the innovation model favored by techies and entrepreneurs (and, yes, that's a generalization which does not apply across the board). The post goes way beyond just the Uber dispute to talk about patents, and how they turn a permissionless innovation system into the opposite. The whole thing is great, but here's a quick snippet:

But there is still a culture gap here. Specifically, there are two ways of thinking about how business meets law: the permission model and the innovation model. In one, there's some gatekeeper that has set out a list of things you can do and things you can't. If you want to do something different that nobody has done, you can get permission from that gatekeeper to allow it, if it has enough merit and/or you have enough influence. In the other, you can do what you want, unless it's so harmful that someone takes action to stop you...

[...] Patents turn an innovation system into a permission system by carving up the space of possible things you could do but haven't yet, and giving them to anyone who comes along and pays a fee to grab that piece of idea land. Patents don't stop someone from building a product, but they do force them to check with everyone who has patents in the area first and get their permission.

That impedes someone from building a better website that effectively competes with an existing one. It even stops organizations like transit agencies from doing the mostly-obvious, like letting riders track trains and buses in real time, because a "patent troll" has the patent and wants to extract money from anyone stepping nearby.

A number of technology/policy/economics writers, like Tim Lee, have been talking about the destructive effects of patents for some time, but running into resistance from an interesting quarter: lawyers. It seems that most lawyers, accustomed to the world of law where everything is set up with a rule, find the permission system of patents more familiar and comfortable than the innovation model. The problem is, familiar doesn't mean good; patents are slowing down Silicon Valley and favoring large, established companies.

We've seen (and made) similar arguments in the past about the difference between gatekeeping and innovation, but Alpert's writeup lays it out quite nicely and is a worthwhile read. Check it out.

It certainly explains the general clash between entrepreneurs and innovators and any regulatory body they seem to come up against. It's not just a disagreement about the best way to handle things, it's a conflict of totally different paradigms. That can make for much louder clashes and much more confusion. But not much actual innovation.

Part of this really may just be a hammer/nail problem. Politicians have a single real tool: regulation. So that's the tool they always use, in the belief that it will lead to innovation. But, innovation doesn't work by following rules, but by ripping apart the rulebook, and showing that the rules don't make sense. It goes beyond just a clash of cultures to a fundamentally different view of how innovation works.

Google has been getting some buzz for the announcement of the Nexus 7 tablet device, built by Asus. At the Google I/O developer conference, they gave out the device to all attendees. As a press attendee I received a loaner version which I have to return, but in playing around with it for a few days, it seems like a well-designed device and I'm thinking of buying one when they're officially available. But, of course, as with pretty much anything cool or useful these days, some sore loser has to whine about how it's infringing on their patents. This time, it's Nokia bitching about how neither Asus nor Google have licensed its patent portfolio.

Here's the thing: if Nokia invented a device like this, then sell the damn device. If it's better than the Nexus 7 then it will sell better than the Nexus 7. Whining about patent infringement when you can't compete just makes you look like a sore loser. If what Nokia "invented" and patented was so important, bring the product to market and let the market decide. Bitching about how someone made a better product than you and demanding that they pay you money is just pure sour grapes. It may be legal, based on the idiocy of today's patent system, but it sure makes it clear to me why I'd never buy another Nokia product.