Author: Jakke Mäkelä

Physicist, but not ideologically -- it's the methods that matter. Background: PhD in physics, four years in basic research, over a decade in industrial R&D. Interests: anything that can be twisted into numbers; hazards and warnings; invisible risks. Worries: Almost everything, but especially freedom of speech, Internet neutrality, humanitarian problems, IPR, environmental issues. Happiness: family, dry humor, and thinking about things.

Pollution week 2: What’s preventing me?

“Would “my” software infringe on the ‘002 patent? My answer? It probably does not infringe. But I probably should pay nevertheless.”

In the previous part of the pollution theme week, I defined a fairly  trivial software that would allow an asthmatic to follow the air pollution at some other location. I suggested that a patent  (US 8,127,002) has some features that make it look worrisomely close.

I will now try to see guess whether “my” software would infringe the ‘002 patent. And I do mean “guess”;  there is no way of finding the “truth”, as has been discussed earlier. The “truth” can only be discovered in court, when the patent owner sues someone.

Continue reading Pollution week 2: What’s preventing me?

Pollution week 1: “My” Application

“Being allergic, I am (vaguely) dreaming about someday having a “citizens’ network” of sensors to monitor pollution in real time and high resolution. Such data cannot perform miracles, but being prepared is better than being unprepared. Have I already been blocked from doing this?”

We have decided to make this week a kind of demonstrator for our kind of thinking, showing what a project like this can and cannot do.  This is as concrete as it gets.

The special theme we chose is air pollution. More specifically, solutions that would allow asthmatics to get information about the air pollution situation.

To make things as concrete as possible, the whole week revolves around just one patent,
US 8,127,002  (“Hypothesis development based on user and sensing device data”). The narrow focus has a purpose: it concretely shows what kinds of vulnerabilities might enable trolls to be attacked with their own weapons.

I asked the question: could this patent block a person with allergies from getting information about the air pollution levels at a location he is going to?

Answer: possibly. Possibly not.

Continue reading Pollution week 1: “My” Application

Patents – non-conventional warfare?

“But if patents are non-conventional warfare, even these measures of “quality” become largely irrelevant. A “quality” patent is one that manages to frighten targets enough that they pay up. Nothing more, nothing less.”

PATENTS AS NON-CONVENTIONAL WARFARE

In a previous essay (Patents — conventional warfare?), Timo Tokkonen considered patents to be type of warfare between companies. By and large, this is probably the best way to think about patents.  What Timo described is the “conventional warfare” aspect of patents: going to court, and getting a “real value” for the patent.  Maybe it’s possible to extend to analogy:

What if the “non-conventional warfare” part is equally important?

By that, I mean value gained without ever going to court — by settlements and agreements that are made quietly outside the court system. Do we have any way of knowing how important this “hidden” side of the war is?

To put in another way: What if the “real” value of a patent is in how much money it can rake in without ever going to court? One way of quantifying the question is to ask: “How much are companies paying for patent license costs where the underlying patent is spurious, but cannot be invalidated without taking excessive legal risks?”

An economist would say that the question is nonsense, because a contract is a contract, and if someone agrees to pay, then  nothing illegal has happened. Perfectly true, if the two sides are evenly matched. Not so true, if one of the parties has an unfair advantage. (Again a term that no economist accepts. But as we have discussed earlier, non-practicing entities do have an asymmetric advantage over companies that produce something. These contracts may be narrowly  legally acceptable, but there is no reason to accept them ethically).

This is not a very comforting idea, because it would make it even more difficult to estimate the value/risk of a patent. Academics are making efforts to predict the “quality” of individual patents by looking at external parameters such as number of prior art references, a huge number of claims, a large number of later patents referencing the patent,  and so on (see for example  Shresta 2009, Allison et al 2010). The sole definition of “quality” here is “what wins in court”.  These efforts are valuable, because if successful, they would make it at least slightly easier to estimate risk.

But if patents are non-conventional warfare, even these measures of “quality” become largely irrelevant. A “quality” patent is one that manages to frighten targets enough that they pay up. Nothing more, nothing less.

If one considers this non-conventional aspect, then some of the claims of the pro-NPE camp (for example McDonough 2006) become a little suspect. Those authors are looking at what happens in the courtrooms. But what if all the real action is happening outside the courtrooms?

Can this issue even be studied academically? Perhaps. Bessen and Meurer 2012 used surveys as well as public legal data to estimate the direct costs from NPE litigation. They came up with a ballpark minimum figure of 29 billlion USD in 2011. They estimated that about one third of this cost came from cases that never went to court (i.e. our “non-conventional warfare”). This is 10 billion USD, much of it from small and medium-sized companies.

Since there are indirect costs associated with legal assertions, Bessen and Meurer suggest that the real figures could be twice as large. To give some scale: the total R&D spending in 2011 was 247 billion USD. The non-conventional costs would then be in the ballpark of 5-10% of R&D spending. One has to remember, of course, that this is not money that is “robbed” as such; some of the cases may be completely valid. Nevertheless, this is real money.

We have been trying to look for credible first-hand material on the Internet about people or companies that would actually have been harassed by trolls. However, the material tends to be second-hand or generic.The EFF has collected material on cases that would seem to fall into this category, but it is still anecdotal.  Even the various anonymous anti-troll web sites tend to focus on litigated cases. The unlitigated cases exist in a shadowland.

Anyone who is under active targeting will almost certainly remain quiet under his lawyer’s recommendation. And if a settlement is reached, non-disclosure tends to be required. Thus, it is likely that we will never hear of these cases through normal routes.  Any information on anonymous web sites should be treated skeptically at best.

We think Project Troglodyte might actually provide a service in this direction. We already have a fundamentally unconventional view into these issues. We inhabit a kind of twilight zone: not quite hardcore IPR professionals (though hangaround members perhaps), not quite average “persons trained in the art”.

If a patent frightens and confuses us, it will certainly frighten and confuse an average person. A patent attorney can take away a lot of of the confusion by explaining what the patent (possibly) means. But the attorney cannot take away the fright part.

Unconventional warfare calls for unconventional methods perhaps?

Acknowledgements: This posting benefited heavily from arguments raised by Niko Porjo.

Energiajäte ja hyötyjäte: Kuka mitä häh?

“Energiajäte on eri asia kuin polttokelpoinen jäte. Hommatkaapa ite tarrat astioihin.” —-  “Sekajäte nimenomaan on sitä poltettavaa jätettä…haloo.” —- “No HALOO kyllä säilyketökit on sekajätettä..” —- “Kun on vain yksi astia, sekajäte, joka menee nytkin jo polttoon.” —- Miksi meidän taloyhtiössä on edelleen oranssi energiajäte-astia ja harmaa sekajäte-astia?”

Who’s on first?   Normaalisti en naura kenellekään ja ikinä en siteeraa nettikirjoittelua, mutta nyt teen poikkeuksen. Juuri viime viikolla kirjoitin kierrätyksen hankaluudesta. Kuinka ollakaan, tämän viikon Kalevassa oli artikkeli jonka yleisökommentit kertovat enemmän kuin tuhat blogia (Kotitalouksien jätteiden lajittelu tökkii). Näistä kommenteista saisi pienin muokkauksin Kummeli-sketsin.

“Ei minulle ainakaan ole tullut mitään tiedotetta, että sekajäteastia olisi nykyään polttokelpoista jätettä sisältävä astia.”

“Onpas. Vai laitoitko sen kenties samantien (seka)jätteeseen?”

“Hyvä on laittaa kun laatikoissa ei ole merkintöjä ja lajitteluohjeista puuttuu ohjeet mitä saa laittaa poltttoon (kun polttoa ei mainita missään sanallakaan, mitkä laatikot menee ja mitä niihin saa laittaa), näin ainakin SATO:n asunnossa. 

“Jos nyt jutussa olisi ollut lista, että mitä saa laittaa ja mitä ei, niin ehkä olisin oppinut jotain. Sekajätteeseen menee meillä ainakin mm. säilyketölkit, saako niitä pistää?”

“Laita säilyketölkit metallin keräykseen.”

“No HALOO kyllä säilyketökit on sekajätettä.. kuka omakotiasuja viitsii kiikuttaa säilyketölkkejä kierrätyspisteeseen? Eri asia kerrostaloalueiden keskitetyissä kierrätyspisteissä.”

“Minulla on sopimus sekajätteen hakemisesta, ei energiajätteen.”

“Sekajäte nimenomaan on sitä poltettavaa jätettä…haloo.”

“Kun on vain yksi astia, sekajäte, joka menee nytkin jo polttoon.”

“Ehkä olisi voitu jakaa kotitalouksiin kunnon kierrätysoppaat niin tietämättömätkin osaisivat lajitella ja tietäisivät minne sen vaihdelaatikon voi toimittaa (ilmaiseksi) jatkossa.”

“Onhan ne jaettu, jo vuosikausia.”

“Eihän sinne sekajätteeseenkään saa laittaa mitä tahansa! Ne menee nykyään poltettavaksi nekin.” 

“Mutta kun sun sekajäte justiinsa meneekin polttoon…ilman että teet mitään. Ei sitä energiajätteeksi muuteta, se on mennyt Laanilaan kesästä asti.”

“Meidän taloyhtiön jäteastiassa on kyltti SEKAJÄTE, jos olisi astia nimeltä ENERGIAJÄTE niin muutkin ymmärtäisivät laittaa siihen vain palavia jätteitä.”

“Energiajäte on eri asia kuin polttokelpoinen jäte. Hommatkaapa ite tarrat astioihin.”

“No kun se sekajäte ON sitä polttokelpoista jätettä…eli nimenomaan sekajäte menee polttoon. Kahta astiaa ei tarvita. Vaihdat vaan tarran. Ilman tarraakin sun sekajäte menee Laanilaan eli turhaa meuhkaa…”

“Miksi meidän taloyhtiössä on edelleen oranssi energiajäte-astia ja harmaa sekajäte-astia,eri auto tyhjentää astiat..mikä järki tässä on??”

“Oranssiin energia-astiaan laitettua poltettavaa jätettä ei viedä suoraan Kemiran ekovoimalaitokselle eli sitä voidaan polttaa muissakin laitoksissa toisin kuin sekajätettä. “

“No nyt saa ilmeisesti tunkea syyskuusta alkaen roska-astiaan kuivaa risukkoa,kantoja jos lootaan mahtuu,muovia,lautaa,vaneria, polkupyöränrenkaan ym. polttokelpoista roskaa.”

“KAIKKI on polttokelpoista jätettä kunhan uunissa on tarpeeksi kuuma..”

“Mihin pannaan tavalliset roskiin menevät jätteet, jos sekajätteisiin saa laittaa vain polttoaineeksi kelpaavaa materiaalia?”

“Monelta on saattanut mennä ohi mediassa tämä ekovoimalaitokseen liittyvä muutos kotitalouksien jätehuollossa.” 

Niinpä.  Vakavasti ottaen, ei tämä ole mikään naurun paikka. En muuten halua nostaa juuri Oulun jätehuoltoa kepin nokkaan, pahoittelen. Kaikkialla on samanlaista.

Suunnittelun ykkössääntö: jos asiakas ei ymmärrä systeemiä, se on systeemin vika eikä asiakkaan. Jos käytettävyys puuttuu, puuttuu kaikki.

Oulussa ja muuallakin on nyt vapautunut eräistäkin suurfirmoista UX-eksperttejä (käytettävyysosaajia). He ovat nykyoloissa vähään tyytyväisiä eivätkä paljon laskuta.  Ja saisivat ehkä tilannetta selkeytettyä juuri siksi, että tulevat perinteisten piirien ulkopuolelta. Olisiko syytä harkita?

Aiempi kirjoitus: Energiajäte ja hyötyjäte: Ei energiahyötykäyttöön.

Jätteisiin liittyviä muita kirjoituksia: Jätteet

(Kuva: Sami Jumppanen)

 

Troglodyte: How farmers were punished for using a shovel

“Whether or not the cases had any actual merit, the farmers could not afford lawyers. They always caved in and paid a “licensing fee” of $10-$100 (real money in 1875).”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, please see the web page.

HOW FARMERS WERE PUNISHED FOR USING A SHOVEL

[Edited Appendix 2 on 30.8.2012 to suggest a more realistic cost estimate.]

The dystopia described in Trolling on the human rights  is no dystopia. I suggested there that patent trolls (companies owning essentially worthless patents for the sole purpose of extracting licensing fees) could start demanding such “license fees” for basic human rights such as clean water or education.

It turns out this has happened. It happened in the 1870’s, but similar patent mechanics apply today. Weaknesses in 1870’s patent law allowed ruthless operators to collect “license fees” from ordinary farmers who happened to be using shovels. The case is described by Gerard Magliocca (Blackberries and barnyards: Patent trolls and the perils of Innovation, Notre Dame Law Review, June 2007). [See Appendix 1 for more details].

HOW DID THE 1870s SHARKS OPERATE? 

The 1870 Patent Act loosened the criteria for filing patents. Pure design elements could now be patented, rather than functional elements. In other words, tiny (even ornamental) changes to basic designs could be patented and the patents enforced, and it was extremely difficult to know if a given product actually infringed the patent. Magliocca summarized the problem as being that “almost any farm tool could be classified as a design”.

This was quickly abused by patent sharks (as they were called then). By patenting tiny changes to essential equipment such as shovels, they could demand royalties, targeting individual farmers. Whether or not the cases had any actual merit, the farmers could not afford lawyers. They always caved in and paid a “licensing fee” of $10-$100 (real money in 1875). According to this site, ten dollars would have been a week’s salary for an urban fireman. In a  rural economy, this would have been a proportionately much larger sum of money.  Painful but not ruinous.

(I want to make a personal comment here. I do not consider patents as such to be the evil issue here. If someone uses significant money to develop, say, a truly new composite-material shovel that weighs a fraction of current shovels, they are entitled to protect it. It may not sound ethically nice, but at least it is not gaming the system, in the way that trolling is).

According to Magliocca, USPTO practices were changed during the late 1880’s so that pure design elements could no longer be patented. Shark activity was thus no longer profitable.

WHAT ALLOWS TROLLS TO THRIVE?

Magliocca sees direct parallels to today’s trolling situation, especially in software and business patents. He suggests three criteria that breed trolling behavior.

1. Substitution effect. It must be extremely difficult to find a substituting solution, either by bypassing the patents or by using a competing technology. Currently, software is dependent on multiple interacting modules, and redesigning one module can be too difficult to be realistic. On the other hand, in the 1870s, “there are only so many ways to design a shovel”. Once a patent had been granted, much anything could be alleged to infringe it. Since farmers needed shovels, they were open to attack.

2. Marginal improvements. When almost all patents look almost the same, it is difficult to know whether one is infringing or not. This is true of today’s software patents; it was true of design elements for shovels. When one has no prior way of actually knowing whether an infringement has taken place, going to court is a huge risk.

3. Cheap technology. Trolling only makes sense if it is very cheap to file and maintain patents, and owning just one critical patent can bring the targeted system to a halt. In the 1870’s the problems were due to the loose standards for patenting. Today, systems are highly integrated, and just one patent can block an entire system.  In both cases, a strong “portfolio” could be created by just owning one single patent.

Cheapness is also related to the ability to hold on to patents for a long time. In the 1870s, “inventors” could patent small design elements, and then allow the patents to stay inactive until they saw them actually being used.  Currently, this practice is discouraged by making maintaining a patent more expensive over time. However, Magliocca doubts whether the cost currently rises sharply enough.  See Appendix 2 for details.

COULD 1875 BE REPEATED IN 2015?

Patent weirdness today get the most press in areas which are, in my opinion, socially irrelevant. We could survive without pinch-and-zoom user interfaces on touchscreens. We could not survive without water. Could trolls start to interfere with, say, access to water?

I will focus on sensor systems needed to monitor and optimize irrigation. Such ensors are a crucial part of controlling irrigation and conserving water.  I will focus concretely on a patent which I have analyzed already (see Troglodyte: Cleantech 2). That patent is only one specific sample; there could be significantly worse ones.

1. Substitution effect. This might not seem like a severe risk, as a variety of sensor technologies that can be used.  However, patents in the core of data transmission protocols are difficult to bypass because of their very generality, and because a single patent on a small detail can block an entire complex system.  The Cleantech 2 patent certainly is in the category.

2. Marginal improvements. To exaggerate a little, all patents these days look alike. A small company won’t have the time or competence to estimate whether a case is valid. (Bizarrely, trying to do so could actually make things worse. If an infringement is judged to be “willful”, courts may triple the damages. In other words, if a company does try defend itself, in principle it risks being punished three times more severely.  It is a Catch-22). An average company confronted with the Cleantech 2 patent probably would have no idea what to do.

3. Cheap technology. Patenting is cheap compared to the possible profits (see Appendix 2). And the USPTO is in serious trouble with spurious patents. Companies can now file spurious patents in critical areas, and keep them quietly hidden away. The Cleantech 2 patent is a good example. It may (at least partly) be in force for the next twenty years. If someone during that time develops a good real-time system for optimizing irrigation using rain sensors, the patent could come to haunt them.

I truly don’t know if we could see a repeat of 1875. Magliocca’s criteria do seem to be satisfied. The magnitude of the risk is completely impossible to predict. It could lead to severe disruptions in the development of irrigation technologies; it could be a minor irritant that slightly raises licensing costs; or, nothing at all might happen.

However, the right time to start preparing for potential attacks is now, before litigation (or threat of litigation) has even begun. Whether anything can actually be done I do not know; but being unprepared is the worst possible option.

 

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APPENDIX 1: STATISTICS

It appears that Magliocca’s paper is the only major study of that case, and the subjective description is largely based on one historical paper from the 1940’s (however, the paper is backed by extensive legal references).  For the sake of general skepticism, I decided to see whether there are other sources that would support that description.

I made a Google Patents search for patent applications with the term “shovel” between 1860 and 1895 (Figure 1). There is indeed a dramatic peak after 1870, decreasing in the 1880’s. (I have no explanation for the secondary peak before 1890).

It is necessary to consider whether the growth could be due to general trends in patenting after 1875, rather than the specific shark effect. Figure 2 shows the number of patent applications, from USPTO statistics. There is more or less consistent growth throughout the same period. The peak in “shovel” applications is not related to any general growth of patent applications. The statistics are consistent with the shark hypothesis.

Figure 1: Number of patent applications with keyword “shovel”



Figure 2: Overall number of patent applications

 

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APPENDIX 2: HOW CHEAP IS PATENTING, ACTUALLY?

[Edit 30.8.2012: It was pointed out by an experienced reader that a more realistic cost for getting and maintaining a patent for 20 years is closer to 75 kUSD than 15 kUSD, if done properly.  I accept that the estimate below is unrealistically small. However, if a higher cost estimate is used, then part of my point is made stronger: doubling the lifetime of the patent only adds some 5-10% to the overall cost].

From the USPTO’s current fees, filing a patent costs in the ballpark of 1500 USD. If the patent is granted, an issue fee of about 1700 USD must be paid. There can be various hard-to-predict fees which may raise the cost considerably.

In order to maintain the patent, maintenance fees must be paid: 1100 USD at 4 years, 2900 USD at 8 years, and 4700 USD at 12 years. The patent is then valid for 20 years. (The prices can be halved for small entities such as individual inventors). The absolute minimum cost to maintain a patent for 20 years is in the ballpark of 12,000 USD. A practical estimate is at least 15,000 USD, including patent attorney fees.

Magliocca notes that the purpose of the maintenance fees is to make it sharply more expensive to maintain patents for long periods. However, he suggests the rise is not sharp enough. Indeed, given the the initial filing phase also includes requires the patent application to be written by a patent attorney (not cheap), a good ballpark estimate is that the patent has already cost at least 6000 USD by the time of the first renewal, and there are no significant attorney fees after that. A large part of the money has thus already been spent up front.

In practice, maintaining a patent for eleven years easily costs about 10,000 USD, while maintaining it for the whole twenty years costs only 5,000 USD more. This does seem like a no-brainer: if there is any potential, one might as well go the full twenty years.

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