Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
,----[ Quote ]
| Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by giving something away
| is no longer radical. But until recently, practically everything "free" was
| really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You'd
| get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd get a product free only if
| you paid for a service.
|
| Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new
| model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one
| product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is
| falling fast.
`----
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all
A Pending Threat to Patents
,----[ Quote ]
| A case before an appeals court could make it harder to win legal protection
| for business methods
`----
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_09/b4073068471067.htm?campaign_id=yhoo
Bad, bad lobbyist:
Are Patents Headed For Extinction?
,----[ Quote ]
| Successful free enterprise requires an effective system of property ownership
| rights. Economists like Hernando de Soto believe that such rights are the
| underpinning of capitalism and explain how for decades America's strong
| patent system has fostered economic growth and innovation in the face of
| intensifying international competition. Although many factory jobs have moved
| overseas, knowledge workers have enjoyed improved living standards in the
| United States.
|
| That picture will change for the worse if the Patent Reform Act of 2007
| (S.1145), now being considered by the Senate, is enacted in its present form.
| This bill, together with two recent patent-unfriendly Supreme Court rulings,
| represents one of the worst assaults on intellectual property protection in
| the 218-year history of our patent system.
|
| [...]
|
| Joe Kiani is the founder and CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based Masimo.
`----
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/22/patent-laws-kiani-oped-cx_jki_0225patent.html?partner=yahootix
Related:
My Dumb Software Patents
,----[ Quote ]
| The first patent was provisionally filed in 2000 and has been "in process"
| for the last 8 years. Yes, I said 8 years. Many think that Software Patents
| are stupid. I conceptually agree with this statement. Having spent what seems
| like millions of hours constructing these, baby sitting them, defending them;
| it is really all wasted time and effort, at least in a conceptual sense.
| There is no way for a software engineer or system architect to have any idea
| what exists out there to either copy or avoid (whatever the motivation).
`----
http://falseprecision.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/my-dumb-softwar.html
Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
,----[ Quote ]
| A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims
| that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking
| almost any participation by the small business community.
|
| Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for
| competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by
| large corporations and the patent industry.
|
| [...]
|
| The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and
| Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report.
| But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the
| report in any way
|
| [...]
|
| Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community,
| said that he found the report useless: participants were told that
| all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only
| those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/99155/big-businesses-boast-of-patent-benefits-for-small-businesses.html
When Patents Threaten Science
,----[ Quote ]
| Patents should not be used to protect laws of nature, products of
| nature, or mathematical formulas.
`----
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/314/5804/1395
|
|
