06.18.11
Patent Policy Controlled by Giants Like GE and Apple, Not the Public
Electric lobby
Summary: More new evidence that huge corporations with tens of thousands of patent monopolies are those which also control policy
IF THE USPTO proclaims to be there to serve the public, then it sure does a shoddy job. Being the granter of monopolies, it merely helps shut the public out and artificially elevate prices for the benefit of huge businesses (and the billionaires who run them). The sooner the citizens realise this, the greater the opposition to the USPTO will become (especially the “P” in USPTO).
Last week we showed that Intel was attacking public interests while pretending to do the opposite. It argued that software patents were good for the public. What a shameful, shameful lie. The “IP” crowd echoes Intel’s message by saying (in this case) that “Intel on necessity of software patents. It has 45K patents worldwide and invests $300-500M year in #smallbiz”
There is nothing like PR, is there? For a company which is worth (market cap) almost 1,000 times what it claims to invest (for profit) in small businesses this is purely propaganda. And that says nothing about the small businesses that Intel crushes all the time, even by breaking the law and then shredding the evidence. We have covered this before.
The president of the FFII responds with:
@ballard_ip Smallbiz cannot compete with Intel on patents. I should challenge Intel on their claim of hardware == software
Another company which is even larger than Intel would be GE, which also promotes software patents and other stuff which harms Free software. Well, according to this new article, “GE Joins Apple in Urging Congress to Let Patent Office Keep Fees”:
Apple Inc. (AAPL), the AFL-CIO and Yale University were among businesses, unions and universities urging House lawmakers to include a provision in pending legislation that would let the U.S. patent agency control its own funding.
More than 150 companies, schools and groups sent a letter today to House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, expressing their support for letting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office keep all the fees it collects from users.
Conspicuously missing from this debate are representatives of the public. It just shows that to the USPTO the public does not matter. It’s not justified. The truth is, patents as a whole hurt the public in many ways, except perhaps members of the public who are highly ranked in some corporation like GE. Patents are for them. To the rest it’s just an issue that oughtn’t really exist. It is not just issues like cost of medical treatments but also minor things that relate to society and not purely cost; consider Microsoft’s patent’s on cameras that refuse to work (as a patent). Apple too making phones turn against their ‘owners’ based on this new article which says or at least asks, “Apple to ban iPhone concert filming?” Well, Apple is always serving the copyright cartel, which is abominable in itself. Well, now they pursue a monopoly on this Hollywood suck-up. Ain’t Apple a dreamy company? █
Disclosure: My sister and her husband work in Intel and GE, but I reserve no judgment because principles come first.
