Bonum Certa Men Certa

Myths and Hype About Patents

Patent hoarders crowned as champions of innovation

Florence



Summary: Distortion of history and fabricated reports about patents in the corporate media leave many people confused and ultimately unable to make rational judgment

PATENT news may not have been the top news as of late. There weren't many articles about the subject. Instead it was Oracle's copyright case escalated closer to the SCOTUS that made the news and dominated this theme of news. Oracle's attack on Android depends on it and Android is now the world's dominant operating system, so it's a big deal. The subject was very recently covered here, so we won't elaborate on it; instead we'll point out one of the earliest reports about it. The news is pretty much everywhere, not only in the West's Establishment media but also in the East.



"Those who claim that an innovation was made possible because of patents usually rewrite history (revisionism) about cases where there was innovation despite patents."In addition to the above there was also some media hype about patent statistics from the USPTO, perhaps the world's most lenient (as in low standards) patent office. Matt Levy took the opportunity to debunk mythology which favours and glorifies patents, even some of the most famous of them (like sewing machines, cars, and other industrial revolution items). Levy said that "with patent reform again on the horizon, we’ll be seeing a lot of articles like this one (promoted by this blog post). The article in question claims that there was no big patent holdup in the early aviation industry, that it’s all just a myth put forth by the U.S. government. As a consequence, you shouldn’t listen to anyone claiming that there are problems in the U.S. patent system."

We already tackled this piece of propaganda some weeks ago. Those who claim that an innovation was made possible because of patents usually rewrite history (revisionism) about cases where there was innovation despite patents. That's true when it comes to sewing machines and means of transportation. There's a history there that's full of disputes, retardation of innovation and suppression of small players using patents. Edison, one of the myth makers, is not an innovator but a person who used patents to abuse and exploit -- at times bankrupt -- real innovators. Big business like Edison's GE love to pretend that patents exist to serve the small people, providing them protection from large corporations. In reality, the very opposite holds true, almost universally.

Last week IBM made the headlines for being the 'leading' big corporation when it comes to amassing patents. IBM has a history of bullying other (smaller) companies using patents, so this is worth paying attention to. There were a lot of articles about it and they hail IBM as some kind of a heroic national enterprise because it is pushing pieces of papers, requesting that the government gives them patent monopolies, including software patents, as usual (the USPTO was headed by a man from IBM until not so long ago and he promoted software patents). Protectionism is not the same as innovation and since more than 9 out of 10 applications to the USPTO now end up enshrined as a patent, the total count of patents means little more than eagerness to do paperwork. When one single company can receive up to 10,000 patents in one single year it says quite a lot about how easy it is to obtain a patent in the United States' USPTO.

Bloomberg was quick to cover this [1, 2] (Bloomberg and IBM are not far apart) and the seminal report said that "IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty is still looking to newer areas like cloud computing and data analytics to reverse falling revenue and a projected decline in annual profit this year, the first drop since 2002. Last year, 40 percent of the company’s patents were issued for work relating to the company’s growth initiatives, IBM said in the statement."

This simply means that IBM is making fewer products but yielding more paperwork. What an utter waste of workforce. Well, later on it was News Corp. and CBS covering that too [1, 2] (we believe they covered it the earliest, except perhaps Bloomberg) and then came the noise. Microsoft spin came from Microsoft propaganda sites and larer came the Korean angle which favours Samsung.

We should also mention some disgraced reports (like this one from Bloomberg) which say that Samsung wants to get BlackBerry's patents. These patents have been decoupled from the other parts of the company (thus facilitating purchase like that of Motorola's mobility business). Not much was achieve except bumping a stock (maybe gaming the market for someone's quick fortune). We looked at these reports and found that they mostly lacked credibility and merit. Samsung already has wonderful hardware (cutting-edge, best bar none in some areas), a lot of patents, and at least 2 Linux-powered platforms. Samsung also hires FOSS and Linux professional these days, so why would it want anything from BlackBerry? Well, BlackBerry denies the rumour (denial not about the patents but about buying the company as a whole). Samsung also denies it, so we have not really covered it ourselves and we don't intend to; unsubstantiated rumour is what it looked like and given how quickly it received a lot of coverage (even trending in Twitter at one point) before denials it seems possible that someone in Wall Street pulled a profitable stunt at the expense of many other people. Opportunists exist not only where patents grow.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
 
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025