Correction: Thanks to Seb Schmoller for pointing out that the op ed piece is not, in fact, by Tim Berners Lee but by Timothy B. Lee. Very different guy. Nevertheless, the points made by…um…the other Tim Lee are no less valid than they would have been coming from The Man Himself.
There’s a great op ed piece in the New York Times by Tim Berners Lee Timothy B. Lee on the impact of software patents, drawing on a 1991 quote from Bill Gates:
Microsoft sang a very different tune in 1991. In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.” Mr. Gates worried that “some large company will patent some obvious thing” and use the patent to “take as much of our profits as they want.”
He goes on to use the Verizon suit against Vonage as an example of why he believes Gates was right then and is wrong now:
The Gates memo predicted that a large company would “patent some obvious thing,” and that’s exactly what Verizon has done. Two of its patents cover the concept of translating phone numbers into Internet addresses. It is virtually impossible to create a consumer-friendly Internet telephone product without doing that. So if Verizon prevails on appeal, it will probably be able to drive Vonage out of business. Consumers will suffer from fewer choices and higher prices, and future competitors will be reluctant to enter markets dominated by patents.
There’s no mention of the education market in his editorial, but the inference is not a hard one to make regarding the dangers to our industry. This is a great piece to share with anyone in education who has questions about why people worry about edupatents.
Actually, I’m not related to Mr. Berners-Lee.
Noted and corrected. My apologies, sir.