Apple鈥檚 suit against HTC pits patents against innovation
Eric Von Hippel, professor of technological innovation at MIT 聽on yesterday鈥檚 announcement that Apple is suing HTC and other mobile device makers for
鈥淚t鈥檚 a bad scene right now. The social value of patents was supposed to be to encourage innovation 鈥� that鈥檚 what society gets out of it. The net effect is that they decrease innovation, and in the end, the public loses out.鈥�
It鈥檚 interesting that the justifications of patents I鈥檝e seen (even from Objectivists) is on utilitarian premises 鈥� a justification of the 鈥渟ocial鈥� benefits of the patent system. But the evidence suggests the opposite 鈥� , not a benefit to both innovators and consumers. It seems like every day we hear about patent lawsuits being used to get monopolistic privileges from the government as a substitute for innovation.
The premises the patent system is based on are utterly out of touch with the modern world. The old notion of a new invention being state of the art for a decade is an outdated () way of thinking about the pace of innovation. Today鈥檚 latest innovations are taken for granted in next year鈥檚 products.
Inventions are increasingly becoming 聽and shape the next technological paradigm rather than detailed technical specifications.聽 Patent portfolios are becoming nuclear arsenals.聽 Full-out patent war against an equally matched competitor means mutually assured destruction (because it risks having one鈥檚 patents invalidated or having to pay huge damages and pull products from market), so large companies inevitably settle and use their patents to keep new innovators out.聽 This is why HTC is a safer target than Google, which created the software over which Apple is suing.
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