{"id":539,"date":"2007-04-20T19:34:14","date_gmt":"2007-04-21T00:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/?p=539"},"modified":"2007-04-20T19:34:37","modified_gmt":"2007-04-21T00:34:37","slug":"is-piling-up-patents-really-a-good-measure-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/04\/20\/is-piling-up-patents-really-a-good-measure-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Is piling up patents really a good measure of success?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/4\/6562865_7cd5cc3b85_m.jpg?w=840\" alt=\"IBM 64-bit core memory chip\" align='right' hspace='10' vspace='10' data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br \/>\nThe keynote speaker tonight at <a href=\"http:\/\/unhinderedbytalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/04\/20\/greetings-from-mics-2007\/\">MICS<\/a> is from IBM and is extoling the very significant accomplishments of IBM over the years.  He&#8217;s chosen, however, to place significant emphasis on how many patents are generated by IBM.  They apparently consistently lead in the # of patents generated per company in the U.S., and their presence in Rochester, MN, contributes to Rochester often topping the charts of highest per capita patents in the States.<\/p>\n<p>But is this really a good thing?  In the early days of IBM&#8217;s work in computing, the bulk of IBM&#8217;s patents would have been hardware, which is pretty reasonable.  Increasingly, though, these are software patents, which just isn&#8217;t a happy thing.  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Software_patent_debate\">To quote Don Knuth<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI strongly believe that the recent trend in patenting algorithms is of benefit only to a very small number of attorneys and inventors, while it is seriously harmful to the vast majority of people who want to do useful things with computers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Given IBM&#8217;s current crucial ties with open source initiatives, it seems particularly unfortunate that their long standing corporate culture continues to extol practices that work directly against the open growth and development of both the field and the public cultures surrounding them.<\/p>\nNo tag for this post.\n\t<h4>Related posts<\/h4>\n\t<ul class=\"st-related-posts\">\n\t<li>No related posts.<\/li>\n\t<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The keynote speaker tonight at MICS is from IBM and is extoling the very significant accomplishments of IBM over the years. He&#8217;s chosen, however, to place significant emphasis on how many patents are generated by IBM. They apparently consistently lead in the # of patents generated per company in the U.S., and their presence in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/04\/20\/is-piling-up-patents-really-a-good-measure-of-success\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is piling up patents really a good measure of success?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-8H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":375,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/08\/23\/wikis-to-save-the-patent-office\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":0},"title":"Wikis to save the patent office?","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"23 Aug 06","format":false,"excerpt":"In a rare moment of potential sense in the U.S. patent, people are seriously discussing the possibility of using wikis to support the public review of patent applications. This is particularly exciting given the particularly sorry state of software patents, where lots of common sense ideas are granted broad, sweeping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":264,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/11\/28\/some-problems-with-captchas\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":1},"title":"Some problems with CAPTCHAs","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"28 Nov 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Mr. Tozier was kind enough to get in touch with an example of a CAPTCHA image (see right) generated by the plug-in I'm trying out, and I must agree with his assessment that only a \"scarce class of psychics, known for their ability to read around the corners and edges\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/02\/02\/umm-is-changing-our-domain-name\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":2},"title":"UMM is changing our domain name","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"2 Feb 05","format":false,"excerpt":"The marketing minions at UMM decided (quite sensibly) to change our domain from \"mrs.umn.edu\" to \"morris.umn.edu\" to improve \"name recognition\". While I quite agree with the intent, the timing and details of the the switch were perhaps less than perfect. Anyway, the deed is mostly done now, and it went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":704,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/18\/wonderful-little-film-about-paul-rand\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":3},"title":"Wonderful little film about Paul Rand","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"18 Nov 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Rand is responsible for a number of iconic pieces of graphic design (e.g., the classic IBM logo), and this is a nice short film combining examples of his work with short snippets that I assume came from interviews with him. Some great quotes include A work of art is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Art&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":349,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/06\/19\/just-busy-playing-with-the-cat\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":4},"title":"Just busy playing with the cat","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"19 Jun 06","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not dead, just busy with a thousand things (including playing with the cat). I'm up to my ears in playing sysadmin at home (any suggestions on Mac OS X backup systems for a collection of laptops and a desktop\/server box?), getting some photos printed for the PRCA (go here\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":450,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/02\/08\/some-cool-tips-on-paper-prototyping\/","url_meta":{"origin":539,"position":5},"title":"Some cool tips on paper prototyping","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"8 Feb 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Brian Ohs just pointed me at this fine article on using old school pen and paper to sketch out user interface ideas instead of more heavyweight options like sets of (static) HTML pages. This issue came up in my Software Engineering course last semester, with some groups going the HTML\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}