David Lawrence
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Jim Giberti] “Problem is they’re so broke from fighting an ongoing patent battle with a big lighting company that a product that might literally revolutionize industrial and corporate lighting wallows as cheap chinese competition continues unfettered.”
But Jim,
[Bill Davis] “He got run over by more sophisticated competitors and became collateral damage. That’s a simple fact of business life.”
Besides, the lighting industry is bigger than ever! Profit!
Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’ll shut up now. 😉
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David Lawrence
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[Chris Harlan] “THAT was marvelous!”
LOL, YES!
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David Lawrence
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Sigh.
Let me make this simple for you.
Apple did not invent multi-touch or pinch-to-zoom. This is a fact. Please see the Jeff Han video above.
Apple absolutely deserves its success for bringing multi-touch and pinch-to-zoom to the market. But it absolutely does not deserve the power to force competitors to pay a high tax on or cease using technologies it did not invent.
That’s we’re talking about.
The US patent system is broken. Especially for software. It creates as much incentive for patent trolls as it does for true innovators.
The current 20-year lockdown on foundational computing methods is insane. EFF has some outstanding ideas on how to make things better.
[Bill Davis] “That’s an opinion. Which is fine. “
and you know what they say about opinions…
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[Michael Gissing] “history tells us that the mouse was taken by Jobs after seeing it at PARC. Xerox did market a computer two years before Apple with a GUI and mouse. I was only wrong that it was a two button mouse they sold. But don’t trust either of our memories and check WIKI as the mouse was independently developed a few times decades before PARC anyway.”
That’s correct. The mouse was actually developed at Stanford Research Institute and first demonstrated to the public on December 9, 1968 by Douglas C. Engelbart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs
Engelbart and his SRI colleagues demoed not just the mouse, but the graphical user interface, dynamically linked files, hypertext, and live on-screen collaboration. This demo is now dubbed “The Mother of All Demos” because in 1968, Engelbart and his team showed the world the future of computing.
Try imagining what that future would look like today if everything SRI demonstrated in 1968 had been patented out of the reach of others to build upon and refine. This is the point of Kirby Ferguson’s brilliant Everything Is A Remix series.
Software patents are bogus.
BTW, when I was at LFL in 1987, Apple had Engelbart visit and consult with us on our work. One of my most cherished memories is of giving him a private demo of our early NLE and just getting to talk with him about the history and future of the mouse and computer interface. He is a gentleman, a true genius, and a giant in the history of computing.
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David Lawrence
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Awesome. Thank you.
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David Lawrence
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[Bill Davis] “You’re actually saying that the software industry is not healthier and generating more income today than it ever has in history?”
Yup. I don’t equate software patent monopoly profits with a healthy software ecosystem.
[Bill Davis] “I’d LOVE to hear any statistics or facts to back that up. “
Well, for starters, here’s a report you can read from the EFF that estimates that over 11 billion dollars a year is wasted in software patent lawsuits. Guess who pays that bill? Maybe you can explain how this waste is good for innovation and consumers.
The fact is if you’re a small company starting out in the garage, your innovative product can be crushed before it even hits the market if another company wants to go after it. All they have to do is hold a patent. They don’t even need to make a competing product. This happens all the time. Here’s just one example.
No one’s arguing that companies should be able to steal source code and sell copies of other’s work as their own. The problem is that the US system grants overly broad patents to foundational computing processes and uses. This creates software monopolies. Monopolies are bad for choice and for innovation.
The system is broken. Software patents are bogus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ_______________________
David Lawrence
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[Chris Harlan] “Careful, now. You need to grasp–however difficult it might be–that Bill has a patent pending on the “condescending “Uh,…” and that he’s not afraid to use it.”
LOL, thanks for the reminder 😉
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David Lawrence
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[Bill Davis] “Uh,
In the first quote the subject is an IDEA.
In the second quote the subject is a PRODUCT.
Why is this a difficult concept to grasp?”
Wrong.
The first quote refers to specific technologies. These technologies were “stolen” because they were developed before technology companies learned to abuse a broken patent system.
The second quote reflects the hypocrisy of a company that owes its very existence to “stolen” ideas.
When I was at Lucasfilm in the late 1980’s, my team and I were doing interactive software design research for Apple. I’ve been part of and have watched the software industry evolve for decades. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about and it has not changed for the better. Quite the opposite.
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David Lawrence
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Looks interesting! Any plans for a Mac OS version?
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David Lawrence
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[Michael Gissing] “If Xerox had patent protection like you espouse, then Apple would never have happened. We live in an age that has benefited more from the fact that until recently software couldn’t be patented. If you think the era we live in is because of patents then you really don’t know this subject.”
Well said and exactly right.
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David Lawrence
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