The Case for Software Patents

It's become popular lately to call for the elimination of software patents.  Tim Lee at Forbes sounded the call last month (link), and this week Mark Cuban joined the chorus (link):

"Because of software and process patents any company could be sued for almost anything. It is impossible to know what the next patent to be issued will be and whether or not your company will be at complete risk. It is impossible to go through the entire catalog of patents issued over the last 10, 15, 20 years and determine which will be used to initiate a suit against your company."

I have a ton of respect for many of the people arguing against software patents, but I disagree strongly with their arguments.  I think software patents play an important role in encouraging innovation, especially by small companies.  The loss of them would make it harder for small companies to survive, and would discourage fundamental innovation in software.

The online debate about software patents is very contentious, and much of it focuses on philosophical issues like the nature of software and whether that's inherently patentable.  The debate also often gets mixed with the contention that all software should be free.  I'm not going to get into either topic; the arguments are arcane, sometimes quasi-religious in their fervor, and besides they've already been debated to death online. 

What I want to focus on is the broader issue of the economic role of patents and how that applies to software.  The patent system is designed to encourage innovation by giving a creator a temporary monopoly on the use of an invention.  Does that mechanism work in software?  What are the problems?  And what's the best way to fix them?

When you take that perspective, I think it's clear that there are some genuine problems with software patents.  (Actually, there are problems with patents in general, and software is just the most prominent example.)  But I think there are better ways than a ban to solve those problems.  To me, banning software patents to solve patent problems would be like banning automobiles to stop car theft.  The cure is far worse than the disease.

The value of software patents

Let me start with a personal example.  As I've mentioned before, I'm working on a startup.  When we brief people on what we're doing, one of the first questions we get is, "how will you prevent [Google / Apple / Microsoft / insert hot web company here] from copying you?"

A big part of the answer is, "we've filed for a patent."

A patent isn't magic protection, of course.  It might not be granted, and even if it's granted, patents are difficult to enforce against a really big company.  But it reassures investors, and more importantly if a Facebook or Google wanted to copy our work, the patent makes it safer and quicker for them to buy our company rather than just ripping us off.  So it helps to protect the value of our company.

Without the patent, I think it could be open season on us the moment we announce our product.

Advocates of eliminating software patents say there are other ways to protect software companies.  The first is that software can be copyrighted.  That's technically true, but the only thing copyright protects you from is word for word theft of your source code; it does not protect inventions.  For most software innovations, copyright is no protection at all. 

The second argument is that small companies should move quickly, so the big companies can't catch up with them.  The idea is that if you move fast enough, you won't need patents.  I think there's a consumer web app bias in that advice -- it works best for small apps that can be adopted quickly, or that have a strong social effect (so the user base is part of your competitive protection).  It doesn't work well for software tools that have a slower adoption curve.  The more complex and powerful the software, the slower the adoption cycle.  This is especially true for enterprise tools.  Without patents, those companies are exquisitely vulnerable to being ripped off soon after they launch, when they're just starting to gain word of mouth. 

So for companies creating new categories of software, and especially for enterprise software tools, I think patents remain the best (and really only) protection from theft.

But what about the damage being caused by abuse of the patent system?  If we keep software patents, are we then endorsing those abuses? 

I don't think so.  In the articles I've seen, there are two primary arguments for eliminating software patents: Trolls and patent warfare.  They need to be discussed separately.

Discouraging patent trolls.  The troll problem is something we all know about: patent licensing companies buy large collections of patents and then extort fees from companies that had no idea they were violating the patents.  That's the core of the problem Mark Cuban was talking about above, and it is outrageous.  These surprise lawsuits can have a devastating effect on smaller companies that can't afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves.  Even if you're in the right, it can be so expensive to defend yourself that you just have to give up and pay the license fee.  That definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, it is contrary to the intent of the patent system, and therefore it needs to be restrained.

But I think the answer in that case is not to eliminate software patents; it's to restrict the right of "non-practicing entities" (patent trolls) to sue for patent infringement.  That would still have a financial effect on small companies -- in the case of my startup, it would make it harder for us to sell our patent if we wanted to.  But patent law exists to protect the process of innovation, not to protect inventors for their own sake.  If you can't put your patent to good use, you aren't contributing to the public good and you shouldn't get the same level of protection as a company that has built a business around a patent.

Patent warfare is a very different issue.  Several large tech companies are using patent lawsuits to slow down competitors and pull revenue out of them.  Eliminating software patents would not stop these wars; they're also based on hardware patents, antitrust law, and any other field of law that the companies can apply.  It's like one of those cartoon fights in a kitchen where a character opens up a drawer and throws everything inside it. 

 
Yeah, like that.

The underlying problem here isn't about patents; it's about the use (and abuse) of the legal system as a competitive tool.  I've had more involvement in tech industry legal wars than I want to think about: I gave depositions in the Apple-Microsoft IP wars, and I testified in Washington in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. The overall experience left me plenty cynical about the legal system, but it also persuaded me that big tech companies are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves in court.  They do not need our help.  You should think of lawsuits as just another way that tech companies express love for one-another.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Android vendors being sued by Apple, but a lot of it is their own fault.  HTC in particular has no one to blame but itself for its situation, in my opinion.  HTC was one of the first companies in mobile computing, creating PDAs for Compaq and early smartphones for Orange and O2.  I've got to believe that if HTC had been thinking clearly about patents, there are a lot of fundamental mobile inventions it could have patented.  Then it would have had a big enough patent portfolio to force a cross-licensing deal with Apple.

The same thing goes for Google.  When it decided to enter the mobile OS business, it should have expected that it would end up at war with Apple and Microsoft (heck, anyone could have predicted that).  Google should have bought up a big mobile patent portfolio (like maybe Palm's) back when they were inexpensive.

Are we obligated to change the patent laws just because Google and HTC were careless?  No.  Is it in the public interest for us to intervene anyway?  I doubt it.  Here's how the mobile patent wars will play out:  The big boys will do a whole bunch more legal maneuvering, they'll scream bloody murder, and in the end one of them will write a check to the other.  Then they'll all go back to work.

My advice: If it bothers you, stop reading the news stories about it.  Or sit back and enjoy it as theatre.  It's hardly an important enough issue to justify stripping the patent protection from every small software company in the US.

A world without software patents

If you want to understand the importance of software patents, go back and talk to the first people who patented software.  That's what I did.  Two years ago, I corresponded with Martin Goetz, holder of the first software patent (link). 

Goetz was a manager at Applied Data Research, one of the first independent app companies in the 1960s.  ADR made applications for mainframes, and IBM copied and gave away a version of ADR's Autoflow application (the first commercially marketed third party software app).  ADR might have been wiped out, but it had patented Autoflow, and it was able to successfully sue IBM.  That lawsuit, plus a related one by the US government, laid the foundations of the independent software industry by forcing IBM to stop giving away free apps for its mainframes.

The lawsuits involved a lot of legal issues, including antitrust, so you can't say that software patents alone led to the birth of the software industry.  But I think it's clear that patents helped codify the value of software independent from hardware.  If that value hadn't been recognized, the antitrust suit would have been meaningless because there would have been no damages.

So antitrust and patent law have worked together to help protect software innovation.  Antitrust helped to restrain big companies from giving away free competitors to an app (although that protection has eroded lately), while patents restrained big companies from copying apps directly.  It's like a ladder.  If you pull out either leg, I worry that it won't stand.

In his online memoirs (link), Goetz makes the case that application innovation was slow and unresponsive to users in the decade before software patents, and accelerated dramatically in the decade after.  I agree.  That is exactly the sort of innovation that patent law was meant to encourage, and so I view software patents as a success.

Without software patents, I think it would be far too easy to go back to the bad old days when the big computing companies walked all over small software companies, the software industry consisted of only consultants and custom developers, and software innovation moved at a much slower pace.

_____

More reading:  Software entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham wrote a nuanced and detailed take on the subject here.  Some of his conclusions differ a bit from mine, but the essay is well worth reading.

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Review: TeamWox Online Team Collaboration Software

Here at TechGeeze, we have reviewed software that cater to enterprise-level clients. There are business, process software, organizational software and there’s the collaboration software. And as the title suggests, we’ll be reviewing a collaboration software this time around. Basically, this kind of software allows businesses and companies to have tasks, processes and even documentation to be “collaborated” to have great team dynamics within the company to work. This means that these components should be well organized and be transparent enough that team members will have an idea of how their individual tasks fit in to the overall picture of the team and eventually, the company.

And to make things easier for business to do these, TeamWox offers their Online Team Collaboration Software. For those in the industry, think of it as a team room or for a more common term, a repository where members can store documents, see the team structure, exchange information and other functions that are essential to the performance of the team. How does it fare to the other ones we’ve reviewed before. Head on below for more.

User Interface

As with most web-based business collaborative software, the interface for TeamWox uses a tab-based layout, allowing users to have easy access to which kind of task they’re going to do. The main administrator is allowed to customize which tabs are to be displayed per user or group. Each tab is assigned a module that the administrator can then tinker for further customization. And as seen in the following screenshot, the left pane contains all the options that can be modified in this software:

Features

The collaborative software, as mentioned, is divided into key modules that will handle the various tasks that each department/user group may have. The included ones are as follows:

1. Human Resource Management (HRM)
2. Tasks
3. Documents Management (DocFlow)
4. eMail Client
5. Organizations & Contacts (CRM functions)
6. Message Board (Forum)
7. Corporate Search Engine
8. Reports
9. Online Assistant (Chat)
10. Service Desk (HelpDesk)
11. Accounting and e-Bank
12. IP PBX Phone System

For this review, let’s try to see how TeamWox delivers in terms of each component.

Human Resource Management

Now it won’t be a collaboration software without people that will actually collaborate, that’s why one of the main focus TeamWox has placed is into the resource management module. Like other management tools, it allows you to place users as members of the pre-defined teams or just create your own to suit how the company structure works. Each user then has the capability to perform tasks, has his/her own calendar to for better scheduling of priorities, log the number of hours spent on a project and even keep track whether the resource is actually working or not.

Collaboration also comes with the tool’s built-in mini-social networking engine. With this, users can integrate external accounts such as Yahoo! and Skype to the tool. And if you want to limit collaboration to the tool itself, they’ve provided a chat as well as board functionality so that users can interact while still maintaining security that might be compromised when using other social networks.

Tasks

One of the more core functions of this tool is how it manages tasks. Tasks can be anything, from meetings to reports to reminders and even documents. These tasks allow the collaboration concept to work by effectively managing which person does what, which team is responsible for what and so on. The key element to these tasks lies within the interaction that the team members have during the duration of the task. Let’s say you have some details that was raised in the task but wasn’t able to note it, just look at the archive of that task and it will be noted. You can also keep track the hours spent on the said task and more importantly, the people involved.

Documents Management

Documentation has been a key element to every team and every company, thus it is important to have a way to check in and track the documentation each team has. Whether it is for process adherence or just to upload a new tidbit of information, documentation is always important. TeamWox handles documentation just like with any other tool should be. The tool allows you to upload/download documents, annotate them and keep a consistent version management for any changes.

Each document can also be delegated to a specific team or user to view and modify. This way, there would be an overall control as to which ones can view a specific document. It integrates well with the team-based collaboration of the program. Another aspect they’ve added is the integration of a workflow functionality in the documentation module. Typical tools have a separate workflow function but TeamWox decided to include it in the documents. It is common to have documents pass through a series of approvals given a business process, and it is done well with this tool.

And with the social integration of the tool, users can place comments in each document to further promote the collaborative aspect of the tool.

eMail Client

Ok, we all know that companies have their own email clients and servers, why does TeamWox have to provide its own? To answer that, while the tool indeed provides a client, users can use it without having to create a dedicated TeamWox email, though that can still be possible.

Sticking to the collaboration model, existing email addresses of the users can be easily integrated through the email client of the tool. Furthermore, users can create their own mailboxes that could automatically segregate email depending on who sent it and to which department or group it is intended to. Another aspect of this collaboration model is the “assigned” mailbox. Instead of manually forwarding emails with details regarding tasks and what not, an email is automatically sent onto this mailbox once a task is assigned to a particular user. This eliminates the possibility of overlooking an assigned task because notifications weren’t done properly.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is becoming one of the more important modules to any business software as it is very important to have a database of contacts, vendors, customers and even potential clients. This applies to both companies and individuals that are connected to the said entities.

What’s the importance of having a unified database for all these contact information? For starters, while each client may have their own set of clients and customers to work upon, some responsibilities still overlap with other departments, and it would be very tedious to have a separate module just because of that reason when an administrator can just define some rules on how a contact or customer would interact with a certain department.

Companies can have multiple contacts and with this setup, documents and other related tasks can be easily delivered and forwarded to the concerned parties through a single notification of the customer name. Finally, the tool stores relevant history of any activity that the contact may have had for easier archiving of details that can be easily overlooked without this functionality.

Message Board & Chat

Aside from emails and documents, part of the team dynamics will involve real-time interaction. Now specific to this tool, it allows this through the use of their integrated message board and chat functionality. Both of these work just like any other board/chat feature but TeamWox actually adds feature to allow private meetings in lieu of actual physical meetings without letting non-members know of the details.

Reports

No business software would be complete without a reporting tool as this is the only way for executives to have a clear view of how everything is going. Reports in TeamWox are primarily based on the creation of accounting books and it is of utmost importance that those creating these books. It may seem daunting, well because it is, that’s why TeamWox has deeply integrated automation in the creation of these reports. Coordination is also automated depending on which department should be handled the report or which team should produce another report.

Depending on the nature of the data presented, the tool automatically determines how the report should be displayed. Figurative data over a relative period of time are often displayed graphically while tabular data are displayed in interactive lists where users can click on a detail for more information. Overall, the tool is effective in presenting reports even in its vanilla configuration, much more of it has been tailored to the business needs.

Support

And finally, for service-related products, after-sales support is very important and TeamWox has still this covered with their Service Desk module. This allows administrators to setup a dedicated help desk for generating tickets for the various products that the company is offering. The service desk not only covers external products offered by the company, it can also handle internal issues within the company. Let’s say a printer in this department doesn’t work, an internal ticket can still be raised to inform the IT department of the issue and they’ll be notified immediately. Just make sure that the configuration for the ticketing tool is setup correctly to properly differentiate internal from external issues. But overall, the module does what it should.

Final Thoughts

The primary advantage TeamWox has over similarly-offered solutions is how fast it is able to perform the needed tasks and how organized things can be. Yes the initial setup can be daunting to the number of users and groups and what not to be configured but once done, everything will flow smoothly. To the task assignments to the document flows and approvals and even to the message boards, TeamWox has hit it and if they say “collaborative software”, they mean collaborative software. Covering most, if not all, of the essential business aspects is important and TeamWox does it without having to be overly convoluted.

As such, TechGeeze recommends the TeamWox Online Team Collaboration Software to small/medium scale enterprises as well as organizations that needed some form of repository for their documents and activities. For more information about this tool and you can also try TeamWox for free, and launch in 1 minute.

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Aakash Tablet PC Specifications and features hardware and software

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The date of 5th October 2011 will be remembered in history as this is the day when union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal launched the most economical computing device ever in Indian History called the " Aakash Tablet".The prototype of Aakash tablet PC was made public in the month of july back in 2010 and the final device was officially launched on 5th October 2011.There is much talk in the Internet and electronic media that the prototype displayed last year was not even 1 percent of the final product.but despite all the contradictions the product look good and the most important thing is that it is available at affordable price of Rs 1750/-.So with this price tag it is surely the Cheapest Tablet PC in the world.Aakash Tablet PC is made jointly by UK nased company called Datawind in collaboration with  IIT`s .Here you can see the difference between the Prototype and Original Product being launched:Everyone who heard the news of the cheapest Tablet PC being launched is willing to buy the Aakash Tablet PC.We have already discussed Where to Buy Aakash Tablet PC in India ? in our previous post.Now it is time for pen down some of the Features and Hardware and Software specification of the Aakash Tablet PC.Aakash Tablet Hardware specifications:
- Processor: 366 Mhz. Connexant with Graphics accelerator and HD Video processor
- Memory (RAM): 256MB RAM / Storage (Internal): 2GB Flash
- Storage (External): 2GB to 32GB Supported
- Peripherals (USB2.0 ports, number): 1 Standard USB port
- Audio out: 3.5mm jack / Audio in: 3.5mm jack
- Display and Resolution: 7? display with 800×480 pixel resolution
- Input Devices: Resistive touch screen
- Connectivity and Networking: GPRS and WiFi IEEE 802.11 a/b/g
- Power and Battery: Up to 180 minutes on battery. AC adapter 200-240 volt range.
Aakash Tablet Software specifications:
- OS: Android 2.2
- Document Rendering
* Supported Document formats: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, ODT, ODP
* PDF viewer, Text editor
- Multimedia and Image Display
* Image viewer supported formats: PNG, JPG, BMP and GIF
* Supported audio formats: MP3, AAC, AC3, WAV, WMA
* Supported video formats: MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, FLV

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Datawind Ubislate 7 Configuration both Hardware and Software

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Datawind Ubislate 7 tablet powered by Android 2.0 will be released by Datawind in the month of November 2011.The Commercial version of Aakash Tablet 7 is likely to be priced at Rs 2999/-.Before buying the product ,buyers must have complete Knowledge about the Product like its features,specification and Configuration.In our previous post we have written about the Features of Datawind Ubislate 7 and now its time for publishing some information on the Hardware and Software Configuration of the Datawind Ubislate 7Connexant Processor with Graphics accelerator and HD video processorMemory Capacity of 256 MBStorage Capacity of 2 GB that can be extended to 32 GBUSB 2.0 support with 2 USB slotsAudio Out: 3.5 mm jack and audio In: 3.5 mm Jack7" Touch screen with a resolution of 800 X 480 Pixels.Internet connectivity with GPRS and WiFi IEEE 802.11 a/b/.Approximately 180 minutes of battery back up.AC adapter 200-240 volt range.Ubislate 7 is powered by Andriod 2.0 Operating system.It acts as Document viewer with following support formats DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, ODT, ODP.It acts as Image viewer that supports PNG, JPG, BMP and GIF Supports audio formats: Like  MP3, AAC, AC3, WAV, WMA Supports video formats Like MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, FLV

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Android Latest Update - Motorola Android Software Upgrade News

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