"You know the message
you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the
world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might
as well be comfortable.'"
- Jerry Seinfeld in ‘The Pilot’ (Seinfeld)
As John Paczkowski notes in today’s AllThingsD, Kodak has sued Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) for infringing on its patents for previewing photos and processing images of different resolutions.
I am so sick of these lame patent attacks by failing companies, where the essence of the 'innovation' is something obvious. Let's see. I take a digital picture and want to preview it. Stop the presses, I have split the atom!
I mean really, is this what Kodak, the pioneer and one-time leader of photography has come to, a patent troll? Is there no better indicator that Kodak is officially out of ideas?
Mind you, this follows Nokia, ostensibly the leader in mobile phone unit shipments, but looking mighty long in the tooth, also suing Apple for patent infringements related to iPhone.
If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.
But, it’s not just limited to the also-rans suing the BigCo Market leaders, for as Venture Capitalist, Fred Wilson (‘AVC’), notes (read the discussion thread in his post - it's great):
“Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No!”
We Need a New Litmus Test for Patent-worthiness
What we need is a new litmus test for what is patent-worthy. After all, it's pretty damn hard to credibly argue that society benefits when, for example, Amazon is awarded a patent for its "one-click ordering" business-process since gravity would have led to the same outcome in due course (i.e., it's obvious; the output of focusing on the best user experience, and the highest yielding path for converting an engaged prospect to a paying customer).
In other words, why treat patents like winning the lotto, with awards gained simply by virtue of buying a lot of tickets or being first in line?
Don’t get me wrong, though. I am NOT arguing against the merit of patents in general, as by contrast, when Amgen spends hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D on development of a new cancer-curing drug, they NEED a patent to protect against cheap generic copycats that would otherwise obviate the incentive for making the risky investment in the first place.
But, what Kodak is doing by suing Apple and RIMM is the equivalent of wearing sweatpants; namely, telling the marketplace that, “We give up. We are out of ideas,” and the legal system shouldn’t give them a free pass to do so.
Related Posts:
- Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard
- The Pitch Man: Must Read for Product Nuts
- Upward Mobility, Land Grabs and the iPhone Universe: Apple's mobile patent play and what it means to developers.