On the ongoing subject of Patent Reform

The ongoing subject of Patent Reform has pushed my buttons a bit;
"White Board: Austan Goolsbee on Patent Reform"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/07/white-board-austan-goolsbee-patent-reform

The subject of the U. S. Patent system and far more generally, giving credit for the contributions of ideas and the development of physical means to explore application of those ideas, has been of interest to me. And decades ago I had read of calls for revision of the Patent system, although just how to do that were not described.

I recall back in the '60's when I had a couple ideas that I had suggested to my employer, who eventually wrote me a release for them, a friendly co-worker who had once worked as a patent lawyer, told me that a patent does not protect one's idea, it only gives one a right to sue those who use the idea after you have a patented granted on it. He said the only useful patents were for processes, and the patent also written to not include some key part of the idea so others could not really copy it from the patent data.

Plus even back then the cost of a patent was huge, many months of my salary. (My then-wife, who was very pragmatic and preserved only "#1," who I so desperately needed as my mate, always demanded my uncashed but signed paycheck, and in return I got $5 for lunches, and no other spending money ... she would not even allow me to buy a 4-function calculator while I was struggling to do my hobby project of calculating the materials stresses on my "Mooncable" anchored lunar tether to see if space-rated fiberglass would be adequate strength/weight ratio if designed with a constant-stress tapered cross-section, so I had months of hand calculation in my spare time and only had my slide rule as a help)

But later in the early 1980's when I worked for Shugart Corp, a division of Xerox, and had been promoted to have the Electronics Design/Development Engineer title (despite lack of a formal degree) I was in the loop to read the patent summaries that went around in the engineering department. Xerox and IBM had a mutual sharing of patents agreement, so the latest ones were listed there. I always really enjoyed reading those patent summaries, seemed to really brighten up my interest as a technically creative person by nature. Very stimulating reading. Those patents tended to be on electrical and mechanical things, which were both things I was long interested in and knew a lot about, so the patent summaries gave hints that instantly blossomed in my imagination for a few seconds, fun. So, I got a bit more acquainted with that subject.

And years before that, I had helped write the patent application wording that ultimately was granted, with the senior Electronics Engineer and I listed as the inventors, that eventually years later got granted. But I later heard that the company, Pertec Computer Corporation, only got the patent to prevent some rival company from seeing and patenting the idea and thus preventing Pertec ourselves from using it in our disk drives we developed and manufactured. (U S Patent 4,055,814 Abraham et al - I was the "et al" - "Phase Locked Loop for Synchronized VCO With Digital Data Pulses" - 1977.)

So, I have some awareness of the subject of patents.

I vaguely remember that back in the mid-1980's I had written up my ideas on how to possibly acknowledge all the idea inputs involved in making something new and useful. It went far beyond the original intent of the patent system. The patent system was originally created so as to give rights to the creator of some new product, often after years of tinkering on it, since there was a propensity for some other persons to just make money by copying the invention and selling it, cheaper because they had none of the costs of creating the idea and developing it into a manufacturable product, costs that would have had to be added to the product otherwise. Also the original patent was there with a time limit - 17 years I think - after which the patent would expire and everybody could then use its ideas; this encouraged inventors to disclose their processes in a patent, ensuring it was theirs for at least the 17 years, and to the larger system it meant that the ideas key to the invention would not be lost to civilization when the inventor passed away, as so often happened before then.

Yet as I pointed out above, a patent can be used to squelch the availability of an idea-based invention. This can be done by a company to prevent the use of a potentially rival technology, to keep it out of the competition; the patent would be gotten with no intent to actually make the products available to the customer base, but instead was gotten with the intent to prevent customers from utilizing those products, and thus would have to buy the company's established products. In 17 years the originator of the idea is likely to have perished from starvation or other neglect, so the advantages to such corporate stuff is likely to be permanent. There have been many stories floating around where this kind of thing was done, particularly in the automotive field, often said to have the motive of preventing fuel-saving mechanisms from being available to cars, so as to sell more of the highly profitable gasoline.

So, I think the subject of Patent Reform needs some heavy thinking and wisdom applied to it, far more than what is being now proposed by the Obama administration. But what they are dong is a good start, I think.

Perhaps I will re-think all the ideas I had for acknowledging all the idea input and craftsmanship involved in making an invention and producing it, and write them in this blog. I will let this urge stew while I go about my daily survival chores now.

Later - I need to point out that my purpose in this blog post is not so much as to point out rule changes needed in the patent system, but rather instead explore the need to find ways to encourage and support the idea-makers and creative crafts people that produce the innovations and inventions that are needed quite rapidly as civilization adjusts to its own expanding self, as humanity moves away from the animalistic hunter-gatherer predatory exploitative mode of life, and into the nurturing responsible mode.

Yet I realize that there is a tendency for some non-creative types of people to assume that inventions and their patents only come from the highly degreed (and highly paid) scientists & engineers who toil away in the bowels of some corporate lab, producing hugely complex and expensive prototype gizmos for the corporation to manufacture and make big profit for the investors; but exactly what the scientists and engineers focus on to invent for the corporation is only defined by the corporate managers, and the managers expect their defined patentable inventions to be produced as a result. Any other ideas the scientists and engineers might have are mere rubbish, wild cards, possibly disruptive jokers in the nicely laid out plans of the management staff, and are to be suppressed by every means. Management rules, period. Our system has painted itself into a corner, it seems to me.

Gone is the earlier notion that ideas for innovations and inventions come from the lone inventor who spontaneously comes up with ideas and then finds possible uses for them, preferably applied to some kind of endeavor he/she is interested in enabling happen. But that is the actual kind of thing I am attempting to encourage through reward of any and all who participate. This is what America needs to return to the fore in innovation. And yes, the corporate controlled scientists & engineers are also needed as part of that system too ... but just not being the top level of the system. The top level of innovation is the creative individual, whether a CEO or a janitor, an explorer of the nature of things, tinkerer with concepts and/or physical stuff with their hands, whose minds are busy integrating their lifetime of experiences to find matches of patterns produced in their mind, with patterns of needs and benefits that civilization would better thrive with as a result.

Most likely what is needed is to create a larger system to help promote and reword innovation of any and all types; the Patent System most likely would only be a subset of that system, dealing with only the aspect of protecting the efforts of those who toiled in mind and body to make some new innovative process or device that would help civilization, protecting them from those who would simply rob the invention and make it cheaper as a rival business to make money for themselves, not rewarding those who had produced the invention at all. Or, those business interests who would grab an invention's idea and patent it to prevent civilization from utilizing it, so as to maintain some pre-existing business products and services.

Exploring the mechanisms of how ideas come to be, seems a necessary step. Oftentimes we hear of ideas being produced in a generally similar time frame in far-apart areas of the world, too. Yet a patent is awarded to only one of them, excluding the others. How about a system that rewards all of those who independently came up with the same or similar ideas? Yet there are always copycats in the world; and indeed, our education system is based on copycatting the knowledge provided by others in the past eras; we tend to be thus conditioned to do that. And each innovation is built on other innovations, otherwise, to make a new Smartphone one would need to dig the raw materials out of the ground and figure out how to process the materials and put them together all the way up to the final assembly and test of the devices, all over again each time. So the ideas in innovation are actually a flow of ideas, being assembled this way and that in the mind or hand of the creative person, like clay that is squeezed in the fingers and the eye sees what it looks like as a result, and decides if that is interesting or not.

How to appropriately reward that kind of thing, regardless of when and where and who does it, seems to be the question.

The "Employment Agreement" that actually is to kill technological innovation in America

Although I endeavor to keep my posts fairly clear-headed and understandingly descriptive of the various sides of issues involved, my long standing irritation and frustration about the mechanisms whereby corporate business typically suppresses all technological ideas except those towards its specific products and then only if in total control of by those specific businessmen, this is a post where I have not first completely leveled my frustration and irritation at what I see as a major wrong-doing by the many large technical-oriented corporations which I worked for in my career in electronics; and no doubt the same thing occurs in most, if not all other large corporations in this country. And to be fair and balanced, indeed there are concerns that are probably valid for the corporations too, but the result is the over-reacting by the more powerful in the contest; and in the case of corporate business vs an impoverished individual, guess who is the more powerful.

Back in the Eighties I even wrote up what seemed to be a fair way to deal with the problem, but I could find no way to get it to the attention of people; even corporate management would be unable to evaluate it objectively as it put them in as the villains for the most part; and anyway they were too powerful to need to make any concessions. It did seem a potential solution; and indeed, if extended far enough, could supplant the now effectively rather useless patent system. Perhaps later I will add to this blog a resurrected version of that suggested solution.

For now, I am composing and posting what I see as the various aspects of a major problem in America; one that has not gone away simply by ignoring it; and I have seen it in a lot of instances over the past four decades and more.

Probably another reason that I have not written extensively on this major problem which the US faces, is that I would face more corporate-political wrath, and currently there is much rule by a run-amok business culture led by only the blinding guiding vision of maximum profits for the least effort... not to mention some egotistical elitism often involved in the mix. And corporate business can be ruthless toward the individual. (Another subject that comes to mind once again now is that of "Does might make right?" but I'm not going there now; one ultra-complex problem at a time please, if possible; even if they are somewhat interrelated.) So, here goes:

Contrary to an old adage, the world does not beat a path to one's door to buy your technological creative goodie from you; although you might return home some day and find it gone from your file cabinets and erased from your computer files; and more amazingly, though it may take years, eventually the last bits even gone missing from your bank safe deposit box (such as when banks buy each other out and physically move the bank with its safe deposit boxes; or, one gets foggy-minded unrelentingly about making the payment for the safe deposit box on time and rush to the bank to find they have drilled out your lock even though somehow they had ignored that you had finally made the payment on time.) These things have indeed happened to me; and "they" would no doubt now smugly say "prove it."

"Industrial espionage" is routinely and almost openly practiced among corporations, to find out what their competitors are up to, so as to help guide their own business plans; thus sicing the operators on an unemployed individual unprotected out there, is duck soup to those operators, masters of the arts of secretive snoop and deception.

Also, average people nowadays seem to require advertising sales pitches and some store to buy at; otherwise, there is nothing of interest to them. And, to businessmen, apparently they think that potentially competitive concepts must be suppressed, hidden and destroyed, so that they themselves will be able to continue to thrive.

It takes a large group to physically manifest and get a new thing to market; so it is reasonable for an idea-person to seek to get into good terms with a corporate business in hopes of figuring out how to communicate one's great ideas to the leaders of the business, and surely they would see the value and welcome one into the fold as one who helps guide what the corporate business does. Or so my naive Aspie mentality thought, rather stubbornly believing in the eventual wisdom and integrity of guiding businesspeople, corporation after corporation showed my that that image of business management was quite wrong, not just in the first unlucky try but in the other jobs with other companies too. Anyway, I also had to earn a living at the same time, so working in some lowly position (such as an engineering technician) for a corporation so as to have the opportunity to show them one's creative ability through ideas for new products for them so as to make things better for everybody, amazingly got automatically virtually destroyed when walking in through their door, when the so-called "Employment Agreement" had to be signed as a condition of employment, a legal document that declares that all of the employee's ideas and inventions of any kind whatsoever freely belong only to the employer (and the employer had no responsibility toward the creative ideas or to the employee, for their objective evaluation and development and marketing; the ideas were simply owned automatically and shelved, out of reach now by anybody.) Sign it or don't work; no work thus no way to pay bills or buy groceries. So, sign and hope they have better sense in reality. Nope; it generally was found to be a "casting pearls before swine" type result. (but not always; a few recognized and acknowledged my talent along the way, very rarely.) Lots of my concepts and ideas got ignored or rejected, and rarely did they later acknowledge that many years later the very thing I had earlier offered, was made into working reality by someone else, who additionally gave no credit to me. The company people were totally absorbed on the track on which they started, and to them the "employment agreement document" was just to ensure no one stole their pre-loaded company goodies. It all maintained the illusion that the company personnel, particularly management, were the only ones capable of improving the company's output, thus guaranteeing security in their jobs. Don't rock the boat, it is hard enough for them to keep all their ducks in a row.

So at this point, I can see a consistent pattern that ought to be noticed by Americans if they are going to fix the big mess we are no longer just potentially in; the mess is shouted on the front pages of the news nowadays. It is possible that the greatest cause of the collapse of America's innovative capacity, quite possibly the root cause of the "sick economy" recession ongoing, has been the unobvious so-called "Employment Agreement" required of most corporate technical workers. This "Employment Agreement" is a condition of employment at nearly all corporations, and stifles the grass roots of innovation, the people who are actually involved in the creation of technologies, unlike most manager mentalities, who are the ones directing what can be done by the technical types. The technical type workers, having to work for some corporation for a living, have all their rights to their spontaneous innovative ideas taken away from them automatically by their employers as a condition of employment; and the employers do not even need to take any action to develop those ideas they have forced away from their employees. Thus the stimulus for ideas for spontaneous inventions, the starting point for all great innovations as well as small ones, is crushed, and the technical types know it from when they have to start to work. Some states had passed laws against corporations to prevent them from controlling employees innovative ideas unless done as part of the paid assigned job; but the big corporations failed to obey the law, saying the employee would have to fight the company in court, and employees are there to earn a paycheck and have no money for lawyers and a big court battle over each little idea. Thus, the situation remained the same.

By crushing the baseline of innovation of Yankee Ingenuity, and having done it for probably half a century in America, the spirit of innovation has been crushed out of Americans.

The psychology of why corporations have done this is likely that managers do not understand spontaneous innovation, and see it as only interruptions to their planned out paths of bringing their predetermined products to market, is what the managers are paid for; and to make the implication that the employees will be stealing the company's ideas, makes them smug and covers up the theft the corporation is doing of the employees ideas, and the corporation has the money and power to control what happens. (I recall only meeting one employee who was such an idea-thief; and he was such a master of social deception that he e weaseled himself into the good graces of top management, while crushing the careers of the other employees from whom he had stolen their ideas.)

It is a real mess; and only America as America can fix it, since the corporations won't fix it because they see spontaneous innovation as something the managers rarely can do (and sometimes egotistically reinforce that attitude by using the word 'creative" in context to imply the meaning of "creative" is equal to "lying"); and they must keep their top esteem to keep their plush lives, managing to keep a steady-as-she-goes business as usual mode; that is their job. No wild cards of spontaneous inventions are allowed to foul up the nicely planned ultimate achievement of the company's original goals. But all the time, all the baseline innovations that the technical employees have as their nature, are getting told "NO!" at the instant of their birth.

Thus the only innovations that come to reality are those necessary to produce the originally-foresee goal product of the company. And, often that goal product is designed to make the company the most profit, not to provide the customer with the best product for the money, so even innovations the employees have are not welcome even if they relate directly to the job they are to do, blocked because it would be a disruption to the course of action laid out by management.

Is there a way to fix the problem, even if there were a way to get the corporate management to actually comply? That is a subject for some of the best of Yankee Ingenuity, if any sparks of it can be found still alive and functional. Possibly it can be declared (and fully somehow enforce) that all such "employment agreements" are absolutely null and void, and that the corporation is quite able to protect the innovations that it has actually employed and paid to be developed, through their virtual franchises in the field. Also, somehow every employee would need to be made fully aware of the new freedom thus given, which had long been crushed out of them, along with the awareness to not use company resources toward innovative ideas other than the minor costs of holding onto the idea until one can get to where the idea can be fully written to be remembered; ideas usually happen at any hour anywhere, unrelated to what is being done at the moment, and thus can also sometimes occur when on paid time at work; an idea often has to be jotted down at the instant of conception, ans the integration into a solution which the back of the mind has been working on, soon gets overwritten by ongoing attentions to teh tasks at hand. So those few moments are merely a "break time activity" to jot down the spontaneous inspiration for innovation.

Benevolent corporations could then find way to be a partner to employees in their innovative spirit renewed, as a company benefit, with invitations for the employer to be a partner in the development of the new inventions that would spontaneously start happening. But, it may take a long time for people to allow their creative spark to grow back into life again, even if it has not been stamped out completely.

And so then, with the grass roots innovator types having their hands now untied, eventually America can be grow to be the great innovator once again, something desperately needed to pull us out of the recession. Even if management then finds there are a few more things to do, so as to make a tiny space for the innovations' births and not strangle their growth; meantime keep on getting the corporate job done, even that might be done better with the employees no longer being so frustrated, and with renewed belief in a good working relationship with the corporation and its management staff, no longer feeling so much in a master-slave mode ruled by blind tyrants; but instead now as mutual cooperators understanding the special skills of each kind of person, whether manager or technical producer, all are needed to make it all happen. And those new sparks of spontaneous innovation of all kinds, can again have a chance at life, and some will become the new creations America needs to survive and thrive, originally totally unguessed by management.