Along with Mark (see here) I went last Wednesday to the Society for Computer and Law’s surprisingly not very animated debate on whether IPR was good or bad in the software industry. Unanimated because there seemed to be a fair measure of agreement from all sectors. Distilled down these were:
- The question is wrong;
- IPR is just a game;
- In a free world, we would junk much of it. Pleased to see the back of look and feel, and much of the rest of it just gets in the way of the real competitive drivers: providing a good service.
Having got IPR, suppliers and customers have to live and work (and play) with it. If other suppliers accumulate patents, everyone does in order to be able to play the game. Negotiating ownership and exploitation rights in contracts is part of dance which has to be undertaken.
But really quite a lot of it does not seem to benefit the market. Everyone seemed pleased to see the back of look and feel in copyright protection. Many confirmed that patents were of doubtful strength or commercial value and an impediment to competition; and the advent of patent trolls in the software sector meant that the dynamics of the game had changed, and exposed suppliers to unjustified, but nevertheless, expensive challenges. And nobody really had an answer to a questioner’s challenge that the Gowers Review had suggested that there was no evidence that intellectual property had promoted innovation in the software sector.
At a time when we see the use of IPR related rights as a way of protecting from competition in the digital field should we be seriously worried that they are not providing any real benefit to innovation?
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