"Updating" Patents

To turn a page of a book is no longer free, because Apple owns it. Patent office gave Apple an exclusive privilege for turning a page on a scree. That is right, now you have to pay for the activity we have been doing since the very beginning of the existence of book, and only this is on your digital devices.  May soon we have to pay to have any thing on a screen?

A patent on such broad idea does not only fail to serve its original purpose of protecting intellectual properties, but also limits development on both technology and economy in the field of Information Technology.  Patent law needs to be reformed, and “software patent” should be the first to be eliminated.

Software patents, as indicated on words, are patents for programs that run on an electronic device.  But it is different from most of other patents that issued for hardware innovations.  Software patents often cover not the actual programs (there is something called copyright), but the general ideas behind the programs. For example, the famous Siri patent 8,086,604 from Apple.  Instead of granting patent for Siri program, it covered any “universal interface” that people can use to search across varieties of medium, such as Internet, without going through multiple search engines.  Then, as ridiculous as it can be, the famous “Google quick search box,” a function that has been in use for years, became a violation to Apple’s patent.  

Patent is now guns for those software gangsters.  Nancy R. Heinen said, “attitude was that if someone at Apple can dream it up, then we should apply for a patent, because even if we never build it, it’s a defensive tool." Just to show how software patent can be used as a weapon. Patent 5,715,314 excluded all “network-based sakes systems.” Patent 5,797,127is on the whole Priceline.com, and blocks any competitor in the field.  The ridiculous of all, Patent 4,949,257covers all purchase of software over a network. Software patents have become pistols for software monopolies, and serve none of patent’s original purpose.

For the patent’s purpose of serving as public recourse in order to help later inventors, software patent results in a completely opposite reaction. A single search interface may be great idea, but it covers so broad that it restricts all other Apple competitor from farther developing a better or different program of the same idea.  Now, for an inelegant programmer, instead of spending passion in developing a great program that would benefit many, he or she has to pay Apple or any other big software giants couple million dollars to gain access for patents, which do not even help or have anything to do with the development at all.

Moreover, software patents like the Siri patent also fail to serve the very basic purpose of patent.  That is to protect one’s intellectual works. But there is not intellectual work to protect.  Such ideas that are being “protected” can come up by anyone, who is frustrated after searching multiple search engines, or known by everyone who can turn a page. The only different between those people and Apple is couple expensive patent attorneys. 

In addition, software patent results in mass financial damages for innovators, especially individual programmers.  First, to file a patent in US, it takes about $40,000.  It is not affordable for many poor little individual software developers.  If that do not stop them, then, potential lawsuits from big lawyer-ed up software giants for sure will destroy the rest.  Keith Bergelt estimates, “win, lose or draw, it costs $3 to $ 5 million dollars to defend against a patent lawsuits.”  It is not the amount of money ordinary entrepreneurs can afford.  MichaelPhillips is one of the many victims lost his company not to patentedtechnology, but to a patent lawsuit. 

It is not even talking about patent lawsuits that are outside of courts. After Google bought Motorola, it demanded Apple to pay 2.25% of all its sells on devices that uses Wi-Fi for Google’s patent on the ideal of Wi-Fi.  On the same week, Apple’s $368 million went to VirnetX for the idea of having a camera filming the person while calling (FaceTime).  Software giant Apple may be able to afford this, but what about smaller companies and ordinary consumers? 

If the patent system stays where it is, it is not so long until the end of software development.  Then, only chaos of patent war will remain.  Software patents need to be eliminated before not turning a page, but even the idea of having software becomes a patent. 

Hacking Voting Machine

Election nowadays is a completely different story from decades ago.  Everything from campaign advertisements to polling analysis is all going digital.  Voting process is not an acceptation.  From the very first voting machine in 1920, voting machine was designed to fight voting fraud.  Now, many parts of the country use electronic voting machines. However, whenever things going electronic, there is the concern about security.  It is for sure harder to hack a voting machine than to tamper the old phone voting system, but it is not an impossible task.  Here is a youtube video showing how to hack a voting machine.

-->

Nowadays, voting machine is not the only concern people have in this brand new century.  Everything in our life is going electronic in a blink of eyes.  Information security on electronic devices becomes more and more important.  However, security is not a new problem specific to electronic devices.  It is also possible to hack old paper or phone system.  Electronic information is easy to carry, store, change and copy, which also make it easy to still and interference.  From this point of view, electronic seems made information unsecured.  On the other hand, instead of pills of papers, small electronic chips also made information smaller and easier to guard in the physical world.  So did electronic bring better or worse of security? 

Renewable Energy vs. Renewable Energy Policy

Another $249 million US government grant vaporized as A123Systems, a lithium ion battery manufacturer, declared bankruptcy on October 16th.  It is the one of the largest failures of green energy companies after the bankruptcy of Solyndra with $528 million government loan as part of President Obama’s alternative energy project of stimulus package.  Green energy technology such as solar photovoltaic is important for the future, but it should not be substitute or granted by government just for the purpose of increasing their capacity.  Instead the government should pay more attention on the development of the actual technology, such as investing more in research institutions, to improve its efficiency and reliability.  It is essential to make green energy a real competitor against conventional energy on both environmental and financial aspects.  Overall, the federal government can’t babysit clean energy forever.

Alternative energy is no doubt the future for energy industry.  It is not because of the climate change.  Many people may have a false assumption on the need to alternative energy is solely base on the possible cause-effect relationship between climate change and CO2 emission.  Therefore, people refuse to support alternative energy by arguing the cause of climate change is not proven to be human activity or CO2 emission alone. Like Governor Mitt Romney said in his speech at Consol Energy Center, “my view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”  His view may be true, but it proves nothing against developments of alternative energy.

Fossil fuel as a limited recourse is the real reason behind the need of alternative energy. Facing the rapid growth of world energy consumption, the end of precious fossil fuel is going to come.  When governor Romney said, “I will fight for oil, coal andnatural gas,” he did not realize that there will soon be no more oil, coal and natural gas to fight for.  The world needs to move on to another form of energy for its demands. 

Therefore, when president Obama supported developments of alternative energy as part of his the Stimulus package, it is like finally somebody know what is the right thing to do.  However, the result is not so right.  The Stimulus package did not only do the right thing of promoting clean energy, it also did bad thing, like loaning millions to individual companies, which turned out to be complete failures.   The share of clean energy in US barely passed 12% in 2011, after spent almost all of $90 billions.  Two large federal supported companies bankrupted, which lead to almost $800 million taxpayers’ money gone to nowhere. Moreover, for every MW-h of solar energy people use, more than $700 vaporized under the name of federal subsidies. Governor Romney may be wrong on his view on future energy industry, but his is right when he said, “in place of real energy, Obama has focused on an imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power the economy.”

One thing people have to realize is that building an unsupported frame of clean energy by pouring taxpayers’ money is not going to help the transition of energy industry in the long run.  It is going to collapse as soon as the money disappears.  Base on the national debts of US, it is not so far away.  The only way to strength the structure is to build a strong foundation, which is effective clean energy technology itself.  The only reason for the government to spend this much money in support is clean energy technology is unable to support itself on the market to compete with conventional energy on both efficiency and production costs.  The concept of free market is only in favor of strong competitors.  By thinking in the long term of clean energy development, it is critical for it to be able to compete in the market by itself without much government financial supports.  It is only can be achieved by improving technology’s efficiency and reduce production costs. 

In term of improving this new technology, no place does it better and science and innovation institute.  It was the National Renewable Energy Laboratory decreased costs of wind power production.  However, only $2 billions of Stimulus package went into science and innovation.  It is not a small amount of money, but the money could do better if instead of throwing money to a company, which major goal is to be profitable, it went into science institutions where innovation is the priority.