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It is way past time for a worldwide IP system of copyrights and patents of many types and flavors. The current IP system has become a costly, even dangerous mess. One thing it is far to simplistic for the complex world we live in. IP protection should be of various lengths of time, depending on how advanced and relevant it is and some type of licensing system needs to be attached so technological advancement is not used as a weapon as it is possible to use control of IP for conquest. The importance and value of IP of all types is increasing at a rate no store of value in the past has ever experienced. This is already changing every aspect of our lives personally, health wise, career wise, our freedoms and political systems. If not handled properly mishandling of this trend could lead to economic and physical destruction through new types of warfare that will morph out of the technologies we have created. Cyber war is just one of the many incantations of warfare that has been invented, with many more types to come. We must take ownership of the changes we wrought for they can be of great benefit or great harm and the choice is ours. IP without responsibility by definition is irresponsible.
Thoughts, comments and observations on this solicited and wanted. This process needs to be started in many places and I feel SemiWiki is just one of many ideal places to start people thinking about this.
One of my personal thoughts on this is about the intersections of finance, economics and IP.
Mixed feelings. On the one hand I generate IP including 30 or so patents. On the other hand I have done patent searches for a few of those myself and it is simply shocking how bad the state of documents is. I have found very high rates of overlap filing, different ways of stating the same (vague and often pointless) idea, sometimes even done by different people in the same company. Then most of that just sits there unused. It could be compared to minefields which become useless no-mans lands, except that may overstate the quality of what is out there.
So I would be more enthousiastic with a system that works. I try to be conscientious and I do see some really nice, clear, consequential patents in the system at times, but clearly the administration of the system is far from ensuring good quality. And I don't think most of the junk is malicious, mostly things are earnestly written, they are just written by people who have no idea what the prior art is. Indeed the less they know, the more unlikely they are to describe it using regular terms of art, and it seems that often leaves the examiners baffled.
Perhaps new technology will help. Patent searching online is now a lot more powerful than it used to be. It is not clear how much of that is available to the examiners.
The benefit vs. harm to society depends a lot on that quality ratio.
This might just be the right thread for my first post. I am currently working for a company dealing with securing digital identities to put it in General terms.
Most of the current markets can be served with physical Hardware (asics). Nevertheless digitalization renders provisioning/handling of IP and corresponding partnerships more and more important.
This, in turn, will increase the power and value of IP even further.
If anyone can share a good read on IP handling in the semiconductor industry (be it white papers, books, blogs, vlogs, Forum posts) that help a newbie to learn the Basics of the business, I`ll highly appreciate!
Tanj, I agree completely. The value of IP is increasing at a dramatic rate in all fields and the amount of resources of all types devoted to creating new IP globally has increased to the point the current system of handling IP is so obsolete it is now creating problems on a larger and larger scale to the point it is actually slowing down progress and creating serious conflicts. Only a world wide system has any chance of cleaning up a mess that is getting to the point we are literally having IP wars that could rapidly escalate in their ability to create economic, social and political damage.
