[TheMagicHorsey]

This problem won't be solved until software engineers organize, go to Washington DC, and demand reform. If we don't do that, our competitiveness over the next decade is going to take a hit. Its not like everyone in the world is loaded down with the same kinds of legal costs that we suffer here in the states. Chinese, Indian, Australian, New Zealand, Latvian, Estonian, and Brazilian startups are not a huge threat to us now ... in the future they will eat our lunch if our country fucks us in the ass like this moving forward. Why is an investor going to give me money in Silicon Valley, knowing I'm going to get taxed by a dozen or more trolls. He's going to take his money and shop for a foreign team first ... not now ... but in the future when economic incentives bring those teams into existence abroad. Little things like this start the snowballs rolling down the mountain that turn into an avalanche. We think we are the center of the world right now. We sleep on our success, tomorrow someone else will eat our lunch.

Right now these patent laws are being used to tax engineers in order to pay lawyers. The lawyers produce nothing. The laws are set up so we can't do business without shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars to them monthly. This makes it so its harder for us to bootstrap. When we try to get to MVP our attention is divided from the things that matter to all this other bullshit that the lawyers have cooked up. If you are lucky to get a good lawyer, maybe you don't have much of a headache.

But even with the best lawyer, if you see some modest success, the leeches come out of the swamp to suck at your blood ... I mean the patent trolls, and various other lawsuits. The laws make you a criminal no matter how honestly you do your work. You could sit in a clean room and make something all on your own. When you emerge, the leeches will still be granted a right to suck at your revenues. That's how this blasted patent system works today.

Are we going to organize ever and reverse this trend? Probably not. We are all too busy trying to run businesses. You know who isn't busy? You know who has every incentive to spend every waking hour in Washington DC to make sure nothing changes? The patent trolls and the patent lawyers.

As we say after playing a game of Starcraft: GG.

[rayiner]

Appealing to the "engineers versus lawyers" dichotomy is a predictable play, but not really one rooted in reality. To use copyright law as an example, it wasn't the copyright trolls that created the modern "copyright infringement is a crime!" regime--it was Adobe and Microsoft and all the engineering companies that lobbied to get software pirates treated like arms traffickers. Similarly, it wasn't patent trolls and patent lawyers that created the modern patent regime--it was the IBMs and GEs and Mercks of the world.

I do agree about your general point, which is that the new generation of engineering companies should lobby for reforms that they think necessary. Though I'd be interested to see if they have the same sort of principled objections to the trademark regime that is the bedrock of the advertising industry that is now their lifeblood.

[WildUtah]

Trademark? Why would that be a problem? Sure, any complex system has some bad cases, but we don't see thousands of innovative companies shaken down and destroyed for the corrupt benefit of trademark litigators.

Likewise there are problems with copyright, but -- unless you're really an infringer -- not on one thousandth the scale of patents. And boat hull registratons, trade secrets, plant breeders' rights, design patents, and trade dress are similar. It's only utility patents that are rotten and systematically corrupted.

[DannyBee]

"Are we going to organize ever and reverse this trend? Probably not. We are all too busy trying to run businesses. You know who isn't busy? You know who has every incentive to spend every waking hour in Washington DC to make sure nothing changes? The patent trolls and the patent lawyers. "

This is in fact, why I went to law school after getting my CS degree, and why i'm a patent lawyer. Because I hope that some day, maybe there will be more of us than there are of them.

However, it would be a great start if, rather than rail against this stuff on the internet, people actually showed up to do something about it when push came to shove. Instead, they complain that they shouldn't have to, and the problem should simply solve itself, and then go back to burying their head in the sand.

Existing advocacy efforts by organizations (EFF, etc) and companies (Google, etc) would be enhanced 100x if they could get even 100k people to give enough of a shit on a regular basis to write a congressman.

[rayiner]

"Wahh wahh we're too busy running a business to make our voice heard in Congress, wahh wahh."

The cost of a successful lobbying presence is measured in the tens of millions of dollars a year, which is chump change for an industry as big and influential as the tech industry. Heck, construction companies have a much more organized and effective lobby, and they basically make no money at all (see the article on the front page about their 1% margins). Really, it's not that much money. Raise it on Kickstarter or whatever.

There is a bizarre mental block/persecution complex/"I'm going to take my balls and go home" phenomenon at play in the tech industry that's makes no sense to me. Silicon Valley isn't a special snowflake and Congress isn't going to divine its needs and tend to them. You've got one side telling Congress that absolutely everything needs to be patentable to keep the Chinese from stealing all our technology, and nothing but deafening silence in response. What exactly do you expect to happen in that circumstance?

[DannyBee]

" and nothing but deafening silence in response. What exactly do you expect to happen in that circumstance?"

Saying this tells me you have literally no idea what the tech industry is doing in Washington. I've been there. I've watched them up close, fighting patent fights. There is no deafening silence on the part of large companies, or lobbyists, only on the part of people and small business owners The reason the construction industry is more effective is because the unions and other organizing efforts are effective at getting people involved.

In the end, if it's just a bunch of companies pissing on each other, congress mostly doesn't care. If you start getting constituents involved, they start to care.

[tptacek]

Construction gave ~55M; they have low margins but vast revenue, probably more than the tech industry.

[fpgeek]

Complaining to DannyBee about the tech lobbying presence is missing the point. In terms of what he might be able to influence, Google actually has a significant (and growing) lobbying presence on a number of issues:

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=d000022008...

And, last I heard, software patents were a prominent issue on Google's list. The point he's making is that the EFF and Google and the few others directly pushing on this aren't enough and that "enough" people who care enough to regularly write congressmen could make a big difference.

More generally, it is worth underlining that the tech industry is not unanimous on this issue. Should the anti-software patent side start to get some traction in Congress, you could expect pro-software patent players to push back - not just patent lawyers and trolls but probably also companies benefiting from the current regime (e.g. IBM, Microsoft and Apple). In that sort of situation, I suspect the organized lobbying on both sides starts to cancel out and engaged voters start to make an even bigger difference.