> but you're ignoring the question of whether they're incremental improvements over existing patents or over the public domain. If the question is whether a patent reduces the incentive for others to make incremental improvements, finding an incremental improvement to something that exists in the public domain provides no such evidence.
Here's how patents are prosecuted: Applicant files a patent with some broad claims. Examiner usually (statistically speaking) rejects it on the basis of non-novelty and/or obviousness and cites some prior art references, which are usually other patents. Applicant then amends their claims with the minimum amount of limitations needed to avoid the prior art references (because they want a patent as broad as possible) and tries again. This cycle typically continues until the examiner can no longer find a concise enough set of prior art references to cover all the limitations of the claim, at which point the patent is allowed.
This process necessarily means that the vast majority of patents technically introduce only incremental improvements (or, more correctly, differences) over the prior art.
Case in point, randomly selected HVEC-related Apple US patent 7,769,084. It was rejected 4 times by the examiner, the last rejection citing patents 5,986,712 (owned by Thomson Electronics) and 6,310,897 (owned by Sony). Apple prevailed by adding a single 20-word clause to a 3-part claim, which the examiner deemed different enough to allow.
If that is not incremental, I don't know what is. Also, note that prior art owned by two different companies did not prevent Apple from making (and then patenting) an incremental improvement to the art.
Here's Microsoft saying MPEG-LA costs it more than it makes:
I feel like I saw similar statements from Apple and Google but I can't find them offhand. The rough math is easy: your share of the licensing pie is proportional to the fraction of your patents in the whole portfolio. The actual calculation is extremely complex, but you can get a good idea by looking at the lists of patents and their owners.
> ... NPEs don't get a vote in the standards body.
Are you sure? I thought I saw a lot of research institutes and universities on standards committees?
> Patent pools have nothing to do with division of labor.
Patent pools are not directly concerned with division of labor, but patents are. Pools are just a emergent licensing convenience when many fragmented rights are involved.
Here's how patents are prosecuted: Applicant files a patent with some broad claims. Examiner usually (statistically speaking) rejects it on the basis of non-novelty and/or obviousness and cites some prior art references, which are usually other patents. Applicant then amends their claims with the minimum amount of limitations needed to avoid the prior art references (because they want a patent as broad as possible) and tries again. This cycle typically continues until the examiner can no longer find a concise enough set of prior art references to cover all the limitations of the claim, at which point the patent is allowed.
This process necessarily means that the vast majority of patents technically introduce only incremental improvements (or, more correctly, differences) over the prior art.
Case in point, randomly selected HVEC-related Apple US patent 7,769,084. It was rejected 4 times by the examiner, the last rejection citing patents 5,986,712 (owned by Thomson Electronics) and 6,310,897 (owned by Sony). Apple prevailed by adding a single 20-word clause to a 3-part claim, which the examiner deemed different enough to allow.
If that is not incremental, I don't know what is. Also, note that prior art owned by two different companies did not prevent Apple from making (and then patenting) an incremental improvement to the art.
Here's Microsoft saying MPEG-LA costs it more than it makes:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-h...
I feel like I saw similar statements from Apple and Google but I can't find them offhand. The rough math is easy: your share of the licensing pie is proportional to the fraction of your patents in the whole portfolio. The actual calculation is extremely complex, but you can get a good idea by looking at the lists of patents and their owners.
> ... NPEs don't get a vote in the standards body.
Are you sure? I thought I saw a lot of research institutes and universities on standards committees?
> Patent pools have nothing to do with division of labor.
Patent pools are not directly concerned with division of labor, but patents are. Pools are just a emergent licensing convenience when many fragmented rights are involved.