Supply Excellence — An Aussie’s Take on Patent Madness

An Aussie’s Take on Patent Madness

May 30th, 2007 · by Tim Minahan · No Comments · best practices, events, supply management, supply risk

Last week’s rant — “Putting an End to Patent Madness” — put the spotlight on a critical issue for enterprises considering supply management software investments. It also sparked some great debate among Supply Excellence readers looking to balance intellectual property (IP) protection with the insatiable need for continuous innovation and improvement.

I tip my hat to Doug Hudgeon’s thoughtful response, which I have shared in its entirety below. (I also encourage you to check out Doug’s own blog, Vendor Management, which offers a pragmatic practitioner’s view from the land Down Under:

I understand and appreciate the rationale behind the patent system - certain capital investment would not be worthwhile if the investor was not granted a time-limited monopoly in which to recoup the investment. The inequities apparent in the patent system stem from two problems: 1) granting the monopoly for time periods longer than required to recoup the investment, and 2) granting the monopoly to non-novel inventions.

As to the first point, the equity of the patent system correlates highly with the differential between the time required to originally manufacture the product and the time required to replicate it. Compare drug manufacture to software creation: a drug may take 10 years to design, develop and bring to market and 2 months for a competitor to replicate. Whereas a software application that takes a year to write may still take 6-9 months for a competitor to replicate.

As to the second point, novelty is determined by whether the invention is obvious to an experienced practitioner in the industry. The issue faced by the patent office is that a limited number of people are adjudicating on an infinite (or nearly so) number of industries. Inventions that appear novel to an examiner may in fact be obvious to a truly experienced practitioner. I hope that the US Patent Office’s foray into crowd-sourcing is going to help address this point: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2007/ 03/04/AR2007030401263.html

Many thanks, Doug. Your arguments are well put. I too hope that the US Patent Office, Congress, and the Supreme Court are listening.

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