The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued this brief comment on Jeff Bezos’ open letter on improving the patent system:
We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies. At the same time, we welcome Mr. Bezos support for PTO retaining 100% of its fees, which is central to maintaining the quality of our work, as well as his willingness to fund a central prior art database, a need we have often noted.
Conversation with Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos
Whatever you want to say about Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive at Amazon.com, give him credit for listening. I still disagree with his stance on software patents, even though he’s come a long way toward the right position. Yet I have to applaud his willingness to have a conversation with the Net, not just stonewall or bluster.
I spoke with him yesterday, after he’d posted his open letter on the Amazon Web site. “If we do something we think was a mistake, we try to fix it,” he said. “If we don’t think we made a mistake, we try to make people understand.” He doesn’t think Amazon has made any mistakes here, though he now feels the patent system needs to be changed in fairly dramatic ways.
In conversations with Tim O’Reilly stemming from O’Reilly’s own open letter on the subject, Bezos insisted that the Amazon patents were truly innovative ideas and deserved protection. But O’Reilly wanted to tackle the larger issues.
“Some questions left me thinking,. boy, there really is a potential problem with respect to software patents,” Bezos told me. “I hadn’t given bigger context much thought.”
After many discussions with O’Reilly and a torrent of (mostly) thoughtful e-mail, Bezos concluded that the system did need to be changed — and that he and Amazon were in a perfect position to do it.
“It’s one thing for people with no software patents to call for patent reform,” he said. “We have a credible position because we have these software patents.”
My own view remains that software patents are a bad idea, period, particularly the “business process” patents that take an offline concept and get protection when the idea is taken online. Priceline.com, which makes Amazon look pristine by comparison, is the major patent mill.
Bezos, of course, thinks otherwise. “The purpose (of patents) is to encourage innovation by giving people an exclusive period where they can recoup research and development costs,” he said.
Shortening the term of software patents would solve many of today’s problems, Bezos says. “In Internet time, if you can’t recoup research and development costs in 3 to 5 years, it’s probably not a good patent.”
Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston invented the electronic spreadsheet in the days before software patents were awarded. I sense no lack of innovation in that era.
“If you eliminated the patent system I don’t think people would stop inventing,” Bezos said. “What you’re trying to do is maximize invention.”
The patent issue has caused several people, including me, to urge a boycott of Amazon. Bezos said there’s been no impact on the company. Advertising on the Howard Stern show churned a much uglier response, he said.
In general, he said, “boycotts extraordinarily good tools for customers to use.” he said. But not this time, because people simply don’t understand all the issues.
“I genunely believe we’re doing the right thing,” he said.
OTHER READING:
Irish Times lambastes Amazon, which makes a foolishly nasty reply (screen shot sent to Scripting News).
DaveNet: Speaking of the Cluetrain.
Dan Bricklin recalls his testimony to Congress on the patent issue a decade ago.
