RealityPrime

Patents stifle innovation–software patents, doubly so.

That’s just my opinion, of course, as is everything in this post. But I feel pretty confident saying this based on my experience and what I’ve heard from other inventors. The original idea for patents was to do just the opposite–to protect inventors from some greedy corporation coming in and stealing or stifling clever designs. But it seems pretty typical nowadays that some large corporation acquires the patent rights from the true inventor(s) and uses those rights to exploit the market and prevent competition, rather than reward the original innovation or motivate more of the same.

When I worked at Disney, for example, patenting something for the company earned the inventor a few thousand dollars and a plaque, while the company could make an infinite amount of money from his or her work. Sure, there’s an implicit employer/employee relationship there, but where’s the incentive for the inventor? Not money. Certainly not credit. Walt Disney was known for signing every piece of art his artists created. I don’t know too many inventors that aspire to be promoted into management. I do vaguely recall a few smart people who confided to me that they might have some interesting ideas only after they left the company. Even then, they risked the wrath of Disney, once again stifling invention due to just the potential of big bucks from still unproven ideas.

Even within Disney, I witnessed some infighting over just who the actual inventor was. I recall trying to help the company patent the virtual rowing system I largely invented for the Virtual Jungle Cruise ride prototype, making an effort to figure out just which of my colleagues had contributed what help to the effort. I wrote much of the original patent text for the lawyers, highlighting what I thought was novel and non-obvious about it, but the revised patent application came back transformed into something for which two of my more senior colleagues were the primary inventors (however, to be fair, it could have also been lawyer laziness–cut and paste from an older patent application). When I worked on the Virtual Rollercoaster (aka Cyberspace Mountain ride), Disney bought itself a patent for the ride, though the "inventors" listed were the many assorted managers and producers of the project (even the executive V.P. in charge), and not the developers who actually invented some technology. I can’t find a plausible explanation for that one except that we were contractors then and may or may not have signed the "disney owns everything" clause in advance.

But Disney isn’t alone or special in this regard. It’s the system that’s broken. In fact, Disney may have been a victim of the process too. In late 1994, for example, I pitched a ride/game idea to our Creative Director called "Wild Taxi" in which participants would drive a virtual taxi through a 3D gauntlet of city obstacles, cars, pedestrians, manholes, etc.. trying to get their fare to a destination in the shortest time. Interestingly, a few years later, Sega released a series of games called "Crazy Taxi" which made gobs of money for them.

Was there a connection? Who can say for sure? But what’s most interesting is that a) Sega and Disney were briefly in negotiations at exactly that time, b) the "Wild Taxi" concept was, according to my best recollection, presented to Sega reps, and c) the Disney director to whom I first pitched the ride idea wound up being a bigwig at Sega GameWorks a few months after that. Now, he’s a great creative designer, he probably firewalled himself off from any potential conflicts of interest, and I have no reason to assume either he or Sega abused any confidential information from Disney (in fact, there could have even been a deal for Disney to give or sell the concepts to Sega…). But I find it fascinating that Sega is now suing EA and Fox claiming that those companies infringed on Sega’s patent, filed in 1998, covering many of the "Crazy Taxi" concepts. Sega, in my opinion, is not the inventor of Crazy Taxi. They simply hold the patent.

That makes my head spin.

Now, I don’t honestly assume I was the first person ever to think of the "Wild Taxi" style ride/game, and there was certainly a ton more work done by others after the original concept pitch, but for the sake of argument, let’s say I was the original inventor. If so, then it’s possible that a chain of mishandling, misrepresentation, and misappropriation leads giants to sue each other for infringing on a big money maker where the original inventor (hypothetically, me) just watches, helplessly, and in total disgust when I hadn’t even thought the idea patentable in the first place [especially since we never actually built the darn thing!]. And if the inventor wasn’t me, then there may be someone else who had this experience.

That is the state of the US patent system, as I see it. I’m sure my experience isn’t unique.

[12/7/03 -- minor edits for clarity -- Avi]

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