Changing IP Trends

So recent news has IBM suing Amazon over certain patent infringements. How does this bode for the industry overall? Not very well. If many haven't noticed, IBM has been collecting a war chest of patents in the last 10 years. How as this strategy been working for them? Pretty well, I'd say, from the Wall Street Journal article yesterday it indicates they made about $1B last year on patent licensing deals.

I'm in favor of protecting first mover status for developing a technology, but every good developer knows there are about 5 ways of performing the same task. Even though the end result is the same, the nuances of how one arrived there are different and should be allowed. This one area that has always annoyed me.

Another comment annoyed me in this article as well,

Marc Kaufman, a lawyer at Nixon Peabody LLP who isn't involved in the case, says one point tending to IBM's favor is that some patents "have a rather early date for this type of technology." The electronic-catalog patent, for instance, was issued in 1994. That may make it harder for Amazon to claim the technology was widely in use and hence the patents aren't valid.

1994?? Come on. The internet was about 20 years old at this point. Are you really trying to say there did not exist an electronic catalog in existence before 1994? Even if you just stick with http, you have Gopher….

Now, I know, I'm just picking on IBM because I work for Microsoft. And maybe I am in some way, but my primary motivation is a desire to allow for innovation among competitors. I want the consumer to win because they get better products. How do you stand?