Posts Tagged: "monopoly"

In Star Athletica Breyer laments that the majority is ignoring the statute, refers to copyrights as a monopoly, and explains that copyrights are a tax on consumers… These seemingly innocent comments demonstrate a breathtaking dishonesty, which is hardly a newsworthy conclusion, or even much of a revelation to anyone in the patent community. Still, over the past few days the drivel that has been sprinkled into Supreme Court opinions has been particularly nauseating. The ends justify the means for the Supreme Court. When it is convenient they defer to Congress and wax poetically about the importance of stare decisis, as they actually had the gall to do in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment. When adhering to well-established rules and expectations of an entire industry is inconvenient, they create exceptions to statutes, ignore statutory schemes altogether, and overrule generations of well-established law.

When there is no market there can never be a monopoly because you cannot be in exclusive control of a non-existent market, and you cannot manipulate prices when no one is willing to buy what you are offering. Indeed, the truth is that the vast majority of patents, upwards of 90% of patents (perhaps as high as 98% of patents) will result in rights being granted to cover a product or service that will not be commercialized at all, or if commercialized will lose money because too few people are interested. That doesn’t really sound like a monopoly, does it?

Barack Obama came to office with the suspicion that patents caused higher prices and created market inefficiencies. He set a mission to disassemble the patent system, which culminated in the America Invents Act… Obama supplied power to the market incumbents, thereby fortifying their monopoly power, while depriving market entrants of critical tools. By strengthening incumbents and their industrial oligopolies, he harmed competition from market entrants, policies that generated the slowest growth in history.

Bahr explained a number of things, including the reason the USPTO has not updated patent eligibility guidance to address the pro-patent decision of the Federal Circuit in BASCOM v. AT&T. Many in the industry have been critical of the fact that the USPTO, which has been otherwise quick to provide guidance with respect to important precedential decisions, did not provide examiners with guidance in this case which found the software claims at issue patent eligible. Bahr explained that the USPTO did not think the case changed anything they had previously told patent examiners, which is why no further guidance had been issued.

A recent Barron’s editorial, however, has raised some eyebrows among those who are familiar with the effect of proper patent enforcement on financial fortunes. Published May 14th, “Patents Can Be Dangerous to Inventors’ Welfare” is a perfect example of how a rather odious point-of-view can be freshened and sweetened when some of the inconvenient truths are laid by the wayside.

In my experience one of the things that inventors of board games frequently forget is the inclusion of alternative methods of play. Don’t just focus on the preferred method of play and preferred rules, but think about ways that the game can be modified and changed. Let me use an example from the extremely popular game Monopoly. One of the things that keep many people from playing Monopoly is the length of the game. That has lead to any number of various “house rules” to be implemented by those who love the game but want it to be played faster so the game can be completed in a reasonable time frame, or at least before everyone loses interest. So if you invented Monopoly in addition to the traditional rules you should give some thought to rules associated with accelerated play.