Tweet
Extended New York Times article on them. The law, as usual, is most favorable to the giants: Google, Microsoft, and especially Apple, which seems to have turned into a giant patent troll. It is no longer possible to start a software company with a good idea; you will will be sued out of existence.
James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario, software entrepreneur and, these days, economist:
Vlingo’s founder since decided to quit the voice recognition field—his area of scientific expertise [of 30 years!]—because of the legal landscape. I would have serious second thoughts about starting another software company today, given what I know about software patents.
5 Comments
Hey. Wonder if drone-programmers give a shit.
Oh, interesting. “Apple sues drone manufacturers…”
Universal voice recognition has been in the hands of NSA since the 1980′s (worked on a computer they were going to do it with in the mid 80′s). Apple was still building Apple IIs in a garage.
Another place I worked announced that they were going to create it, only to shut down the project a month later with no explanation.
How the hell did a private company wind up with the “patent” on this technology? Whom in the Government did they pay off to get to pretend they invented it?
Two corporations on the list in the article are the ones who started this nightmare with the lawsuit Apple vs Microsoft, over Windows, charging patent infringement by Microsoft on Apple’s software. The judge ruled that software, being a written entity, was covered by copyright, not patent, and that ideas aren’t patentable. Microsoft won.
Since that lawsuit, Microsoft had been overactive in lobbying for changes in the law to invent the thing called “intellectual property” and otherwise protect itself from predatory practices similar to what it had visited on Apple via Bill Gates being an Apple contractor to develop things like Excel. He had an inside track as a contractor to the Apple operating system source code and exploited it to come up with Windows.
Computers have been suffering from this bad judgement on the part of the judge ever since.
I didn’t realize James Kwak was once involved with software development. Now I like him even better.
Yeah. Software patents. Totally screwed up. But, amazingly, not nearly as screwed up as patents on design.