Empirical Examination of Software Patents

by on June 13, 2006 · 8 comments

Via IPCentral, I just finished reading “Patents and Business Models for Software Firms.” The authors assemble a large data set of patents, classify them as software and non-software, and do some statistical analysis as to which type of firms are most likely to take advantage of patents. They conclude, not surprisingly, that product-oriented firms are more likely to patent than service-oriented firms.

What they don’t do (and they acknowledge it) is determine any kind of causal connection among software patents, R&D spending, and innovation. And it seems to me it would be difficult to draw any conclusions about the impact of software patents on overall industry innovation using data of this sort. Software patents clearly benefit firms at the margin, or they wouldn’t seek them. But we can’t conclude from that fact that software patents benefit the industry overall–that would be a fallacy of composition.

It seems to me the best way of evaluating software patents empirically would be at the micro level: that is, look at individual patents and try to estimate the likelihood that the covered invention would have been created without the availability of software patents. Obviously, some will be hard cases, but there are also many easy cases.

It occurred to me that this is the sort of task that could be accomplished in a decentralized, peer produced manner: set up a web page where the user can look at a patent and rate it for obviousness, prior art, etc. There are probably enough geeks out there who hate software patents that you could analyze far more patents in far more detail than a traditional research team could hope to accomplish.

I just registered AmIObviousOrNot.com. I could set the site up, but my web development skills are rather rusty, so it would take me a while. Are there any PHP gurus out there who’d like to help out with a project like this?

SHARE: 8 comments

About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

Read more articles by Tim Lee.

  • enigma_foundry

    “It seems to me the only credible way of evaluating software patents empirically would be at the micro level:…”

    No, how about the macro-level-compare countries that have software patents with those that don’t…

  • http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com eee_eff

    “It seems to me the only credible way of evaluating software patents empirically would be at the micro level:…”

    No, how about the macro-level-compare countries that have software patents with those that don’t…

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    That’s an interesting idea. The problem I see is that software is often sold in a global market. RIM, for example, is a Canadian company, but they still got hit by a big lawsuit in the United States. So it’s not clear to me how you could isolate the incentive effects created by each individual companies. I’d be interested in ideas on how that might be done, though.

  • Steve R.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation is running a “patent” webpage (http://www.eff.org/patent/). However, their webpage is not interactive, in the sense of being able to leave reader comments. Would there be a way to link what you are proposing with the information that they have already assembled??? I will avoid the useless buzzword “synergy”. :)

    I believe that a reader interactive patent webpage would be very useful.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Steve: The EFF project has a little bit different focus–they’re trying to find prior art that will stand up in court for a small number of particularly egregious patents. I’m interested in evaluating a much broader cross-section of software patents in less depth. But perhaps there’s some room for collaboration there.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    That’s an interesting idea. The problem I see is that software is often sold in a global market. RIM, for example, is a Canadian company, but they still got hit by a big lawsuit in the United States. So it’s not clear to me how you could isolate the incentive effects created by each individual companies. I’d be interested in ideas on how that might be done, though.

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation is running a “patent” webpage (http://www.eff.org/patent/). However, their webpage is not interactive, in the sense of being able to leave reader comments. Would there be a way to link what you are proposing with the information that they have already assembled??? I will avoid the useless buzzword “synergy”. :)

    I believe that a reader interactive patent webpage would be very useful.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Steve: The EFF project has a little bit different focus–they’re trying to find prior art that will stand up in court for a small number of particularly egregious patents. I’m interested in evaluating a much broader cross-section of software patents in less depth. But perhaps there’s some room for collaboration there.

Previous post:

Next post: