Friday, August 23, 2002

Infringing Is As Infringing Does Linus Torvalds: "Technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git." I've spent a fair amount of time helping some technology companies with large patent portfolios figure out how make the most of their IP. One thing that I learned from the patent attorneys is there is no difference between an unknowing infringer and a willful infringer. You still infringed on someone's patent and they can collect damages from you for that. So Linus is free to stick his head in the sand, but he'll still be before a judge regardless of whether he infringes out of ignorance or malice. And heaven help him after that quote if the plantiff shows up in a shallow grave. 8:12:19 PM    comment []  Upcoming Tech Dip In a similar vein, today's lunch discussion also covered the side effects of the tech contraction. Fewer and fewer start-ups being funded. Good ideas are falling by the wayside because shell-shocked VCs won't help and corporations can't muster the capital to acquire leading edge tech from small companies. Every month that goes by now where a small company can't get its ideas off the ground is another month 2 years from now where there will be a shortage of good, emerging technology. Just like the baby boomers are throwing off waves of population surges downstream at 20 year intervals, I predict the bursting of the tech bubble is going to make cyclical periods of technology shortages downstream as well. If the economy recovers over the next few years, we may still find that we're on the rocks in the tech industry as the shortage caused by the funding crisis now manifests itself in a lack of new products and innovation hitting the street two years from now. Bubbles in the pipeline won't smooth out until the VCs realize that dollar cost averaging works for tech investments the same way it works for your 401k. A constant flow of money is required to keep a constant flow of innovation. Pony up now or expect all the vintage 2001-2002 funds to return some horrible results starting in 2004. p.s. for those so inclined, there's got to be a way to arbitrage this, eh? 3:41:32 PM    comment []  Our time has passed...? Charles Cooper: "Lessig would limit software copyrights to 10 years. After that, the code would wind up in the public domain. I can't think of a better prescription for formalizing the existing constellation of power that favors the Microsofts and Oracles over the small and independent developers." I had lunch with a friend today. We both agreed that market forces are conspiring to make this concern irrelevant. It's nearly impossible for a small start-up to get funding these days. And any company that does make it to the end of the virtual runway and get airborne is destined to be acquired long before any 10 year limit on copyrights expires. I hate to say it, but I think the period of cottage industry and small companies is over for the software business, everywhere except the extreme edge of the net. It's certainly the case that we don't have village blacksmiths or local iron foundaries anymore. Is it any surprise that as the software industry matures, we'd see market forces favor large, efficent entities over smaller ones? Besides, the complexity of systems that end users have come to expect can no longer be created by a handful of guys in a garage. Big systems cooperating with other big systems, by their very nature, require large, dedicated, well-funded teams of people. That's not to say that I don't pine for the days when a guy with a good idea could impact an industry. It's just that I think the last time that was possible was sometime in 1996. 3:32:06 PM    comment []

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