Patent wars, Innovation, Roads

(or the Art of fosteringinnovation

while protecting your assets)

@jon_bou

A long time ago in a country far,far away. . . .

@jon_bou

Venice, 1450

@jon_bou

First regulated patent system on a large scale,mostly in the field of glass making

@jon_bou

XVth century

Venetian merchants emigratedand spread the use of patents

Why would aFrench stateprotect theinterests of aVenetianmerchant?

@jon_bou

@jon_bou

Inventor

Exclusive rightsfor commercial use

Society

Detailed public disclosureof the invention

@jon_bou

Exclusive right to sell an invention

An invention ispatentable if:

@jon_bou

• it’s novel

• it involves an inventive step

• it is industrially applicable

@jon_bou

Exclusive right to make copies of creative works that have been instantiated in a tangible form

@jon_bou

Innovation spread

through the silk road, the spice road, the sea lanes

@jon_bou

Truck ideas and Road ideas

“in this world there's two kinds of [ideas], my friend”

Scott Jensen

@jon_bou

Truck ideas…

@jon_bou

… and road ideas

@jon_bou

ROAD IDEA

TRUCK IDEA

@jon_bou

ROAD IDEA

TRUCK IDEA

@jon_bou

ROAD IDEA

TRUCK IDEA

HTTP

@jon_bou

“In The Road Ahead, Bill Gated predicted thatthe Information Super Highway would rule thefuture. In the first edition, The Information SuperHighway was to be the logical successor to theInternet, but definitely not using Internettechnology.”

November 1995,First edition

The Ben Horowitz leaks:

@jon_bou

ROAD IDEA

TRUCK IDEA

@jon_bou

ROAD IDEA

TRUCK IDEA

A little bit of background

1995

@jon_bou

2003

2007

2012

publishes

is born

acquires

sues

2006 licensed under

sues2010

The Google vs Oracle case

COPYRIGHT

@jon_bou

PATENTS DAMAGES

The Two Patents

6061520

RE38104

« Method and system for performingstatic initialization »

« Method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code »

@jon_bou

The Copyright infringement

@jon_bou

37 Java packages alleged of infringement:

• rangeCheck function (9 lines)

• several test files

• structure, sequence and organization of the Java API

• API documentation

District court

April 31, 2012

“Anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry outexactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API.It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical

Court of Appeals

May 9, 2014

“The structure, sequence and organization of an API are copyrightable”

Did Google infringe the copyright or was it a fair use?

Back to the District court

Fair use: doctrine that permits limited use of copy-righted material without permission from the right holders

@jon_bou

Well we shouldn’t even care

@jon_bou

It’s not the moral of the story

« Data is the oil of the XXIst century » (ew)

@jon_bou

Patents, copyright, sopa/pipa don’t suit data

Beautifully designed APIs protect data

@jon_bou

Web APIs are the new software patents

@jon_bou

PATENT

Open data, services and resources to third-parties.

Legal and commercial protection and monopoly

API

Publications and explanations of scientific inventions

Counterpart:

Legal and commercial protection and monopoly

Counterpart:

Open APIs, like patents before,breed ecosystem innovation

@jon_bou

(… but it’s not enough)

API exploration and discovery

@jon_bou

(How to scale the API economy ?)

Some are alreadybuilding the roads

@jon_bou

{API}Search

« Where we going, man?- I don’t know, but we gotta go. »

@jon_bou