Pending: Patent Enclosures Program

Today Facebook patented its NewsFeed (I read on RWW). The patent says that they are the patent holders for:

A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.

I cannot believe that there is no prior art here! The Facebook Fanboi Nick O'Neill piously believes that:

It appears that this patent surrounds implicit actions. This means status updates, which is what Twitter is based on, are not part of this patent. Instead, this is about stories about the actions of a user's friends. While still significant, the implications for competing social networks may be less substantial.

Pull the other one, Nick. Based on Facebook's well documented benign and gentle past (for US readers - that's irony ) they are not likely to use this for commercial advantage? The main problem is that the patent system in the US is increasingly compromised, but we have covered this ad nausea before.

But I think this is becoming a real issue now, and there may be worse to come in my opinion. The problem the system has is that it is part subsidised by the state and probably costs far more to operate than it costs applicants, so its creaking. And what concerns me even more is the Vulture Capitalists are circling, this article by Nathan Myrhvold in the March Edition of HBR is quite scary- its basically a defence of his company, Intellectual Ventures', wish to Bunker Hunt the Patent market:

My company, Intellectual Ventures, is misunderstood. We have been reviled as a patent troll—a renegade outfit that buys up patents and then uses them to hold up innocent companies. What we’re really trying to do is create a capital market for inventions akin to the venture capital market that supports start-ups and the private equity market that revitalizes inefficient companies. Our goal is to make applied research a profitable activity that attracts vastly more private investment than it does today so that the number of inventions generated soars.

The basic idea is that there is a VC type market for "Invention Capital":

....a full-fledged invention capital system could solve many of the problems that have long plagued both inventors and the consumers of inventions: inadequate funding for applied research, an inefficient market for connecting companies with the inventions they need and for monetizing inventions, a balkanization of the inventors and inventions required to tackle big problems, and an enforcement and arbitration system that simultaneously permits too much infringement and relies too heavily on lawsuits to determine price.

Anyway, the argument is that the Government based patent system is not fit for purpose (true) and the solution is thus to privatise it (probably false, in our view - or at least not without a lot more safeguards than I suspect Mr Myrvold would want).

Another interpretation is that they have seen how big business has managed to buy up DNA IPR which by rights are global Common Stock, and are reselling this at vast profit to its original providers by the simple trick of legal enforcement based on having the money. In medieval England this was known as the Enclosure system, where rich Barons enclosed common peasant land and forced the peasants to pay for using it. One would also feel more re-assured IV were "doing it for us" if they didn't currently use "idea generation" sessions where their lawyers float round writing stuff down to run off and patent.

But one can see how these things will take root simply because they will get the money from backers to do them given the vast profit potential, as the existing creaking system will have few backers and defenders, and there is little financial/lobbying/ethical resource available to "Do The Right Thing".

So there is a strong argument that it behooves the Tech industry to fix the patent system, as what may replace it could be infinitely worse. One non-Myrhvoldian approach could be to wholesale import the European system, which is not yet as broken - but that would require the US to get over the Not Invented Here syndrome.