14 comments

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  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Tim, the distinction between innovation and invention is rather important. See Joshua Lerner and Marco Iansiti, Evidence Regarding Microsoft and Innovation, AEI-Brookings Joint Center Publication (2002).
  
  Invention, by itself is not as important as innovation. F. Scott Kieff, in the paper you talked about earlier, argued that society will benefit more from the commercialization of inventions (which turns them into innovations) than by inventions themselves, because of: 1) positive externalities resulting from the diffusion, refinment process, 2) consumer access to new technologies.
  
  I would not downplay invention as being necessarily easy either. Note that the creation of early Internet technologies took place only with billions of dollars in DARPA funding, and entailed several decades of improvements until DARPA enlisted private firms to help refine the technologies.
  
  PS- I don't see how your post relates to patents. For instance, one can take either your post or Masnick's post, and use them to *support* the role of patents; since Apple was able to commercialize its technologies into a sleek mass market product and non-patenting firms were not.
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  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Noel, how would a lack of patents have prevented Apple from bringing the iPhone to market?
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  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Tim,
  
  Its difficult to pin-point direct causality in innovation. Granted, the American capital market/VC system, education system, specialty research centers and patent system contribute to innovation. But none of these alone would facilitate innovation.
  
  I was not claiming that Apple would *not* have created the iPhone without patents. Rather, I was commenting on how your post suggested that Apple has successfully commercialized a set of technologies in which it holds patents. I was just saying its hard to read how you were making the argument that patents were not important to Apple.
  
  PS- I would argue that patents will enable Apple to improve on the iPhone. Lets wait and see.
• 

  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  PPS- the process of Apple *improving* the iPhone would be called *diffusion*, whereby an innovator releases one generation of a product, takes in consumer signals that would suggest means of increasing societal adoption, and then refines the product in a later generation. This whole process is part of commercialization. See Hall, Bronwyn H., "Innovation and Diffusion" (January 2004), NBER Working Paper No. W10212.
  
  Whether Apple will be more likely to invest in the diffusion process because of the exclusivity enabled by its patents is something we can witness in real-time, if Tim continues on his Apple binge.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Noel, I have no doubt that Apple's patents are helpful to Apple, but that's not the issue. High steel tariffs are helpful to the steel industry, but that doesn't make them good policy.
  
  You stated that "Apple was able to commercialize its technologies into a sleek mass market product and non-patenting firms were not." I assumed you were suggesting that Apple's patents allowed Apple to commercialize its iPhone, and would not have been able to do so otherwise. If that's not what you were suggesting, then what was your point?
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  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Tim, I was merely tracing the fact-pattern of your post when I said that Apple successfully commercialized technologies in the iPhone and previous inventors with similar technologies were not. The extent of a correlation between Apple's achievement and patents is yet to be seen, but you have to admit that a firm that commercializes a technology benefits the public more than one that merely invents it.
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  Herman Swartz

  2 years ago

  Plenty of half truths and half-witted comments in your article.
  
  You really need to do some research, not just repeat FUD. If the Mac interface was a simple rip-off of Xerox Park's ideas, then why would anyone get credit for airplane flight or why not have DaVince get credit for the helicopter after all he drew a crude drawing like one.
  
  This brain off pablum no doubt excites the anti-innovation, anti-patent and anti-Apple zealots but truthiness does not make truth unless your a moron like Bush.
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  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Exactly....
• 

  Louis Wheeler

  2 years ago

  Innovation and invent mean almost the same thing-- new. It's just that we use invent to apply to new devices while innovation can also mean new methods and customs. What Apple does is create devices and systems that are difficult to imagine coming from any other company.
  
  
  
  
  It's easy to dismiss an innovation. All you have to say is that someone else thought of it first while ignoring the effort necessary to make an idea practical. The desktop on Xerox's Star looked nothing like or worked like the Macintosh. The Xerox "mouse" looked like a trackball. The Mac's desktop was much better and more practical than the Star's. And the Mac cost $2,500 while the Star was $15,000.
  
  
  
  
  
  Besides, Xerox got its idea for the Star from Bart Engelhard's seminal work in the fifties and sixties. Apple only got a one day show and tell for its million dollars in stock. It got no hardware designs or software. Apple had to go and innovate its own way of doing things and Apple's way was often better. The point is that it is damned hard to get things right so that they are useful in ways that no one else dreamed of. The Macintosh did that. Apple continues to do that.
  
  
  
  
  
  The iPhone will do that, too. Why? Because it's nothing like the other smart phones. It's a computer more powerful than most from five to ten years ago. It has a shortened version of Mac OSX 10.5 in it. There is little that the iPhones won't be able to do, eventually. Mostly, the iPhone will expose how rotten the current Smartphones are. And it will do it in a way that seems intuitive. People will ask, "This seems so easy. Why didn't phones work like this before?" A lot of hard work and thinking are necessary to make things appear easy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Great design, good looks, near perfect execution, ease of use and fine craftsmanship are nothing new, but they are damned rare.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bravo, Apple, you did it again.
  
  
  
  
  
  If it were easy to do what Apple did, then why weren't the Smartphones designed like this, years ago?
  
  
• 

  Blinx

  2 years ago

  Apple may have seen the graphical user interface first at Xerox Parc, but the difference between what they saw and the Lisa/Mac GUI they came up with was huge. In the process of fleshing out many innovative features from scratch, Apple mastered the "genre," if you will.
  
  That's why the iPhone is years ahead of the LG Prada, and why Windows will always feel like an inferior version of the Mac OS.
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  Michael Sullivan

  2 years ago

  I think the point is that innnovators (in the apple sense) normally have (as a prerequisite to being able to innovate in the sense we are talking about -- making new technology available to the masses) the marketing power to make plenty of money without patent protection. The inventor, sans patents, OTOH, if he does not have access to that kind of marketing channel or a robust and efficient market for selling inventions to companies that do, is liable to end up with nothing for efforts that eventually make somebody a lot of money.
  
  The problem with the patent system is that it is currently protecting a lot of processes and ideas that don't really fit with its original purpose. It has required increasingly deep understanding of a wide variety of fields to make those distinctions properly, and the patent office has largely punted.
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  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Michael, the patent system has long entailed two aspects in promoting the "Progress of Science and Useful Arts. Number 1 is the ex ante justification for patents, which is commonly known as the incentive theory that aims to resolve the problem of public goods. A lot of literature aiming to debunk the importance focuses on this prong. Number 2 is the ex post justification for patents; scholars from Mark Lemley, Edmund Kitch, John Duffy, Kenneth Dam and F. Scott Kieff have written on this prong- patents help commercialization and the diffusion of innovation. From what I've seen on TLF, there is sometimes utter misunderstanding regarding the second ex post aspect of patents; which is odd, considering that the Bayh-Dole Act, the patenting practices of IBM, Microsoft, Apple and most academic literature supporting patents refers to the ex post basis for them.
  
  Herman, Louis, Blinx, Michael; you folks put up some great posts.
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  Anonymous

  2 years ago

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• 

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  2 years ago

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