by Sören Stamer July 19, 2007 at 07:32 PM

I like French movies, Champagne, Paris (the city), the lovely accent of French women speaking foreign languages. I like Le Grand Bleu, Nikita and French kisses. I like Cannes, Bordeaux wines, Luc Besson, Jean Reno and Sophie Marceau. And I like French cheese too.

What I really don't like is the Tour de France obsessed with doping and being treated arrogantly by an Air France supervisor in Paris after they have messed up my international connecting flight. I don’t like to be told that it is the fault of another Air France subsidiary instead of offering any help. And I don’t like to be sent on a 3h journey through the various terminals of Charles de Gaulle Airport to get some help from this other Air France subsidiary.

Hello Monsignor Supervisor, it was a quite expensive Air France ticket for four Air France flights. Your company sold it, your company got the money, and your company created the problem in the first place. Therefore, as a simple matter of fact, I expect your company to be kind and handle the mess without any discussion.

By the way, telling me and the other passengers from the US that this connection fails every other day wasn't too smart either. I didn’t solve any problem. And to hear that you knew about my misery even before we bought the flawed tickets from your company is even worse.

Why has your company told me to use this inaccurate flight connection, just to annoy me?

And what have you done about it personally?

Go ahead with your silly dog fight with your local sister company but don’t expect me to fly again with Air France.

by Sören Stamer July 13, 2007 at 02:17 PM

I don't believe in patents. Actually, I do not like the whole idea of patenting my ideas to exclude others from using them. And I am pretty sure that today’s patent systems and the whole idea of patenting ideas will be gone sooner or later - for the benefit of our society. But what is the alternative?

First things first:

1. I don't believe in the patent system: It simply doesn't scale

Informationen grows with exponential speed with a growth rate of 66% per year. As a result it doubles in less than two years for at least a century now. The number of globally filed patents grew by 6,8 % in 2006. It was a record year for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

However, the rest of the system doesn't scale nearly as well. It doesn't scale at all. Someone has to evaluate patents and review them against prior art, existing patents and hopefully against stupidity. This takes time. And it will take even more time in tomorrow’s world with a lot more knowledge to check against. Well, we might be able to address this issue by hiring more people in countries with relatively cheap labor or some kind of crowd sourcing.

However, the main issue here is another one: The rest of the world, i.e. all other enterprises, have to spend more and more resources to keep the patent system alive. Every company has to educate all of their employees to know all the patents that might be relevant to their work all the time. How would this work - for example in the software industry? We live in a global society and offer global services over the Internet. Not even the brightest software engineers will be able to handle all the different patents in every part of the world. The results may be funny: Hire one or two lawyers per software developer? The first one to evaluate all existing and new software patents and the other one sitting next to the software developer to do the legal code review in real-time?

Think of all the time we have to spend in every company today if you try do it right. And now think of a situation with 159 times more knowledge and two times more patents. Life in 2017 won't work like this, would it?

2. I don't like the idea of patenting ideas: It is not fair and it harms our society

Every idea has its context. It needs an environment so that it can be thought of in the first place. Since all human beings are social beings we can't speak, think or exist without the society we live in. The whole knowledge of our society is the gift that our society gave us as an individual being. But if this is true, it is kind of unfair to exclude society from results that were created out of its own context. Our existing patent systems overvalue the contribution of a single entity and undervalue the contribution of the whole society.

Patents are often said to be used to "defend" a business against competitors with other patents. Sounds like a stupid idea to create those "weapons against innovation" in the first place.

Our whole society would be better off if we shared all of our ideas to build a better future for us all. Therefore, limiting the use of good ideas to create a better world through the artificial concept of patenting is unfair and harms our society as a whole.

3. I am sure patents will vanish: We can't take the consequences

Is our society really willing to accept the consequences of the patent system as a whole? I don't think so. Think of all the poor people in Africa suffering from diseases that could be reduced by patented drugs from the first world. Is protecting the existing patent system more important than the lives of millions?

Think of global warming. Wouldn't it be good to openly share our knowledge to reduce the global output of CO2? If a major car manufacturer knows how to build a highly efficient engine for a very low price and using limited resources, shouldn't this knowledge be used everywhere in the world to build better cars with lower energy consumption? Is it acceptable for our society to limit the use of such knowledge to maximize the profits of one company? I think not.

I believe we should share all the knowledge we have for the benefits of our society. And I also believe that we have to find a new way to value the contribution of us all in such a system. Innovators, artists and other knowledge workers should be able to pay their bills at the end of the month.

How might a world without patents work?

A pharmaceutical company has to invest a lot of money into R&D to find new and better drugs. They may argue that they are not able to do this without our existing patent system since other companies may use all the research results without paying for them. Those new competitors without any R&D spending will be more competitive from a financial perspective. They will be able to offer the drugs for a lower price and therefore win the whole business sooner or later. Therefore, not investing into R&D looks like the best strategy.

Well, not if we as customers act differently. We don't have to buy the cheapest product. We can make a strong statement with every single buying decision.

We should buy the drugs from those companies that contribute the most to our society. Yes, we will pay more. But there’s nothing wrong with that – just think of our existing behavior regarding alternative energy. In such a society, pharmaceutical companies will continue to invest into R&D but without patenting the results at all. They will contribute all of their results to the public domain instead. As a result we will see an explosion of creativity on a global scale. Nobody will be excluded from the knowledge. And everyone will be able to benefit from the results.

Wouldn't this be fair?

Yes, and I believe it will be reality some day. The major issue is the fundamental paradigm shift that has to be mastered by all the existing stakeholders. My guess is that the public opinion and our own buying behavior will be the driving force for this healthy change.

by Björn Bauer July 03, 2007 at 10:00 PM

Nick O'Neill wrote some nice words about the future of companies and what they have to do to attract young employees that grew up in social networks. But to attract people is one thing. The impact in the culture of these companies is what follows. Absolutely worth a reading. It's an amazing feeling to read such words from outside of our small world, noticing that not only we are talking about this.

We still have much work to do at CoreMedia, but it feels good to be on the right way.

And to all those who are thinking about working for CoreMedia: "Talk to us!"
You can find many of us in Facebook (simply type in 'CoreMedia' in the search field), ask questions and find out what's in it.

You're very welcome!