Ernst F. W. Alexanderson Quotes

Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.

The patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inventors. At the time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up production, the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use patented products.

At Linkabit, we put little effort and energy into patenting things.

support … continued widespread innovation by resisting the wider application of patents

Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

I would just love to create a bunch of patents, I have a book of 50 right now.

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.

The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.

In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them.

It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

When we began Qualcomm, it had become quite clear that it was very important to patent new ideas.

Lincoln said that the Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity. And that is why we need to improve the effectiveness of our Patent Office.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

It almost goes without saying that when you are a startup, one of the first things you do is you start setting aside money to defend yourself from patent lawsuits, because any successful company, even moderately successful, is going to get hit by a patent lawsuit from someone who's just trying to look for a payout.

If people don't get paid for their inventions, that's not a good thing. In the case of many patents, there are people who aren't in a position to take them to the next level. If you don't enforce your rights, no one is going to enforce them for you.

There are always giants out there trying to strangle the innovator and steal his innovation.

patents are an arm in the hands of large enterprises which use them in order to block all inconvenient innovation or to restrict the development of free software. The American experience with software patents is particularly negative and merits reflexion

We believe that patents exist to reward the inventors of truly outstanding ideas, not to allow big businesses to stifle competition with an ever-growing tide of trivial, incomprehensible, overreaching patents. We will stop the abuse of patent law by raising the bar on how innovative an idea has to be before it can be patented, and by prohibiting patents on software, business methods, concepts and works of nature. We will require a working model to be provided to the patent office before a patent is granted and we will strictly enforce the current rule that patents are invalid if they are "obvious to someone skilled in the art".

One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons.

The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things

The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.

Don't negotiate with terrorists; patent trolls have done more damage to the United States economy than any domestic or foreign terrorist organization in history, every year.

To tell you the truth although it would put £500 in my pockets to specify my own patent rails, I cannot do so after the experience I have had.

The reforms proposed by the Patent Reform Act of 2007 are precisely the type of congressional action needed. The Act will remove obstacles to growth and restore balance to the patent system.