James Gosling Quotes

Many people believe that patents—especially in the high technology arena—actually inhibit innovation.

Business associates tried to persuade Tesla to not allow Marconi to experiment with radio as he was using many of Tesla’s patents. Tesla was not driven by money and wanted to see Marconi develop new science which he did. Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.

One of the limits of the patent systems for an individual or small company is the huge effort it takes to document an invention and enforce patent rights after getting a patent.

This principle justified the Government in allowing a local Indonesian company to manufacture anti-AIDS drugs without paying licensing rates demanded by the drug companies that held the patents. The principle is that patent rights and the desire to profit should not supersede the rights of people to continue to live because they cannot afford the drugs to keep them alive. The local manufacturers provide the drugs to the government at cost of manufacture which is a tiny proportion of the price the patent owner charges.

Industrial spying and trade secret thefts are very common in the South Korean business culture. Bribery of competitor’s employees is common. In the pre WWII period of Japanese control, the Japanese had a policy of keeping Korea technically backward to produce food cheaply and trade the food to Japan and buy manufactured goods from Japan—a classic colonial strategy. Japanese engineers and other technicians would go to Korea set up facilities but never share their knowledge with the Koreans. If technicians were needed, they would have to come from Japan. None the less there is a cultural blindness and Korean firms will commonly steal technology from anyone—partners or others. The South Korean Governments had looked at this with a blind eye. Many Koreans believe that because of past history the only way that they can survive on world competition is to continue to pilfer technology. However, modern South Korea has excellent technicians and scientists in almost all fields and making the cultural shift to a standard that is more consonant with the majority of the industrial democracies is the great challenge.