An Airbnb for farmland hits a snag, as farmers raise data privacy concerns - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2020/02/24/808764422/data-privacy-concerns-are-raised-after-startup-tries-to-rent-farmland <comment><USER4> There is actually more to this than is visible on the surface. And I can't talk about some of it.

But here it is:

1\. Climate Corp was part of Monsanto before it became Bayer. It was acquired by Monsanto. 2\. John Deere wanted to buy Climate as well as Monsanto but that was struck down by US courts and Bayer bought Monsanto. 3\. What was Climate Corp doing before? They had something called Field View where they charged farmers to collect and collate data. 4\. All precision Ag, Ag robotics and farm data collections have two big industry 'partners': Wall Street and Farm input companies. 5\. Now add farmland to Precision Ag/Ag robotics. 6\. This is a kind of consolidation of land, inputs, data and machinery. 6\. Eventually, all land will be owned by farm machinery companies and input companies. There won't be any more farmers in the future but only farming corporations. 7\. It goes back to Wall Street because big Ag is commodities.

I am a small scale farmer interested in small acreage Ag robotics to save labour. But no one was interested even though food is important and Ag is a big deal in the USA.

No investors, no traction, no interest and I have no qualms about cold calling...and down that rabbit hole, I found out that diff between food farming and commodity crop farming.

In reality, there is no agtech for food farming. In the USA anyways. Agtech is about land, inputs and mostly commodity crops. And speculation markets.

I don't have an opinion. Maybe this is more efficient. Maybe it's not a good idea. And this kind of Ag isn't even what I am interested in and I just stumbled upon this while trying to figure why Agtech is such a big deal but I can't find interest in automating food production.

It is pretty fascinating how Big Ag has managed to consolidate and rein in together. The players are still the same and it's a few big corporations that will control this sector.

Many of the players and VC companies and start ups are well known but it's not really necessary to drop those names. But anyone can connect the dots if they invested some time. It is literally a web ..six degrees and all that.

Back to the article, expect 'family farmers' to be separated from their land in the near and near-distant future. Already a lot of American farmland is owned by foreign countries/investors, pension funds, insurance companies, university wealth funds and hedge funds.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the extremely insightful context.

With so much first-hand knowledge of this situation, I'm having a hard time processing how you don't have an opinion on it. It seems that this is exceedingly detrimental to the well being of literally everyone and everything involved except for those that profit from it.

<comment><USER6> This is somewhat for discussion purposes. Farmers make a profit, a farmer retiring can liquidate his assets by selling his land to a pension fund where in the olden days he 'needed a son', the lessee of the land usually wouldn't start farming there is there isn't a profit involved. The produce gets sold to a middle man and an end user, again for a profit.

The company I work for is in finance (non-US) and has a pretty large investment in farmland, which we lease out up to very, very long contracts. As far as I can tell people are quite happy with our stewardship. We provide liquidity and give farmers the optionality to choose a different time horizon for their firm. We lease out lands for biological farming, sometimes have historical properties we maintain and lease out, do solar parks. It's like real estate but with a different time horizon.

Re the 'long game' discussion for finance and machinisation. The firm has literally been doing this for a few centuries so this hasn't been the original goal. I don't think it's come up yet as a current goal, although in all honesty I can see the appeal from a finance perspective. The farmer is the middleman we can cut out and replace by machines. First thought then is - <USER3> does it matter what the background of the owner doing the machinisation is?

<comment><USER7> _> Re the 'long game' discussion for finance and machinisation. The firm has literally been doing this for a few centuries so this hasn't been the original goal. I don't think it's come up yet as a current goal, although in all honesty I can see the appeal from a finance perspective. The farmer is the middleman we can cut out and replace by machines. First thought then is - <USER3> does it matter what the background of the owner doing the machinisation is?_

Sounds an awful lot like deskilling, so hopefully the labour concerned has an exit strategy.

<comment><USER6> I don't want to sound totally econofuturoptimistic, but No, it's not de- skilling in my book. I'd venture robotisation is actually re-skilling or up- skilling. Or in other words: the average education level of the employees after more and more capital flows in, goes up. And automisation / robotisation is nothing new in agriculture. You need a lot less labour, that's true. But that's the trend in agriculture for about 150 years (as far as I understand rice is one of the few crops that's pretty constant in hours per bushel). Modern day large farms are run by a handful of people (and an enormous supply chain on both sides). An example: The Netherlands is a substantial exporter of food, and farming is about 1.5% of GDP. That's astonishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Long term the Tillable idea won't fly. I worked with farmers as a fertilizer company agronomist for twenty years. If I understand it correctly Tillable is trying to insert themselves in the middle, acquire the right to sublease large amounts of land and mark it up.

Say you own a farm and lease it out. The family you lease your land to might be a neighbor. In the winter they might plow your driveway gratis. They add fertilizer and lime as needed. I've known farmers to even add small amounts of drainage tile at the beginning of a lease.

Now consider I'm a super large farmer who has rented your land through Tillable. Farming is a super thin margin business. I live two counties over so I am not going to plow out your driveway or look after your farm for you. I will pay top dollar, I will in effect mine your land to make a profit.

I won't put on fertilizer if levels are high and skip the lime. I will make a nice profit for a few years and then when yields drop I will drop the lease. Over time the price of the lease will drop sharply. So in effect the landlord will gain a few bucks short term but lose big time over the long term.

On a small scale I've seen this happen. When the landlord offers it back to the original renter he will be shocked and angry when he either refuses or offers a pittance.

The landlord either has to invest his own money on lime and fertilizer building the farm back up or have a series of short time renters from outside the county who take a chance on the land.

<comment><USER9> It sounds to me like you're making two points:

1\. Tenant farmers often pay their landlord partially in kind, with things like driveway plowing. Outsider tenants wouldn't do this.

2\. The tenant farmer has a wide range of options for how well to take care of the land, which affects its long-term value. Outsider tenants would optimize to maximize production during their lease at minimum cost, hurting long-term value.

I don't think (1) is a major issue: landlords can consider the in-kind benefits they get just as well as cash compensation. But (2) seems very serious to me. Market rates for land are much lower than they would be without the issue that the landlord needs to trust the tenant to be a good long-term steward. Whether Tillable can succeed long-term depends on whether they can solve this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the first I've heard of Tillable. As described, it's not really AirBnB for farmland, it's a growing-rights exchange.

The counterparty risk for landowners is substantial if it isn't mitigated somehow. A long-term relationship with the land is essential to keeping it healthy.

The relationships between farmers and landowners often span generations -- that makes them ripe for disruption, but the many practices that have emerged to safeguard those relationships have good reasons to exist. So many deals of substantial value are made in in-kind exchanges between neighbors who have worked side by side for decades. Rapidly-changing tenants would change everything.

<comment><USER11> As somebody who manages some family land, I wholeheartedly agree. Going back to 1830, there are only three other families we have trusted to lease our land. Some generations we lease their land. Other generations they lease ours. I've seen a cousin's land destroyed for years by outside farmers. I know I could make some good money by leasing to an outsider for a few seasons, but they will use and abandon it, and it will take several seasons to recover. What's the point in that?

<comment><USER10> One could imagine sufficient contracts to preserve the land's value/health, but they would be difficult to write and add friction.

A lot of conservation/preservation is easier if you know you're going to be leasing it for years and the landlord is your neighbor.

<comment><AUTHOR> No contract enforces anything against a corporation who is willing to waste your time in court. They have employees who waste the time of poor farmers in court every day. They use what they learn in court to write progressively more evil contracts. When is the last time any of these farmers hired a lawyer so skilled at contract law? Is such a lawyer available in their state? In any neighboring state?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kull's previous startup, 640Labs, was purchased by Climate Corporation.

 _Smith had to wonder: Did Tillable target specific landlords because it got access to data about how productive and profitable their land is?_

Climate Corp is a division of Monsanto. Wanna bet they have their own data about crop yields?

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope this doesn't discourage farmers from using technology to improve efficiency, yields, profits, etc.

I can't imagine how tough it is to farm for your livelihood. The pressure on farmers must be brutal - from John Deere making it impossible to fix/own your own tractor[0] to climate change, and now your landlord might not renew your lease.

At that point, why put so much effort into something with so little upside and so much downside for the farmer.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john- deere/](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/)

<comment><USER14> > I hope this doesn't discourage farmers from using technology to improve > efficiency, yields, profits, etc.

Throughout history of settled humans, Farmers have always been at the brink of technological progress. The wheel, the plow, and all sorts of machines. It's a common theme to depict them as technologically backwards, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Another common but misguided theme is to depict them as stupid, which they aren't in any form or fashion. They know when something is harmful to them, and this is an instance.

<comment><USER15> > Farmers have always been at the brink of technological progress.

You would think we would see more automation and fewer cows being milked by hand were this true.

<comment><USER16> The primary method of milking cows in the US has been by machine for decades...

And most farms in the US are highly automated: automated sprinklers, automated tractors, automated planters, automated harvesters (of crops that are amenable to machine harvesting).

It's simply that there are a lot of food crops that are trivial for humans to harvest by hand that would require very expensive machinery and technology to accomplish with a machine.

<comment><USER17> This. The supply of cheap human labor tends to make technological progress slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In India big farmers rent their land to big corporations and sit back relax and collect rent dollars.

Many have become millionaire overnight by doing this.

Government started taxing farmers for this reason. Untill recently, all farm income was tax free.

The case in point being that MNCs are producing the kind of output, no farmer here ever could dream of producing.

And the con? All they need is a huge piece of land.

Very little labor if any is used in this.

Most small farms are not profitable as overhead of bringing machine or labor to small farm is just too high.

I know a few farmers who sold their few hectares land in Punjab and brought several thousands of hectare land in Australia.

So you can how inflated the price of farm land is in India.

Now after making enough money in Australia, they are buying back their ancestral lands and this is sending the price of farm land in Punjab through the roof.

</comment><comment><USER19> Family farming in Pennsylvania died years ago from land competition.

The first general category of threat came from industrial farming. Large corporations started acquiring land in order to optimize profits for their monocultures. Over time, much of the land that was historically family farms became mega-farms that out compete any new family farms.

The second general category of threat was real estate developers. They would buy up land, often from the people who used to rent to farmers. At first they might not raise rents at all. But later when the market was agreeable, they'd raise rents until farmers couldn't afford to farm it, and then develop it for more profitable commercial or residential use. (interestingly, many plots that weren't being developed sat empty, and so some farmers would actually guerilla-farm it for years/decades)

A third general category was non-developers (usually the inheritor of older farms or land owners) who owned lots of land and rented it to farmers. They would "suggest" that the most profitable crop be placed and that they receive a cut, or they'd rent the land to someone else when the lease was up. So over time most land went to farming corn even if the farmer wanted to grow real food, and eventually that land would get sold to one of the two above.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is is too uncharitable of me to think of Tillable as a VC-funded vehicle to make sharecropping even worse than it already was?

<comment><USER21> Agreed, it seems like yet another iteration of a company that starts off by disrupting a market to make it more liquid, but whose endgame is becoming the dominant or sole rentier in that space.

<comment><USER22> Exactly, they sound like an unnecessary middle man that disrupts established relationships with promises of higher rents, which will end up killing the smaller farmers in favour of the large corporate farmers.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand, as a small farmer, I am small because it is _very difficult_ to find land that isn't already tied up in established relationships, often to those large corporate farmers. If something like this can give me an in with a landowner that I currently don't have, it helps my small farming business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the farmers have decades long relationship with the landowners this looks like a power play by tillable/VCs to get in there and take a recurring cut. They know the farmers have no option but to rent land and the VCs know it. So they are using their money to pay cash to landowners and get them on the site. Probability wise there is a 90% chance that the land will be rented by the same farmer as before because of land proximity issues. So it's just free money for tillable.

<comment><USER25> So, why would the farmer use it then?

<comment><USER26> Because he needs land to farm on, or he stops being a farmer and has to shut down his business.

He will now pay e.g. $1000. Tillable will offer $1100 upfront to the land owner and then "offer" it to the farmer for the low price of $1200. Since he can't just farm on some piece of land 500 miles away, he can either pay the new price, or stop farming.

Tillable offers no significant service here. It's not that there's a lot of land sitting idle because farmers and land owners have no way to come in contact, they are not solving a problem, they are just injecting themselves to extract rent with VC money.

<comment><USER27> If the farmer is willing to accept a $1200 price, then what prevents the land owner from charging $1200 right now? All the factors you list which push the price up apply just as well for the current owner-renter negotiations.

The scenario you describe is possible only if there is a lot of land that's severely mispriced / underpriced - in which case the price should and would get corrected, and after that the arbitrage opportunity disappears because, as you say, the land owner can come in contact directly with the farmer and make arrangements.

<comment><USER28> > _If the farmer is willing to accept a $1200 price, then what prevents the > land owner from charging $1200 right now?_

 _Basic human decency_? These are often long-term relationships between neighbours, whose families lived next to each other for decades or hundreds of years.

<comment><USER23> But those with such decency wouldn't turn to Tillable to capture an extra buck, so it remains unclear where you think Tillable fits.

<comment><USER26> Apparently nobody turns to Tillable. It's Tillable that's turning to land owners and tries to convince them to not renew their contracts with farmers so Tillable can negotiate new contracts with higher prices, likely with the same farmers (as farming is very much a local thing, you can't farm a piece of land from a thousand miles away).

<comment><USER23> That only brings us back to the question of why landowners wouldn't go directly to the farmer and ask for the hypothetical $1,200 that Tillable would also ask of them? It is not exactly difficult to figure out who the farmers are in your local area, and it is especially not very difficult to figure out which ones are the hungry ones willing to pay top dollar, if that is your goal. Chances are they have already been hounding you for years. Exactly because people don't normally seek farmland a thousand miles away, where there could potentially be a benefit in new introductions, it remains unclear where Tillable fits.

<comment><USER26> I believe it's similar to smart phones being produced by humans at the other end of the world who live in bunk beds, have 10-12 hour shifts and barred windows + nets below so they don't jump out trying to kill themselves. Most people at this end of the world are not okay with those conditions and do not tolerate them if they know about them. But put a suit at Apple and another suit at Foxconn between the consumer and the producer and they don't know about it. When it comes out, people are appalled and Apple & Foxconn have to shift strategies or face consumers shunning them. Tillable are those suits.

Land owners are not in the business of maximizing profits at any cost, but if you approach them with a much better offer for their land, they don't see the ways how you're able to afford that offer, much like the smart phone buyer does not know why it doesn't cost $100 more. When people profit from something, they are usually not too concerned with the details and accept that things happen that they wouldn't allow if they knew about it, by turning a blind eye (blinded by the profit, you might say).

<comment><USER23> People are willing to pay more to Apple than to Foxconn for an iPhone simply because intellectual property law prevents Foxconn from realistically selling the iPhone at a lower price. When one decides the iPhone is the device for them, they have little choice but to buy it from Apple at whatever price Apple has decided to charge. If there were no such IP encumberments, Foxconn would sell an identical device for a lower price and people would quickly forget who Apple even is.

Farmers approach landowners with better offers all the time with no qualms about paying top dollar to get it. Being a farmer myself, I can tell you first hand that competition for land if _fierce_. Sometimes the approaching farmer is taken up on the offer, sometimes not. But I see no real indication of pent up demand that isn't being satisfied because people cannot figure out who the landowners are. There is literally a land registry, if all else fails. But rural communities are small. You already know who owns what, and conversely who farms what.

It remains: Where does Tillable fit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Fed's response to the pandemic has been essentially to bail-out every financial instrument. Today we are seeing deflationary pressures. But this is only in the short term. Eventually this unprecedentedly massive _printing_ of money will turn inflationary. We have possibly (I don't know) run the course of inventing new financial instruments to turn money into more money. Or maybe the Fed will continue to exceed its charter and and encourage moral hazard.

One thing is for sure, smart capitalists are searching for real assets to acquire. There is a tsunami of capital looking for preservation in the face of coming inflation. Look for consolidation of small residential leases, productive farmland, productive forestry and mineral land and leases in a big way.

</comment><comment><USER30> This sounds an awful lot like tortious interference.

</comment><comment><USER31> What else would such a partnership be used for?

<comment><USER32> Possibly: trying to ensure that the renters do not use up the land they are renting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Any heredity industry is going to be kinda backward.</comment>


My experience and results from writing a 7-day email course - <AUTHOR> http://fieldtripmag.com/2016/7-day-email-course-in-7-days/ <comment><USER2> Was the scrolling super weird for anyone else?</comment>


Arthritis drug spurs hair growth in man with alopecia universalis - <AUTHOR> http://news.yale.edu/2014/06/19/hairless-man-arthritis-drug-spurs-hair-growth-lots-it

<comment><USER2> I've had alopecia universalis for the past two years, so it's exciting to see new research in this area. However, the drug in question (tofacitinib) is still an immunosuppresant, with some serious side effects ([http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/UCM330702.pdf](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/UCM330702.pdf)) -- so I'll be watching the clinical trials closely.

The original paper that's been submitted to Nature is worth a read: [http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/vaop/naam/pdf/jid2014260a....](http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/vaop/naam/pdf/jid2014260a.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Immunosuppressants can have a whole load of side-effects since you're effectively nuking the body's natural defence mechanism. The ones I've used (Prednisone, for asthma and allergies) have always been in pill form which is untargetted, so whilst you may knock off the immune response causing the primary symptom, you also shut down a whole host of other systems too. This has been one of the biggest side-effects for me.

What will be interesting is whether a topical cream can perform targetted application of this - shove it on your scalp for a few months and it locally modulates the immune response to the follicles and allows for hair growth. I'm not nearly familiar enough with the medical processes behind this to know whether you can do this or whether it has to be regulated at some other location.

As an aside, the whole field of computational medical research excites me. Folding@Home and the like have been the first foray into this, but I suspect we'll see a continued rapid expansion of this as we harness huge computational capability to explore modifications to processes to discover a whole host of unknown but useful side-effects from existing medications. I suspect it's likely the next big field.

<comment><USER2> Steroids like Prednisone were the recommended course of treatment by doctors when I was first diagnosed -- a massive dose of oral steroids for months. Rheumatologists said in no uncertain terms that this was likely going to have complications and long-term health consequences. I decided it wasn't worth it for what amounts to a cosmetic change.

From what I've read, tofacitinib is a a JAK inhibitor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_kinase_inhibitor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_kinase_inhibitor)), as opposed to a cortoicosteroid like Prednisone. It inhibits the activity of a very specific family of enzymes that play a part in regulation of the immune system (cytokine signalling).

It makes a ton of sense to dispense it as a topical cream to limit the potentially complex side effects. I'm also curious whether it's more or less effective for scarring vs. non-scarring alopecia, since scarring alopecia is characterized by active inflammation, and tofacitinib is supposed to be successful in reducing inflammation at the right dosage.

If someone has more background in this area, I'd appreciate more details. JAK inhibitors seem like an exciting area of research!

<comment><USER4> I'm sure that whoever is making this drug is already 10 times ahead of any of us in monetizing this for commercial hair loss applications.

I'll give it my best shot. The reason steroidal creams work is because the steroids are lipid soluble and their mechanism of action involves penetrating cell membranes and bindings to transcription factors in the cytoplasm/nucleus.

A tyrosine kinase inhibitor wouldn't be lipid soluble and therefore wouldn't be able to diffuse across the skin or into the capillaries feeding the hair follicles which is where I'm assuming the positive effect is coming from. (Turning off White Blood Cells).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is for alopecia universalis - don't get your hopes up, gents!

<comment><USER6> As someone that has had alopecia aereata in the past, I will get my hopes up! There are definitely worse fates in the world than alopecia aereata, but not having people ask if I intentionally shaved a random section of my head would be nice.

<comment><USER7> Not trying to be a jerk, but why don't you just intentionally shave the rest of your head?

<comment><USER8> As someone who has it, it's not that simple. Imagine a quarter sized bald spot somewhere random on your head. Maybe it goes away in a month. The next time imagine 3 dime sized spots on the edge of your hair line. It's one of those "going full bald " seems like overkill when you are so close to "normal" in most cases. Also, I can't speak for his experience but that's a lot harder when it's an eyebrow, which is my current situation... Maybe it will come back, maybe it won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can I participate as a female volunteer for this study?? Me and my "eyebrows" are up for the challenge!

<comment><USER10> You should call and ask.

[http://medicine.yale.edu/dermatology/people/brett_king-2.pro...](http://medicine.yale.edu/dermatology/people/brett_king-2.profile)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I was just about to look for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Still patiently waiting for a miracle in the area of male pattern baldness... That is, something other than a can of crap you sprinkle on your head. Sigh.

<comment><USER13> Actually I'm optimistic for this drug's use in regular MPB. It has been observed in the past that those on immunosupressant drugs or otherwise severely immuno-compromised do not get MPB. Another article I read mentioned that a doctor who dissected dormant hair follicles from MPB noted that it looked exactly like transplanted tissue that is being rejected in its new host.

So yes, there are many good reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Of course the side effects of an untargetted immunosuppresant drug is likely too great for general MPB, but it may lead to further research. As it stands most companies do not do research directly for drugs targetting MPB because past drugs have been market failures.

<comment><USER14> I'm not optimistic at all. It cured this one type of baldness because the baldness was a symptom of the underlying autoimmunity.

If MPB were a classical autoimmunity, it would have already been "cured" (as in, an effective treatment protocol would be laid out). Instead, it seems to be some not so subtle side effect of hormonal nuclear war, and scientists have spend decades hunting down the various little side chains to the main problem.

The best hope yet for MPB seems to be PGD2 formation inhibitors or GPR44 antagonists which are still undergoing characterization. But my bet is that like DHT, PGD2 overexpression in scalps is simply yet another side effect of the greater convoluted underlying process, and that treating it directly won't be as effective as promised. (Or worse; GPR44 is implicated in some kinds of asthma as well, which means that a drug that targets the receptor might have a wider spectrum of activity -> worse side effects.)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the info. My obsession with MPB has waned over the years so my information is no doubt out of date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Taking Ciclosporin turned all of us patients into Sasquatch. I had to shave my ears. Even bald people sometimes get their hair back after a bone marrow transplant.

I once met a pharma research guy working on hair growth. I told this dude that if they isolated the hows and whys, they'd make a mint.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclosporin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclosporin)

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a friend with alopecia. This would be awesome if gives her an option for reversing it.

</comment><comment><USER17> The title really should refer directly to alopecia. Those of us that have it likely know the name. For everyone else, they don't realize that "male pattern baldness" is completely different.

<comment><USER18> I believe "male pattern baldness" is known as androgenic alopecia. Unfortunately, I don't think this research applies to those with androgenic alopecia.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, though I think most people don't know that. My thoughts are with this new title fewer folks with receding hair lines will get their hopes up.

Granted... I am not exactly sure this was a problem. So, apologies if I made it sound like this was a dire concern. And thanks to the mods for changing the title! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. "Get out of here, baldy!" they said. "Get out of here, baldy!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hope for George Dawes!

</comment><comment><USER21> I have alopecia, dont be a pussy who use drugs with side effects. Take it like a man. No Hair, No Problem i can deal with it.</comment>


XML is almost always misused - <AUTHOR> https://www.devever.net/~hl/xml <comment><USER2> I'm going to just argue the exact opposite of the article: xml and json are both structured data formats useful for tree like data graphs, such as objects.

Whether that was the intended purpose when xml was designed is irrelevant. It's what xml is used for in almost every case.

The author also doesn't suggest what should be used instead to encode structured data, or perhaps more importantly what _should_ have been used to encode graph like things such as map/lists/objects in the 2000's. Json really hasn't been an alternative until quite recently (10 years ago?).

In fact reading the article carefully I fail to see the author argue _why_ xml shouldn't be used as a data format either.

<comment><USER3> Well, XML is a _markup_ language (and is really good at being that) while JSON is not. Sure, XML can be used as a poor man's data storage, as a base for a DSL, etc., but almost always there are better choices.

<comment><USER4> You aren't responding to the comment here, you are just reasserting the article's position. I'd argue there is not another format that is obviously better for every data storage or exchange use case, or that surpasses all of XML's benefits while minimizing all of its downsides. I don't want to look at XML, but I do understand why it is being used.

<comment><USER5> Abuse of XML _killed_ it a format. JSON is absolutely shit for semantic markup, and yet developers today routinely use it for documents because "XML is bad". They contrive ridiculous schemes for adding metadata and type information. They use it to generate HTML even when HTML _takes less space_. Finally, we regressed from XTML to HTML5. Buy-buy namespaces and parsing consistency.

<comment><USER6> Right, but, if given a choice of what to use, between XML and JSON, I'll pick JSON every time.

XML is a complete mess. Have you SEEN it's spec?

You can put JSONs spec in a single page. XMLs spec, not so much. Hell, most of the XML parsers don't support the spec, and the ones which do, historically have been riddled with security holes.

JSON over XML was simplicity over a crazy spec built by a bunch of companies all wanting to shove their own crazyness into it.

<comment><USER7> [http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php](http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Data_portability_issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#Data_portability_issues)

XML has XSD and RELAX NG for more than 15 years now. [https://json- schema.org/](https://json-schema.org/) is still a draft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, what _is_ XML good for? If it's not good for data as everyone says (and I'm not inclined to argue), but it is good for documents, what kind of documents are we referring to? A defined metadata on a text document? A template used with data to generate something else? Is a configuration file a document or data? Where would I want to use XML that something like JSON, a text document, or some combination thereof wouldn't be better?

I'm not being facetious, this is an honest question. Where are the "right" places to use XML?

<comment><USER9> Just the sort of thing you would think of as 'documents'\--the texts of books, manuscripts, and the like, where structure may be somewhat arbitrary. For instance, I work with a few different text corpuses--one of which is an actual dictionary, with entries, definitions, usage examples, etymological information, and bibliographic references. Another is a collection of poetry manuscripts, with annotations for line breaks and editorial emendations, both from the author and other editors (i.e, places in the manuscript with crossouts, interlineal notes, marginal notes, etc).

I mean, in theory, you could do this in JSON or some other data structure. But you would go insane and be shooting yourself in the head before long.

<comment><USER10> > you could do this in JSON or some other data structure

I'm not sure you could. For example, in another comment, I mentioned DocBook[1]. How would you do the following sample document in JSON?

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <book xml:id="simple_book" xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0">
        <title>Very simple book</title>
        <chapter xml:id="chapter_1">
          <title>Chapter 1</title>
          <para>Hello world!</para>
          <img src="hello.jpg"/>
          <para>I hope that your day is proceeding <emphasis>splendidly</emphasis>!</para>
        </chapter>
        <chapter xml:id="chapter_2">
          <title>Chapter 2</title>
          <para>Hello again, world!</para>
        </chapter>
      </book>

Would you make each <chapter> into an object? But you have 2 <para> children in there with an <img> in between. And one <para> has an additional <emphasis> in the content. I can't think of a good JSON schema equivalent to this.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook#Sample_document](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook#Sample_document)

<comment><USER11> See [https://developers.google.com/docs/api/samples/output- json](https://developers.google.com/docs/api/samples/output-json) for what Google Docs does - basically separating markup from the text by using indices.

which is probably the only way to properly deal with markup and especially commented sections that can span over paragraph start/ends - neither JSON or XML seems to have a proper answer for such annotations and I wonder if there's any standard format that can that, especially if humans still want to reasonable be able to view or edit iit...

(OOXML and its binary equivalents more or less solve this by completely separating paragraph and character formatting, both separately indexing the spans of text they annotate)

<comment><USER12> That is what essentially every WYSIWYG text processor does. And also the reason why getting sane HTML out of text processor is somewhat non-trivial, as the separately indexed spans can very well overlap, contradict each other or contain completely unnecessary formatting information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's a very useful and sobering view actually. Unfortunately for the XML format it wasn't designed to prevent its own abuse. But anyway, _XML is for documents_ sounds like a good and acceptable paradigm.

That being said, one subtle and important (and often overlooked) difference between XML and, say JSON is that you can stream XML while parsing it on the application level, whereas JSON can not be parsed by the application due to arbitrary ordering of keys. (Of course lower level parsers use streaming anyway, but that's not the point)

In fact you not only can but you should parse XML while streaming it. This is another common abuse: wherever you look you see some high level function that loads an entire parsed XML structure into memory at once. But once you start asking yourself where the file may be coming from you realize that your system may be open to denial of service attacks. E.g. is your system ready to receive a 16GB XML file?

<comment><USER14> There is no reason you can't do a SAX-style parser for JSON. A quick bit of searchengineering will find dozens, eg. [https://github.com/dgraham/json- stream](https://github.com/dgraham/json-stream)

<comment><USER13> You can in principle, but because the order is not guaranteed, you may find yourself accumulating things in memory. It depends on the task of course, but neither standard parsers nor generators are required to send adjacent JSON entities in a specific order.

I remember someone describing a trick where instead of sending a JSON array they'd just send a stream of JOSN objects, one per line, so that the receiving end could parse the data in a streaming fashion. But that's not JSON anymore.

<comment><USER14> JSONlines is a relatively common technique [http://jsonlines.org/](http://jsonlines.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> XML is a actually wonderful format for data and especially extensible configuration if you combine it with XML Schema and CSS selectors...

\- XML schemas give you a ready-to-use format to describe, restrict and document available configuration settings. The unique keys help and a libxml2 gives ready to use validation, even if you may need to 'translate' its error messages before showing them to end users

\- XML schemas also support other annotations so you can further generalise your configuration readers by recording the necessary bindings in the XML schema itself, allowing to use it eg to define application user interfaces.

\- Almost any text editor can do basic syntax validation preventing most typographic errors, and even better if they can read the schema

\- XML schemas are extensible using <import>s, but namespaces still enforce some separation. You can define explicit points where plugins extend your configuration format using <any>

\- Human editable - closing tags are noisy but more readable than }],{}] when non-programmers may have to edit these files just to add a few extra textfields to an UI.

\- Better datatype support, eg datetimes, by using XML schemas. JSON's type support is too limited

\- Support for comments!

\- And once you've verified the schema... CSS selectors and DOM APIs to actually process the XML documents.

YAML fixed quite a few things, but still no date times or as far as I know standardised approaches to defining schemas. And I've lost count at how any attempts exist to add schema information or namespacing to JSON...

But for markup... we may be better off to just use markdown inside CDATA blocks

<comment><USER7> > XML schemas give you a ready-to-use format to describe, restrict and > document available configuration settings.

As someone that likes and uses s-expressions, I never thought I would find myself defending XML, but here we are in 2019, no one understands basic parsing theory anymore, and file formats have "evolved" to hot garbage like YAML and TOML.

XML has some great tools in comparison:

[http://xmlsoft.org/xmllint.html](http://xmlsoft.org/xmllint.html) [https://relaxng.org/](https://relaxng.org/)

> But for markup... we may be better off to just use markdown inside CDATA > blocks

SGML can still make a comeback: [https://leancrew.com/all-this/2014/09/sgml- nostalgia/](https://leancrew.com/all-this/2014/09/sgml-nostalgia/)

<comment><USER15> YAML and TOML were optimized for human reading and writing, like markdown. XML & even JSON are not as human optimized, but still human usable.

<comment><USER5> Humans should not interact with computers by manually editing data structures serialized to ASCII.

<comment><USER11> But we can't always budget a nice configuration application.

And once we've just put simple XML file there for configuration and we're past the prototyping phase... "well this actually works good enough, let it be".

<comment> Const-me You likely need data model classes for the config anyway, along with support of serialization and deserialization (XML or not is not important). Use a stock property grid control, pass the root object of the config, and you'll get a GUI that does the job much better than ASCII files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If a piece of technology is "almost always" misused, is that the fault of the users, or the technology?

<comment><USER17> If you mean "users" as in "users of the XML format", then it's the fault of developers as 'users' of their applications don't have any choice in the matter.

<comment><USER16> I mean "users" exactly the same way "used" was meant in the author's statement. So yes, the developers, who are the people who are using XML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Here are some very frequently occurring examples of bad schema design:

(4 lines, 75 characters)

> Here's the right way:

(10 lines, 133 characters)

I have a suspicion as to what went wrong.

<comment><USER19> > "But if the people who made the strange decision to use XML as a data format > [...] they might realise that what they're doing is unsuited to it and > unergonomic

The author's point is that XML should not be a data format.

<comment><USER20> Is there logic to the authors assertion past "that isn't what XML was intended for"? It is a pretty nice data format if you want wide compatibility and schema integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is, XML is not a data format. It's a markup language.

<comment><USER21> I just invented XDF, it is exactly like XML, but it can be used to represent arbitrary data structures. Do you have any objections now?

<comment><USER22> That is only valid if the XDF standard has been published by the W3C

<comment><USER23> This doesn't make any sense. W3C doesn't restrict/define use cases of XML, it defines structure and semantics thereof; using it as-if it is an XDF document is perfectly ok, just like you can use XML data for your DASH stream etc... It's a structure on top of XML structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One thing this misses in the "dictionary" example is that tools (like xpath) push you towards "key in attribute" selection. One of the most common operations we do with dictionaries is lookup by known key, and storing the key in attributes makes it much easier.

<comment><USER25> "Key in attribute" is the correct way to do it, it's just that his examples are absolutely terrible and make no sense at all. A completely unstructured list of key-value pairs is overkill for any structured data format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can I have my gripe with apple plists?

<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>

<string>TextEdit</string>

<key>NSHumanReadableCopyright</key>

<string>Copyright 2019</string>

This may be perfectly parsable by a SAX parser storing some state, but its totally not processable by xslt.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that's awful XML. Ironically, they used to have a decent readable format in NeXTStep, it was only later it was XML-ified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I guess the correct answer depends upon the requirement.

I like this way

      <root>
       <item key="name">John</item>
       <item key="city">London</item>
      </root>

So I can use this xpath to get the person's name:

      //root/item[@key="name"]/text()

Not sure what would be the xpath to get the name if the XML was

      <root>
       <item>
        <key>Name</key>
        <value>John</value>
       </item>
       <item>
        <key>City</key>
        <value>London</value>
       </item>
      </root>

This is a better example:

      <employees>
       <employee id="1">
         <field name="name">John</field>
         <field name="city">London</field>
       </employee>
       <employee id="2">
         <field name="name">Jack</field>
         <field name="city">Boston</field>
       </employee>
      <employees>

<comment><USER29> The XPath for the second one would be:

//root/item/key[text()="Name"]/../value/text()

<comment><USER30> Alternatively

      //root/item[key[text()="Name"]]/value/text()

<comment><USER22> You usually do not need to use text() in xpath, so this should work the same:

      //root/item[key="name"]/value

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> XML is/can be much more than a markup language and yes, it can be used very badly but this is usually by inexperienced 'data wranglers' who don't understand the difference between data attributes and data proper.

While XML can seem cumbersome (compared to JSON say) it is a very good 'data transport' tool when used correctly with a sensible schema (XSD).

For example, we use XML as a 'vendor neutral' data format to export/import CAD geometry and associated data for town utilities such as buildings, pipes, roads etc. All this data has to be validated against the schema to ensure its correctness. Using a schema like this enables the city council to import this XML into the GIS system to be used for asset management, financial planning etc.

A good schema can be key to sharing XML effectively between departments/applications and being a markup language this data can also be viewed independently using XLST.

</comment><comment><USER32> I agree with this portion 100%

The correct way to express a dictionary in XML is something like this:

<root> <item> <key>Name</key> <value>John</value> </item> <item> <key>City</key> <value>London</value> </item> </root>

In the past I used to create scripts that exported xml from relational data but didn't really understand the right way to build and structure them.

</comment><comment><USER33> The larger your XML file is the more accurately you're using it. Less " and more <>. I made these mistakes, using XML like a I was writing an HTML doc.

</comment><comment><USER34> It is difficult for me to see what the real issue is with examples given. It seems to be more an aesthetic preference of the author rather than a technical argument. People can use formats for whatever they want. :P

If you told me that the transmission and parsing rate is too slow for their application, that's a real dig at it.

<comment><USER35> I think it's a bit like trying to explain why a Python REPL isn't a substitute for a calculator? Like it can of course do what you want, and you can't "see" what's wrong if you just take what you see literally (you'll obviously get the same answers regardless of what tool you use), but it's just... not meant for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For those wondering what you do with XML as a document markup language, see the XML document that is the specification for XML. I had to look at the page source to determine it really is an XML document. Looks like an HTML document.

[https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/REC- xml-20081126.xml](https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/REC-xml-20081126.xml)

<comment><USER25> I've got a stylesheet I wrote that turns HTML or XHTML into a fully indented and highlighted representation of itself which I was quite proud of :) I used to spend a lot of time writing XSLT and XQuery lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think that Software Engineers should take influence from Authors (after all, are we not all craftsmen/artisans?) and incorporate the philosophies from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author)

The idea, for those not familiar, is that once a work of art is published (a novel, a poem, a song, a painting), it speaks for itself, and authorial intent no longer matters.

That is, meaning and purpose are in the eye of the beholder/consumer. And there is no right or wrong way to "interpret" art. If someone finds meaning that the author did not intend, it is just as valid as a deeply hidden but intentional allegory they intentionally placed in when they were writing.

The relevance to software is it applies to APIs, specifications, standards and formats.

There is no such thing as users using your software or specification "wrong" \- if they insist on doing so, the meaning has evolved. Evolve with it or die.

<comment><USER38> That's a little extreme but you raise a good point. I think a talented spec designer anticipates how their work might be interpreted / used / abused, and, like an adroit villain, nudges their audience toward tenets their grand scheme seeks to achieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > _In 1996, XML was invented._

XML wasn't an original invention; it is specified as a proper SGML subset. From the XML spec:

> _The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely > described in this document._

Now I totally agree that SGML and XML aren't for service payloads and config files. The sole purpose of markup languages is representing _structured text_. And arguably, SGML fills this role much more adequately than XML today as it can represent (via the SHORTREF mechanism) custom Wiki syntaxes such as markdown and others, and in contrast to XML, can deal with the largest corpus of markup out there eg. can parse HTML with all its minimization features such a omitted tags, enumerated and unquoted attributes, etc. See [1] for a practical introduction (disclaimer: link to a tutorial I held last month at ACM DocEng).

[1]: [http://sgmljs.net/docs/sgml-html- tutorial.html](http://sgmljs.net/docs/sgml-html-tutorial.html)

<comment><USER40> SGML's implied close tags are a pain in the ass though. End tags in XML are overly verbose, but at least they're required.

<comment><USER39> You control whether an element requires start- and end-element tags in your element declaration via "O" (letter O as in "omissible") in the respective tag omission indicator position:

        <!ELEMENT e - -(f,g,h)    -- no tag omission -->
        <!ELEMENT f O - (#PCDATA) -- start-tag omission -->
        <!ELEMENT g - O (#PCDATA) -- end-tag omission -->
        <!ELEMENT h O O (#PCDATA) -- both start- and end-
                                     tag omission allowed-->

What's painful about end-element tag omission?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> turns out a well specified format that has a lot of parsers available is useful for more than just a markup language. xml is great at data formatting, a little more verbose than alternatives but also a lot more feature rich

<comment><USER42> The format wasn't well-specified and didn't have a lot of parsers in 1996 though. The parsers came after the decision was made by a lot of people to use a markup language inappropriately for structured data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I present, in the spirit of 'worst XML ever', the docs for ScriptXML:

[https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence/display/XRWIKI/Missi...](https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence/display/XRWIKI/Mission+Director+Guide)

This is the language used in the game X4 Foundations (and others in the series). An example of its use (mine, i claim no grace in it):

[https://github.com/h2odragon/dragoncommands/blob/master/aisc...](https://github.com/h2odragon/dragoncommands/blob/master/aiscripts/deployglobe.xml)

... XML is not a great format for an extension language, I have to say.

<comment><USER44> Eclipse project files are also hot garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would love to know what people think of my XML node-graph/tree editor I made before JSON became mainstream (my excuse): [http://rupy.se/logic.jar](http://rupy.se/logic.jar)

It basically names the tag what you name the node. :S

\- You link/unlink nodes (I called them entities! Xo) by right-click-dragging between them.

\- You copy stuff by right-click-dragging to an empty space.

\- You delete by grabbing something by left-click-holding and pressing the delete key.

\- Oh, and nodes are completely tree structure expandable, just drag-drop attributes on nodes and nodes inside nodes.

The editor uses lightweight rendering so you can have a ton of elements with good performance.

(I know, not super intuitive; but very handy once you know about these.)

</comment><comment><USER46> The first rule of XML is: whatever you're doing with it, that's not what it was for.

</comment><comment><USER47> > a simple test for determining if an XML schema is well designed: remove all > tags and attributes from it ... If what you have left over does not make > sense ... you shouldn't be using XML at all.

Magento 2 (acquired by Adobe for $1.68bn) uses XML to render its layouts. Here's some fun XML for the checkout page:

[https://github.com/magento/magento2/blob/2.3-develop/app/cod...](https://github.com/magento/magento2/blob/2.3-develop/app/code/Magento/Checkout/view/frontend/layout/checkout_index_index.xml)

</comment><comment><USER48> I once had to write a data layer in xml, in-situ with a lifespan for up to hours, as more data was appended to it. An invalid xml document that you couldn't load in many xml apis for 99.9% of its lifespan. I begged and pleaded the lead architect to use an sqlite db for the elements of the data until the transaction was complete and then merely produce the xml file at the end, but no.

It had to survive power outs too.

</comment><comment><USER22> The worst XML use I have ever seen are lists generated by Lazarus. Every list. For example in the project files you have:

        <RequiredPackages Count="5">
          <Item1>
            <PackageName Value="LazUtils"/>
          </Item1>
          <Item2>
            <PackageName Value="treelistviewpackage"/>
          </Item2>
          <Item3>
            <PackageName Value="internettools"/>
          </Item3>
          <Item4>
            <PackageName Value="LCLBase"/>
            <MinVersion Major="1" Release="1" Valid="True"/>
          </Item4>
          <Item5>
            <PackageName Value="LCL"/>
          </Item5>
        </RequiredPackages>

<comment><USER49> I once got a really nice one:

Software v1.0: Config is a binary blob and everybody curses the nasty editor provided by vendors.

Software v2.0: Config is in XML. Thank god!

Oh wait.

<Binaryblob><Byte value="65"/><Byte value="99"/> ....

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Hmm...somewhat disagree with the "correct" way to express a dictionary. I prefer:

       <root>
          <Name>John</Name>
          <City>London</City>
       </root>

Removes one level of indirection, XML already has keys.

<comment><USER51> That's not a good way to express a dictionary because it does not allow arbitrary strings as key names.

It's also not a good example of XML, because XML schemas should have a fixed list of tag names.

<comment><USER52> But the starting point in the example was

        <item name="name" value="John" />
        <item name="city" value="London" />

where the key names are used as attributes, so it wouldn't work with arbitrary key names either, right?

<comment><USER51> It would work (kind of); most XML parsers/generators would take care of escaping and unescaping quotes; but there's no way in the XML spec to escape characters in tag names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have always thought that using XML as a format for storing and retrieving configuration files, was complete insanity.

Which is why I still use the simple, effective, INI format for configuration files for applications I write.

XML for config files is madness personified.

</comment><comment><USER53> RIP Eric Naggum

[http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum- xmlrant.html](http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> I love the quote I originally saw on the Nokogiri (Ruby XML lib) site:

"XML is like violence – if it doesn't solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."

</comment><comment><USER55> The worst example of this that I deal with regularly has to be the libvirt domain XML.

[https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html](https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html)

It does occasionally put information outside of the tags, but because there's no logic to when, it's nearly worse.

</comment><comment><USER56> And JavaScript was never meant to be used to build applications...

There are many, many more inventions that are used for different purposes they were meant for.

The Internet was created so that US can withstand nuclear attack and it was never meant to be primarily used to spread advertisements.

Get over it.

</comment><comment><USER57> I can't find much to corroborate this article's take. RDF is a stark counter- example - a standard from the W3C. It has endorsement from Tim Bray, one of XML's co-authors.

</comment><comment><USER58> XML with only tags and attributes (nothing but ignored spaces between '>' and '<') is a reasonable structured data format.</comment>


US patent chief to software patent critics: "Give it a rest already" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/us-patent-chief-to-software-patent-critics-give-it-a-rest-already/ <comment><USER2> > He noted that during a time of growing litigation in the smartphone > industry, "innovation continues at an absolutely breakneck pace. In a system > like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, > it cannot be said that the patent system is broken," he said.

Metric X is high, therefore disputed policy Y is boosting metric X.

If more people understood the inanity of this line of argument, the world would be a much better place.

The head of the USPTO isn't even willing to have an intellectually honest debate on the subject. It's pretty clear that change is not going to come from within.

<comment><USER3> > Metric X is high, therefore disputed policy Y is boosting metric X.

Although the reasoning doesn't exactly follow, it does still say something important: that the patent system isn't totally breaking innovation. In other words, he's saying that we have something to lose, and he's right.

You can make a strong argument that we won't lose it, and I'd agree with you. But it's not exactly proven. Actually, I don't think it's a simple win or lose situation, I think that patents (or the lack thereof) change the nature of things invented, and it's hard to quantify whether it's better or worse.

<comment><USER4> > the patent system isn't totally breaking innovation

This is like saying it wouldn't be so bad to be blind because blind people are able to live fulfilling and experience-rich lives. Yes, that is true, blind people do live rich and fulfilling lives, but this says nothing at all about the richness of the lives they could be living if they were not blind.

We have fewer than five large companies dominating the smart phone space. Let's ignore for a moment the fallacy that because smart phone innovation is occurring that therefore all innovation is a-okay. There are no small players in this space. This is like American car companies before Tesla and the other new electric companies got started. We know from experience that the domination of an industry by a few large players does not lead to innovation in the long term. It leads to tit-for-tat competition with little novel exploration of the space of possible products. These companies become conservative and self-concerned.

I think if you do any research into the current patent system, you will find it self-evident that the situation is untenable. Amazon holds a patent on "one-click ordering". They own a 20-year patent on the notion of only needing to click one button to make a purchase. Apple was just granted a patent on "searching across multiple databases simultaneously". The absurdity of the situation is apparent.

We are already in a period where large companies can use their patents to crush startups. It does not matter if the patent dispute is spurious and the startup clearly within their rights. Large companies with in-house legal staff can drown a startup by requiring them to fork out enormous quantities of money for legal representation in their self-defense. With a suite of patents, a company like Apple can bring suit after suit until finally the small company either loses one (these things are not decided by engineers or experts in patent law, they are decided by juries, a curse and a blessing), or runs out of money. This is analogous to the libel/slander situation in Britain, in which the cost of defending against a libel suite is enough to ruin a journalistic enterprise.

Read about what happened to Vlingo, as the situation I just described has already occurred: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars- amo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech- giants-can-stifle-competition.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER5> > There are no small players in this space.

There's a horde of small players in the space. They've been dropping like flies, but there's a steady stream of new entrants both on the handset and software sides. Most of these new companies will fail as well. But it's not because of patents, it's because there are big economies of scale and the network effects are even bigger.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. The irony of reading that statement _on this very web site_ is just staggering. How many companies are in the current YC round again?

This argument shouldn't even be at issue. Of course we're seeing very rapid innovation. The question is whether that's because of or in spite of the current patent regime, which is very hard to answer. People like us see the harm that bad patents can do and decide one way.

Other people look at (1) the fact that there is rapid innovation in the market and (2) the patent system was designed to foster innovation as evidence to the contrary. You're not going to win these people over by claiming that patents are "killing" innovation. All they have to do is look in their pockets to see that you're wrong.

<comment><USER7>
      > How many companies are in the current YC round again?

The grandparent post was talking about 'small players' in the 'building a smartphone' market. Unless a significant portion of the current YC round are building smartphones, I'm not sure how this is relevant.

<comment><USER8> Small players in cell phones: [http://www.phonearena.com/news/10-cell-phone- companies-youve...](http://www.phonearena.com/news/10-cell-phone-companies- youve-probably-never-heard-of_id33406)

<comment><USER9> Out of ten, one of them is U.S.-based. That seems to support the assertion that something is wrong in the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fuck this guy and fuck patents.

      That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,
      we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
      and this we should do freely and generously.

      - Benjamin Franklin

Bless Benjamin Franklin.

<comment><USER11> Thats how you create a better world for everyone. I'm pretty sure this guy wants to create a better world for his corporate friends only.

<comment><USER12> As someone who works in the biopharmaceutical industry, I couldn't disagree with you more.

<comment><USER13> Surely you must be trolling.

<comment><USER12> Not trolling. I work in biotech. This industry lives and dies on IP. It literally costs hundreds of millions of dollars to run clinical trials and most of them fail. If someone else can come along and make a knock-off of your product and steal your profit then there's no incentive to run them. The whole model of the pharmaceutical industry relies on ~15-20 years of patent protection. People certainly play games with patents in biopharma, too, but without some form of IP protection you wouldn't get new drugs. Simple as that.

<comment><USER14> New drugs are an extremely specific and limited case of Patents, a chemical formula.

If Biotech worked the way software did, you would be able to patent "A combination of chemicals inside of a pill that cures headaches".

<comment> distant-uncle Very true. Or even just: "A combination of chemicals".

What I also find remarkable is how much actual research in biotech is done with public money. And how much big pharma spends on marketing, as opposed to actual research.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical- comp...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-companies- marketing_n_1760380.html)

I think India's take on pharma products is enlightening. The pharma industry has managed to effect some self-serving changes in India's patent laws. However, as we speak the Supreme Court of India is hearing a case of particular interest.

[http://theconversation.edu.au/david-and-goliath-novartis- cha...](http://theconversation.edu.au/david-and-goliath-novartis-challenges- indias-patent-law-9880)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I met David a few weeks ago to talk about patents and software. I have to say that coming out of that meeting I felt a lot better about things than going in.

He has good intentions. He worked hard to get provisions in the new law that would allow his office to fix the most egregious problems.

They are opening the first satellite patent office in San Jose specifically to address software and technology hardware patents.

I have to agree with him -- we need to give the new laws a chance to work. They just went into effect a few months ago.

<comment><USER16> It's true that the new law needs a chance. And it's true that all or the vast majority of politicians and bureaucrats have good intentions and want things to work. And it's unfortunately a reality that someone who is part of the system (head of the PTO!) has to protect and defend the system.

The problem is that software patents are in fact fundamentally broken. Think about it this way: does it make sense that the patent rules should be the same in fields as different as software/web/internet and pharmaceuticals/biotech -- where the innovation cycle, product lifecycle, and R&D costs are so dramatically different? If we had to design the patent system from scratch, would we put in place the same rules?

The reforms may help a little on the margins. But more fundamental change is needed in the software arena.

<comment><USER17> My view is perhaps a bit limited because I'm in the software industry. Are other industries represented fairly well by the current laws and is it only the software industry that are demanding changes?

Though government is adept at yielding to special interest and industry groups, fundamental change may be difficult to hope for if the software industry is the lone voice at this point.

<comment><USER18> It's not even the software industry generally. My background is in embedded software (military radios, heavy-duty network infrastructure), and I never saw that kind of opposition. I got my degree in aerospace engineering, and even among university kids nobody ever questioned the validity of the patent system or the fact that the university took out patents, etc.

I think the difference is that most engineering industries are very capital intensive. Defending the occasional patent lawsuit doesn't seem so onerous when your capital expenditures are measured in the hundreds of millions or billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Our patent system is the envy of the world,"

I thought it was worlds lawyers wet dream and laughing stock of everybody else.

I can't remember one mention of US patent that was not grotesquely funny. I heard nothing of sorts about patents of any other country. The only thing I heard about those is that they are hard to get, expensive and short lasting.

<comment><USER18> The about-face Silicon Valley has done on this issue in the last decade or two is pretty amusing. Back when Silicon Valley meant Microsoft making software and Sun making hardware, people ranted and tore their hair out over how lack of IP enforcement in developing countries was destroying innovation...

<comment><USER20> The two aren't mutually exclusive. IP needs to be enforced in order for our current system to work -- Even the GPL depends on copyright enforcement. On the other hand, if asinine patents and overly broad copyrights are handed out, then it becomes difficult for everybody.

Copyright needs to be enforced, but on a narrower set of IP. Patents should actually be innovative, unique, and original. Copyright should be specific, with broad fair use and protected status for parodies and satires.

<comment><USER21> >Even the GPL depends on copyright enforcement

I remember Stallman saying something along the lines that GPL is using copyright against itself.

So I don't think GPL "depending" on copyright enforcement is a valid point for IP enforcement.

GPL is just specifically tailored for the current system and would just morph to something else if the legal climate changes.

<comment><USER22> Without copyright protection, it would be pretty easy to interfere with two of the Four Freedoms.

<comment><USER23> Without copyright protection, there would be less incentive to interfere with any of the freedoms. Imagining a lack of copyright on software, the two reasons I can think of to eschew sharing are to keep for oneself/one's group an advantage provided by the program (whether that be a better search algorithm or a better nuclear weapon simulator) or to prevent exposure of assumptions made by the software to a competitor/adversary (e.g., avoid illegitimate SEO, security through obscurity).

The advantages of sharing would remain: everyone with more access, a larger number of people to help improve the software.

The pro-copyright claim is that the current system provides incentives for more software to be built than the absence of copyright would; but that's an economic model without experimental validation and not even as reliable as tested economic models (e.g., Keynesian stimulation/damping).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's not how democracy works. When people don't like what's going on, they work until they change it. What they won't do is "give it a rest".

<comment><USER11> One could argue that we don't live in a true democracy. What we live in right now is much closer to fascism. I'd even go as far as to say that the concept of lobbying is a fascist idea.

This guy has huge ties to IBM, I'd have a very hard time believing he has the public's best interests in mind. He's more likely to pass laws which would help his rich friends instead.

Note that I'm not a strong believer of government to begin with. My rationale is that if society is anything like software development, management should be seen as counter-productive.

<comment><USER25> > I'd even go as far as to say that the concept of lobbying is a fascist idea

The people living in democracies without lobbying wholeheartedly agree. We genuinely can't believe you let it happen.

<comment><USER26> Lobbying is an essential and legitimate part of every democracy. Although it often has negative connotations, the process serves a very important role in the input of policy decisions. In the US, lobbying is constitutionally protected, without which citizens would have no guaranteed way to communicate with elected officials.

Your assertion that you and others live in democracies without such a process is false. Moreover your implication that lobbying is wholly negative and unique to the American democratic system undermines your position and demonstrates what appears to be a bias against the United States in general rather than an honest critique of the way lobbying is conducted in that country.

<comment><USER27> > In the US, lobbying is constitutionally protected, without which citizens > would have no guaranteed way to communicate with elected officials.

Yet de-facto in the day-to-day it is not you-and-me average citizens lobbying at the highest level but HugeCorps because they have the connections and means to pay the right lobbyists that actual average citizens could never afford...

And the very word itself already has a bad connotation. It is not "democratizing" or "participating", it is "lobbying" and nobody associates a positive, generally beneficial democratic process with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The US Patent System is the envy of the world!? I'd love to have more international opinions on this, but from my experience in Japan, France and England, no one envies our patent system, and most programmers simply ignore it even when working on products for the US market.

<comment><USER29> I'm French, now living/workin in the US and I'm not too sure I agree with you. Did you know that even small businesses when they register at "Chambre du commerce" they usually protect their IP/Name through INPI. That's like the first thing they do even if it's a food truck. So for me IP protection is very present in our culture. Same for the companies I worked for we usually submit patent to USPTO before EPO.

<comment><USER30> Please do not confuse IP protection with the patent system. For example I love the copyright system while I hate the patent system. You don't copy code accidentally and to use your example - it's still relatively easy to research if names are already used and you don't have to do that often.

But you have a really hard time figuring out if you break some patents while developing software. Even lawyers and courts often have a hard time figuring out if something steps on a patent or not. As software developer where you develop new things every day you can basically only close your eyes and code on hoping you don't trigger too many patent mines. Patents belong as little in writing software as they belong in writing other things like books, articles or speeches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Self-serving bureaucrat defends his niche...

</comment><comment><USER32> I'll be downvoted to hell for this but he has a point! We do need to let the new get a chance to work. Technology has changed everything and patent law just wasn't written to account for what's happening now. That's indisputable but it doesn't mean the whole system is broken.

I don't think anyone can say "yes the patent system is broken" or "the patent system works fine" definitively because it's not a cut and dry issue. You may argue that patents are a disincentive to innovation while others feels differently. It's really an ideological issue. It's subjective and not objective like people want to make it.

Furthermore, everyone out there yelling about how we need to rebuild the whole patent system from the ground up again or abolish it altogether are really the ones who need to give it a rest. We can't just rewrite all patent law or get rid of patents. That's like saying the US needs a new constitution. So much has been built on top of and around patent law that making such drastic changes would have ripple effects that would be worse than the original problem.

That said, I can't stand behind Kaposs' statement that pace of innovation is evidence of the patent system working. Did he even hear himself say that? What's his definition of innovation? Sure, we have lots of touch screen devices with different names coming out every single day but is that innovation? But really that's neither here nor there. The pace of innovation and the patent system working are wholly unrelated.

I also have an honest question. Why does everyone really want to reform/abolish our patent system? I mean, really. The real reason. Again, I swear its an honest question and I have an honest observation. To me, because no one has explained it to me yet, it seems like there are a few trendy startups and companies out there who got burned by the patent system. So then they threw a fit about patent reform. The HNers and Silicon Valley types picked up on this and now its the hip new cause to support. It reminds me of when being anti-copyright and pro-piracy became cool. They seem to have this really nice sounding ideology behind them that's very easy to adopt and so people do. But to me, these ideas, which in a perfect world would work out great, seem divorced from reality. In the case of startups/companies lobbying for this, don't you think that when they get to such a size where keeping the status quo would help them more than reforming patent law would that they'd drop their ideology and start throwing patent suits around like everybody else? I do. Because I would.

<comment><USER33> > or get rid of patents

We could, its in the right of goverments to do that.

> That's like saying the US needs a new constitution. So much has been built > on top of and around patent law that making such drastic changes would have > ripple effects that would be worse than the original problem.

Thats hard to predict and otherwise its a really bad argument. It remindes me of the argument against lowering inflation. Yes lowering inflation will always creat problems, sometimes even very bad ones but that is no reason to just keep going.

Taking a stand and hit the problem in the face, deal with the consequences and from there on build on a much more solid ground like we did in monetary policy.

> I also have an honest question. Why does everyone really want to > reform/abolish our patent system? I mean, really. The real reason.

I for one think that it is simple a ineffective system that will just harm the economy and the social live more general (specially in the case of copyrights).

From a purly economicl view it seams clear that all form of IP are harmful. Resources that are not limted do not need a propery rights system. I can not prove this (and I think nobody can) the benefits from copying are much much greater then the benefits from improved insentive.

If you look at sientific discovery and innovation, how it works is many small steps and improving little by little. Revolutionary discoverys do not happen very often.

There are many reason this is specially true in practice. In the real world the patent system is ruled over by a goverment agency that is (like any goverment agency) subject to lobbying and other problems discribed in public choice theory (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory>).

> don't you think that when they get to such a size where keeping the status > quo would help them more than reforming patent law would that they'd drop > their ideology and start throwing patent suits around like everybody else? I > do. Because I would.

Sure they would. I would too. That is exactly why we have to change insentives. As long as the system is as it is people will have the same insentives (an we all know what these are).

The most importend economic book you will every read will just say "insentive matter" on every page.

<comment><USER32> Fair enough, good points. But do you kind of see what I'm getting at toward the end? You may have some strong beliefs on patent law but does everyone? Really? Is it just me or does anyone else see this as a bandwagon thing. The next hip cause to support. More people regurgitating something someone told them without reading up on it on their own. That sort of thing. Everything else aside, that's what bothers me most about this issue.

<comment><USER33> > Fair enough, good points. But do you kind of see what I'm getting at toward > the end? You may have some strong beliefs on patent law but does everyone? > Really?

I do understand. I think its a valid point but I also think the hype throws a lot more attention on the issue. Attention that is rightly there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me of a Sanskrit sloka roughly translated as:

 _The wealth that cannot be stolen,_ _neither abducted by state,_ _nor can be divided amongst brothers,_ _Neither it is burdensome to carry,_ _The wealth that increases by giving,_ _That wealth is knowledge_ _and is supreme of all possessions_

Intellectual 'property' is an oxymoron. The treatment of knowledge like a physical asset in that, it must be possessed and contained, is an exercise in futility.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is depressing to read, and I think he is wrong, but the more I think about this, the more I think reforming patent issuance is not going to be as helpful as we think.

Think about it - if the PTO stopped issuing software patents today, we'd still have over a decade of software patent litigation.

The real problem is our legal system - it is too expensive for a someone accused of patent violations to defend themselves. Even if you win, you are still going to be bankrupt or severely weakened by legal fees, and all you've "won" is the right to continue doing what you were doing in the first place. This is the only reason patent trolling is so successful - nobody can fight back.

Start requiring entities who file patent infringement (and other) lawsuits pay the defendants legal fees if they lose, and require an upfront bond (because otherwise they'd just sue with shell companies and declare bankruptcy if they lost). Everyone is going to be concerned about how this hurts the proverbial "little guy" and his ability to sue a big company that has taken his idea, but the little guy is already getting screwed by patent trolls - a big company like Google or Apple has the resources to fight patent litigation, but even one lawsuit is likely to be lethal for a small company. If the "little guy" is going to get hurt either way, I'd rather we tilt things to be in favor of the defendants.

</comment><comment><USER36> > He noted that during a time of growing litigation in the smartphone > industry, "innovation continues at an absolutely breakneck pace. In a system > like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, > it cannot be said that the patent system is broken," he said.

I don't think anyone has been arguing that innovation is no longer happening, but rather that the mess of software patents is making it increasingly difficult for newcomers to enter the industry.

I also like how he completely dodged the question of whether software patents should be allowed at all, from a philosophical perspective..

</comment><comment><USER37> They created a system where a government lawyer makes a law that corporate lawyers can use to make a lot of money. In return, the corporate lawyer pay taxes to the government so that the government lawyer can have a fancy title in a fancy agency.

This is lawyers talking to (and for) lawyers. This doesn't concern engineers or consumers.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you want an honest assessment a company, business, or agency, don't ask the guy who stands to be fired if there's anything wrong.

<comment><USER39> _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!_ \-- Upton Sinclair

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Given that he was nominated to the post by the Obama administration and confirmed by the Senate, where should a grassroots movement to get him shucked out of office be directed?

<comment><USER41> Towards rejecting the entire autonomous bureaucracy he is but a small part of. However, given that most of the US is contentedly employed in service of the top-down government, agorism is the best bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Here we see in action the big government mindset solution to big government induced problems, more big government. I for one, am not surprised, but I have read Ludwig von Mises' book "Bureaucracy".

Seriously, did anyone think a department whose "business" is to accept fees and keep patent examiners employed is going to shrink their market domain? There's plenty more regulatory jobs to be squeezed out of the innovation business to be had yet, this time on the back end.

<comment><USER33> Since you seam to have a intressted in this kind of thing I would recomond (if you dont know it) public choice theory.

Here are some awsome podcasts on the subject: <http://www.econtalk.org/archives/public_choice/>

There are also podcasts about Mises and many other intressting things on there.

<comment><USER42> Yes, that is interesting.

<comment><USER33> He had like 5 nobel laureates on there, including Milton Friedman with 96 and Ronald Coase with 102.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This guy is the head of the Patent and Trademark Office? I think we can now see where part of the problem resides. "Envy of the world." He's either lying or blind.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not going to lie, the patent office was the last place I expected a "think of the children" argument. And, just like every other time I hear that argument, I immediately feel that I'm being lied to and manipulated for somebody else's gain.

</comment><comment><USER45> No, I don't think I'll give it a rest. The patent system drives a business model where companies can produce no products, but instead buy patents and sue people. That's a grievance that people should petition redress of. Sorry, Kappos, until that business model isn't profitable, I'm going to keep bitching, in line with my first amendment rights.

</comment><comment><USER46> We got his attention.

Now I'll write two letters per week.

<comment><USER33> I read your comment and smiled. Thank you for this. Have an upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> In light of this compelling argument, I have changed my stance on software patents. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Kappos!

</comment><comment><USER14> None of his comments even address the problem of patent trolls. When legitimate tech companies such over patents, the obvious defense is to sue back. There is hope that they will realize the futility of the patent war and either do binding mediation or simply decide the war has to end.

Retaliatory defense doesn't work against trolls, who have nothing to defend. Even if the troll company folds for whatever reason, you can just pass the patents to another shell company and start again.

For the IBM lawyer and others saying that the patent system doesn't need reform because there were patent lawsuits 100 or so years ago, please cite an example of the trolls that Rockefeller, Edison faced.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think part of the problem with patents for software is precisely the point that has been made again and again -- software is much closer to mathematics than any other type of patent. If you have a large group of people who are smart and tackling the same software problem, then the nature of the problem itself will often funnel them all toward similar solutions. I mean, there is a thing in software engineering called _refinement_ which is the process of reducing a software requirement specification into working code. In some cases, this can even be done mechanically with CASE tools. Since the optimal code for achieving a particular goal is often a logical (or near logical) necessity of the goal itself, it's hard to see what innovation is really being protected by software patents. It seems to me that where the innovation is actually occurring is in the very act of noticing that a problem needs solving in the first place. But that is not what is patented.

EDIT: Just to clarify my last few sentences. Software patents seem to reward the wrong thing. It seems to me that the innovation occurs in the very act of specifying the requirements for the software. In a sense, the software that best implements the requirement is less a creative invention and more of a _discovery_. Now, I agree that there should be some kind of reward/prize/compensation for companies that choose to pursue unusual goals but I'm not sure that patents are it. Favorable market position may be reward enough.

</comment><comment><USER48> Historical Patent Activity: [http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.ht...](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.htm)

From the OP: "The explosion of litigation we are seeing is a reflection of how the patent system wires us for innovation," Kappos said. "It's natural and reasonable that innovators would seek to protect their breakthroughs using the patent system."

Or maybe...it is natural to file patents _as fast as possible_ to protect ourselves from an increasingly broken system?

It'd be nice if companies could be restricted on the number of patents they could file per year. Let's say a company with 1-10 people can file 1 patent per year. 11-100 people => 5 patents per year. 101-1000 people => 10 patents per year. 1001-10000 people => 50 patents per year.... Then maybe companies would only file their most important "breakthroughs."

Of course, this system would mean that we would have fewer patent prosecution lawyers, and maybe even fewer examiners.

</comment><comment><USER49> Those who profit from patents will always support them.

The best way to undermine patentability is to publicly disclose the invention in advance, thereby creating prior art that no one can patent.

To me, the simplest solution would be "CantPatentThis.com" where you disclose your ideas/sketches. Think GitHub for ideas, not necessarily working code.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER50> Sure, but it defeats the purpose of what the patent is getting at--rewarding an inventor and innovator for creativity in application of new principles. The whole intent of a patent is to give the holder a monopoly on the technology for a given time period so as to encourage innovation. The other shoe is a trade secret--publishing trade secrets would ensure literally no economic rents to the innovator.

Probably a better set of reforms that would solve a host of problems: * 5 year patent length limit * Nontransferability of patent (can't sell IP, say) * No software patents. If it's written in code, get a copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Yeah, software patents should be given a rest - an eternal rest.

 _> He noted that during a time of growing litigation in the smartphone industry, "innovation continues at an absolutely breakneck pace. In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken_

Innovation happens in spite of the sick patent system. Not because of it. I.e. if not for the system, innovation could have been even faster.

 _> Indeed, Kappos suggested that the volume of patent litigation in the smartphone industry was a sign that the patent system was working as intended._

This is lunacy. He suggests that the point of the patent system is increased litigation? He should look in the constitution more often.

</comment><comment><USER52> Having been shaken down a few times in business myself, I learned to call this threat "The Sword of Damocles."

To an extent your likelihood of a shakedown is tied to your market share, but not necessarily.

As a rational person your instinct that your work was developed independently and/or earlier or other well-known work is prior art is irrelevant to the parasites because they are not interested in facts, only money. You can only hope they don't try to kill the host.

Without naming names and amounts since settlements are bound by secrecy, I'd like to hear some (hopefully successful) battlefield stories of handling the dreaded troll letters and blind-side lawsuits?

</comment><comment><USER53> The money quote, "Rather than engage in this empirical debate, or even acknowledge its existence, Kappos acted as though it was self-evident that stronger patents always create a larger incentive for innovation."

And, of course, we have copious illustrations of how he is wrong (and how he is right). So perhaps we should spend the time to determine _if_ patents "always create a larger incentive for innovation" or not.

</comment><comment><USER54> > do we demand today's innovation on the cheap via a weaker patent system that > excludes subject matter, or do we moderate today's consumption with a strong > patent system so our children enjoy greater innovations?

Moderate today's consumption, what does that even mean? Save your innovations for the children? No, thank you, I don't want to slow down progress so that your friends can make more money.

<comment><USER55> He's asserting that the objections to patents are from consumers: Let me have this stuff without paying inventors (patent holders). (This would be bad because it reduces the incentive for innovation).

In my experience, the objections to patents are from innovators: Let me invent without paying people who have been trying to landgrab the intellectual frontier. (This is good because it reduces barriers to innovation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is an idea my colleague suggested:

Form an alliance of companies that boycott people who abuse patents. All these companies pool in their patents and form a super patent alliance. Given a large number of patents, anyone who want to fuck around with patents gets black balled from the Super Patent Alliance.

<comment><USER57> That's how Intellectual Assholes... uh Intellectual Ventures got started. They are now probably the number one patent troll worldwide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Reminds me of the DEA insisting that it's worth spending billions to 'defend' citizens from marijuana.

</comment><comment><USER59> Ignorance is bliss... or in his case a massively overpaid job that doesn't need to exist.

What a prick.

</comment><comment><USER60> Transcript of the actual speech: <http://www.uspto.gov/news/speeches/2012/kappos_CAP.jsp>

He doesn't seem to understand what's going on or why we're angry.

<comment><USER61> He is either corrupt or incompetent (or both).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> >"innovation continues at an absolutely breakneck pace. In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken," he said.

Nice non-sequitur.

</comment><comment><USER63> Patents are evil. They are simply a way for predatory one percenters and lawyers to steal from society.

Look at the fashion industry. Thriving and innovating, with 0 patents.

Trademarks Yes / Patents No

</comment><comment><USER64> > [Kappos] argued would allow the patent office to weed out low-quality > software

I wonder how he would define "low-quality software"

</comment><comment><USER65> This sounds to me like he's protecting his own income. The American patent system is the envy of the world. I Loled.

</comment><comment><USER66> Honestly? Give it a rest? I'd usually try to write a more objective comment, but in this case it's pretty simple.

Not. Bloody. Likely.

</comment><comment><USER67> _"Our patent system is the envy of the world"_

I'd really like to meet the people who sit around envying a patent system. I mean, seriously, how many people can there be that understand patent systems to the detail required to separate the US one out from other first-world nations (since this comment really is a jab at contemporary nations), who then sit around envying it?

</comment><comment><USER68> Well, I guess I know who's part of the problem, then.

</comment><comment><USER69> Let's get rid of this clown.

</comment><comment><USER70> The chief is an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER71> What terrible news.</comment>


Y Combinator Founders' Guide to Running a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://barbra.io/collection/2b4075f9-7e79-4829-98a0-cdb8470fb7ac <comment><AUTHOR> Founders of YC-backed companies give advice for founders on how to run their business, hire, handle growth, marketing, sales, and much more.</comment>


Show HN: Contra, asynchronous flow control with a functional taste to it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bevacqua/contra/

<comment><USER2> Lots of submissions like this: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=contra%20bevacqua&sort=byPopul...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=contra%20bevacqua&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>