[Fwd: Re: [Fwd: [Patents] OBS: Innovation is not the invention!]]

[Erik Josefsson <ehj@cleosan.com>]

here is a comment from Laura Creighton

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Patents] OBS: Innovation is not the invention!
> Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 12:55:27 +0100
> From: Jacek Gancarson Eurofresh <jacek.gancarson@eurofresh.se>
> To: <patents@aful.org>
>
>
> It sounds like invitation to protection of business methods. That means i
> n
> long run patenting of market segments!
>
> *******
>
> Mr Erkki Liikanen
>
> Member of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and the
> Information Society
>
> "A more innovative, entrepreneurial Europe"
>
> Opening address at the XI Congress of Eurochambres
>
> Rome, 9 October 2003
>
> Innovation policy remains high on the Commission's agenda. We are suggest
> ing
> measures at the European level to help enterprises become more competitiv
> e
> through innovation:
>
>
>   a.. First, innovation takes many forms. There is technological 
> innovation,
> but also innovation through new business models and new ways of organisin
> g
> work, innovation in design or in marketing. Innovation can consist in
> finding new uses and new markets for existing products and services.
>
>   b.. That leads to the second theme. We know that most enterprises are 
> not
> always innovative. They often replicate existing businesses. We need to
> increase the percentage of entrepreneurs who innovate, and increase their
> chances of success.

This is pure moonshine.  Most businesses need to adopt the best
practices of whoever is the market leader in the field.  When they
decide to launch new business methods and the like, they go out of
business because there is a direct relationship between being the
leader in the field and having the best business practices.  By all
means, businesses should be allowed to try different radical new
ways of solving business problems, but the simple fact is that most
new ways of doing things are inferior to the old ways.


>   c.. Policies need to encourage innovation, the creation and growth of
> innovative enterprises. Policies also need to encourage the accumulation 
> of
> skills for management and staff to recognise market opportunities and
> respond to them innovatively.

Yes.  competition is the best way to do this.  Patent protection is the
worst way to fail to do this.  Then you will force businesses, contrary 
to your
stated aim to adopt inferior business practices because they can not
adopt those used by the leader in their marketplace.  The leader will
have patented this.

>   d.. Thirdly, innovation policy is multidimensional and has to be
> implemented through many different traditional policy areas. This require
> s a
> coherent strategy and co-ordination across several government departments
> .

Yes, but one must also resist the arrogant practice of believing that
nobody in history has ever faced the problems that you face, or that
all your predesessors were fools.  There is a reason that most chairs
have four legs.  We can make them with three or with five or with seven,
but they won't be better chairs.  This is one of the great lessons of the
new internet economy.  The best online stores were quickly set up by
companies in the catalog business.  Ordering from a catalog and ordering
over the web were extremely similar, and companies that had the old,
boring, paper knowledge of how to run a catalog business had what it took
to compete in opening an internet shop.  Meanwhile, the others who
mistakenly thought that 'nobody has ever done anything like this before'
sunk a huge amoung of money into making mistakes that catalog companies
already knew all about, and avoided.

Eshew novelty for its own sake.

Laura