Software patents, go away!

Some good news have came a few days ago from the USPTO, which you can read in this slashdot article.

As a part of my work I have written patents and had to deal with other patents. I saw some patents which were simple and did not represent any breakthrough at all. And have seen patents written in an extremely obscure way so that one won't be able to understand them.

This really goes against what the patent system was originally designed for, making terrible things happen like the blackberry case and the creation of the patent trolls that annoy innovators. Small companies had to shell very large sums of money on patents just to be able to protect themselves from being sued by those.

I bless this change, hoping for a world with meaningful patents, real breakthroughs and openness for all. I guess we'll all have to live and see it happen.

Innovation everywhere

I have been to a few conferences and heard a panel on innovation in which one of the speakers (whom I will not name) talked about focus and repeated the phrase "don't innovate in the backoffice, keep it to your product"

I don't think that this is a good idea. Innovation is an ideal which leads to better overall performance. Creative thinking is not something that is limited just to your product and boundaries for innovation are not a good thing.

I think that good companies should innovate in many areas. A short list would be: transportation, employment terms and compensation, IT, working with the community and many more. Some of the best companies you know are well known for innovating outside their product (google's 20% is a good example).

To sum it up, don't limit yourself. Innovate everywhere.