At 03:05 PM 10/21/00 -0400, Gord Sellar wrote:
>What's the translation for R&D to profit? I mean to ask, do companies tend
>to lay, say, ten R&D projects out hoping that one will deliver a feasibly
>product, and then produce say ten trial products hoping that one will be a
>major winner and then make it all back off that one? How conservative is
>the process, generally?
This depends very much on the company and marketplace. A startup company
hopes and prays that its one research project succeeds, obviously. A
large, diverse, well-established company would often expect that
reinvesting perhaps 10 percent of its revenue in R&D will result in enough
new technology to maintain its market position. A technology-focused
company might put a far higher percentage into R&D.
I should note that my company is in the betting-it-all-on-one-thing
category. We're a startup, now with about 20 employees. We've just
applied for our first patent and I'm the primary inventor, so I certainly
am in the middle of this.
As a bit of an aside, though an important one, R&D often produces something
quite different from its original goal. In fact, I'd argue that in
technology, where marketing frequently fails is in noticing when
engineering has invented something that customers want, or in following
through by packaging inventions in useful ways. The latter is where
Microsoft excels -- they get a lot of grief for the fact that they notice
when others invent something useful and then package it better. I think
they deserve grief when they try to de-invent something, as they did with
Java, but that's another rant.
>...
>
>But I've been thinking is almost the opposite . . . about how the drive to
>profit might impact on the pace and nature of development -- on that kind
>of popularity that Dyson notes. ie.: "If it's a product everyone wants,
>then we'd better keep it secret till we finish it so nobody rips off our
>idea." Why, after all, would a company want to patent a specific gene or
>series, except to prevent others from researching in that area?
These days, I think that relatively few companies are motivated by
that. Again, it depends on the company and the market, but patents are
also motivated by:
* A desire to document to investors that the company has developed unique
technology.
* A desire to have defensive patents, so that if company X claims you're
infringing their ridiculously broad patent, you can wave your own
ridiculously broad patent at their lawyers. Sorry to be so cynical, but
that's about how it is on some of these.
>... what I am
>trying to note instead is the losses that we all suffer because of the
>effective slowdown and uncooperativeness in development that seems to be
>the natural product of that kind of setup.
You're driving dead at the center of the spirit of patents here. The word
"patent" means "open" because it was designed to be a system in which
society would be assured of access to all inventions after a temporary
period during which the inventor could gain from it. One of the arguments
against software patents is that the period is too long -- many software
patents are worthless by the time they expire, so society never gains from
them.
As for the issues you raised at the end, one could imagine something like
the compulsory license that exists for music. Once you publish a piece of
music, you can't decide who gets to perform it -- anyone who pays the
royalty is allowed to, in contrast to a patent, where you can pick and
choose who licenses it. Such an arrangement for some other kinds of
intellectual property might make a lot of sense now.
Nick
--
Senior VP Strategic Development, Co-Founder
Opion Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(408) 733-7613
