The Web's Father Expects a Grandchild

セマンティックウェブの話。ネットの生みの親である、Tim Berners-Leeのインタビュー。勉強になったのは、特許とかに関わる話。

Q: What's your take on the general state of innovation these days?
A: Would it be possible to develop the World Wide Web in today's climate? If you say "innovation" around here, the typical word association would be "patent." That's a negative association, not a positive one. There's a very strong fear that the rush to patent everything will stifle innovation. The ability to patent really silly, un-novel, boring things which just clutter the space of potential innovation makes it a minefield for somebody who's really being innovative. It prevents them from brainstorming and putting together a whole lot of half-formed ideas into something really effective, because each of those half-formed ideas is blocked by patents.

You can't talk about innovation without a big question mark about whether business can be grown up about patents and actually let software engineers develop things without squabbling over intellectual property rights in such a way as to stifle innovation.

Q: People in the U.S. are waking up to the negative effects this is having on innovation, and in Europe, there's a big argument over software patents.
A: Yes. Over the last five years, we've been trying very hard at the World Wide Web consortium to get industry together so that they can put down standards for infrastructure, whether Web services or the Semantic Web or multimedia portable devices. And they realize that there's a huge potential market there which will work if and only if the infrastructure standards are available royalty-free.

I think there's been a huge learning process. Some of the big companies now realize that it's essential that they have a royalty-free space for the infrastructure or it's not going to take off.

会社で特許書いたこともあるけど、自分の会社でも、「特許＝地雷」として考えている人も多い。特許はなかなか金にならん！という声もよく聞くけど、それより、こういう新しいアイディアの障害となる可能性もあるということ。あまりここまで考えたことなかったけど、言われて見れば納得。持論としては、企業からはなかなか大きな発明（まさに、インターネットの発明レベル）とかは、企業競争の理由から難しいと思っていたけど、下手すると、教育機関とかでの研究者の障壁になるというのは。。うーん、考えさせられます。

source:http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041022_6972_db083.htm