So SOPA and PIPA have been nipped in the bud (for now) but it does not mean we can rest just yet.  Watch this video now for a simple explanation of the very real restriction this Trade Agreement has to your freedom of speech.

You may have seen pictures of members of the Polish Government donning Anonymous masks in protest of ACTA.

You can read more about the ACTA and the Polish Parliament on the Telegraph and Gizmodo.

Or you can watch this simple video explanation of ACTA.

Ever wondered how to measure Online Social Influence? There are a whole host of service providers who aim to provide the answer.

Market leaders so far are:

Klout | Kred.ly | PeerIndex

Klout, Kred and PeerIndex all calculate online social influence by trying to understand what the content of your post, update or tweet is about  and then measure how many other people reacted to or interacted with your content.

The rewards for the provider which cracks the most accurate and trusted measure of how much you influence others online is massive.

Market intelligence data, advertising networks the potential to generate revenue from this score are huge.

Not surprising then that a lot of companies have a lot of money wrapped up in this field developing solutions whilst Tech Investors watch closely, keen to get involved.

So Whats In It For You?

Right now you can get some perks out of Klout, if you have big enough influence in a topic PeerIndex could offer you a gift to help market a product. Kred is not monetised yet but is a big shiny platform leading to the paid for People Browser software platform (you can try a 14 day free trial)

Beyond the gifts what is in it for you?  Psychological and emotional pay off perhaps? a sense of achievement  gain watching your scores increase.

For business the providers all hope to provide the ability for you to locate influencers online in topics relevant for your business which you can then leverage to help market your products and services.

What is Online Social influence?

The ability to influence another persons actions online we take this to be actions that another person takes in response to your content online.

Actions

The following are examples of Social Network actions and are recorded and measured as part of overall scores

Facebook

• Likes and Shares

Twitter

• Re Tweets and Mentions

Linkedin

Others actions that may have influence –  Response comments to your blog or status content.

What are the metrics they all share In common?

The common themes of measuring social influence are unsurprising:

• What you do
• What you talk about
• What others do as a result of 1 and 2

There are three networks which we will look at closely, Klout, Kred.ly and PeerIndex. These services each provide a different take on what a persons online social influence is.

Klout

Klout are the biggest name in influence measurement right now and probably the oldest having a lineage going back to 2008.

Image Source Klout.com

They have developed a track record and simple account interface alongside the Perk network where marketing offers are presented to users based on their Klout Score.

Klout have really reached a point where they are more focused on consumers than on business metrics.

Not without controversy Klout made big changes to it’s algorithm at the back end of 2011 and experienced a consumer backlash over decreasing scores as new methods of normalisation were implemented.

Klout True Reach

Not a measure of an actual audience size but the actual number of people who reacted to your content. True Reach is a changeable figure as the different topics you may talk about  have different numbers of influencers.

True Reach measures who actually reacted from your total audience

Klout Amplification

The measure of people who either respond directly to or share the content onwards. Or interact with others outside of your immediate network about your content.

Klout Network Impact

This is a direct measure of the people in your True Reach and how often they react to your content. The influence of these people directly relates to yours.

Kred.ly

Kred focuses it’s attention on just the Twitter network currently. This is the youngest of the three platforms and still in Beta. Though the product has gained traction quickly via social media.

Kred Influence

“The measure of what others do because of you.”

“Influence increases when others take action because of your content.”

“Your Influence score increases when someone retweets, @replies or follows you.”

Quotes taken from the Kred.ly website

Kred is a snap shot of the last 1,000 days however (Slight Typo on the scoring guide page, makes it look like they have analysed billions of tweets from the last 1,000- anyhow you can download the helpful .pdf guide they produce.)

Kred identifies within Twitter the sub communities and most influential users who are given a Kred  score of 1,000 from this point the normalisation of other profiles takes place so scores can be calculated.

Kred gives points for actions others take in relation to your Tweets:

Image Source Kred.ly

Because of normalization the value of points to Kred changes constantly depending on what is happening in each community and content type.

The difference with Kred is that it has made public the details of the curve mapping influence points and actual Kred scores. This results in the approximate number of actions required to meet the maximum 1,000 Kred Score.

Image Source Kred.ly

Kred also factors offline, a form is provided to upload offline factors which are then added together and form a users offline Kred.

Kred Outreach

Outreach is a users generosity measuring engagement and the willingness to share other users content.

PeerIndex

PeerIndex is the most business focused of the services with a revenue model focused on providing market intelligence to companies.

In this regard PeerIndex have quietly built a position as a reliable and focused provider of data. Do not expect the graphical flair of Klout or Kred.ly, what they do offer is a very fast to read one page synopsis of your influence.

Peerindex measure activities over a wide range of networks.

All measurement is made from a topic base by reviewing the contents of your account and discovering what topics you talk about most and what topics your activity is centred around.

PeerIndex like Kred.ly are very open about the process which drives their measurement.

Image source PeerIndex

In order for the main PI score to be calculated the following are scored;

• Activity – posting content and engagement with others
• Audience – who is in your network
• Authority – are people sharing your content.

PeerIndex Authority

Authority is a trust score measuring how much people actually make use of your content.

There are eight ‘Benchmark’ topics in Peerindex and the Authority score is calculated based on these.

• AME  arts, media and entertainment
• TEC  technology and internet
• SCI  science and environment
• MED  health and medical
• LIF  leisure and lifestyle
• SPO  sports
• POL  news, politics and society
• BIZ  finance, business and economics

Related to this are the ‘Topic resonance scores’ which measure your impact or resonance within certain topic communities.  This could be Football, Social Media and so on.

These are your personal topics which you communicate about the most.

The Authority score  is your measure against all other people in the topic.

PeerIndex Audience Score

The PeerIndex Audience score takes into account the nature of your account followers.  Bots and followers with low activity are taken into account.

This is then compared to everyone else’s audience. Audience is about having receptive followers and your impact on them.

PerIndex Activity Score

The activity score is the measure of how much you do in relation to the topics you most often discuss.

Peerindex normalise your activity so if there are periods of high activity or periods of low activity this is accounted for in the final score.

The activity score is relative to what everyone else is doing. So if you are part of a very active topic community lets say the Republican primaries or the Occupy Wall Street movement. Then you would have needed to be very active to achieve a high score.

What are the metrics they all share In common?

The common themes of measuring social influence are unsurprisingly

1. What you do
2. What you talk about
3. What others do as a result of 1 and 2

The differences come when you compare the math used to create the base lines of influence.

• Klout  and Kred use models which work predominantly from audience interaction
• PeerIndex works from topics

As the means of scoring influence changes between each of the services. So the concept of influence varies between them also.

It’s Semantics

We run the risk of over analysing the differences between the services and their individual concepts. Aside from some mathematical differences. We are talking semantics here when we get to the names for defining:

1. What you do
2. What you talk about
3. What others do as a result of 1 and 2

Audience

The concept of audience is of course central to all three services. Klout and Kred.ly look most closely at your immediate networks and connections. PeerIndex varies the most making comparison of individuals on a global scale.

Klout displays who influencers are in certain topics in relationship to their own network of contacts. PeerIndex places you on a global scale in relation to a topic.

Influence

Is it really possible for Social Influence services like Klout, Kred.ly and PeerIndex to deliver global views of a persons online social influence based on a series of interactions at a relatively obscure low level between individuals?

Can global trends be extrapolated out of this data to deliver insightful marketing analysis?

Will we end up with mesmeric instant real time graphics which show the value of our influence.

All of the services have a different take on what it is to be influential online.

kred.ly has the most straight forward approach. If you are mentioned, RT, shared etc this is influence.

Klout has refined their approach dialling down the importance of mentions and RT’s in their score last year.

This is where Kred.ly goes it’s own way looking at all kinds of activity you can do to increase influence and outreach.

Impact

Klout and Kred both take  impact heavy view of Influence. This is a measure of individual on individual contact extrapolating values from small scale interactions.

PeerIndex is focused on a global measure where individuals are ranked against a global discussion.

There are very good reasons for this and it has to do with the business model of each service.

Klout want companies to sell to you through their service based on your topics and score.

PeerIndex wants wants you to sell for companies, based on your topic and score.

Kred.ly has not monetised yet but does serve to promote the People Browser software.

Community Testing

It would be fantastic to have a software environment where it would be possible to test the three services, and find out which actions and ideas in the post have an affect on the scores on a comparative basis.

Any suggestions?

We’ve noticed a few unanswered forum posts around the web asking things like “How do I get WPEC Product Categories in to menus?”.

You may have run in to this problem whenever you install and activate WPEC as this functionality is not directly available out of the box.

There may appear to be no way to add product categories, variations or product tags to your WordPress theme menus.

You may also have tried deactivating plugins and even changing themes without any success.

Well we have the answer and it will probably leave you banging your head against the wall for not working it out yourself.

The Solution

The solution is ridiculously simple – just follow this 3 step process:

It’s really that simple!

What is WordPress E-commerce?

The WordPress plugin: WPEC is a controversial e-commerce platform for WordPress.

Many WordPress developers have abandoned the platform, as it has developed a reputation for being unstable and making changes that break things when the plugin gets updated.

Personally I continue to use WPEC because I have never experienced such issues and have spent many hours learning the template functions and figuring out the correct way of setting it up. There are many other reasons to support it which are beyond the scope of this article.

The iPhone, Blackberry and other smart phones have achieved more than simply getting close to a desktop internet experience on a mobile device.

Your smart phone is fast becoming an invaluable business tool, mobile applications allow you to complete business tasks from your handset.

Mobile SEO Apps

Downloadable SEO Apps have real value for SEO practitioners. From a handheld device you can check ranking positions, backlinks and use mobile versions of web based services like Raven Tools.

Mobile SEO Apps for Business owners and Marketing managers.

Both of these groups benefit from being able to download a range of SEO Apps which can keep you up to date on the latest performance of your website.

	Description iRank SEO Dashboard Webmaster Tools is a Website Ranking Checker tool which is very efficient for personal as well as professional usage. It is a simple yet powerful tool checking the online ranking of different websites in major search engines.
	Description Website SEO Analyser – Simply enter your domain name and the free Website SEO Analyser app from Koozai will automatically create a report on your site. This SEO diagnostic analysis will help you pinpoint the areas of your website that may need developing as a part of your ongoing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts.
	Description TOP #25 iPhone Business app in UK! TOP #50 iPad Business app in US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, & Japan!
	Description iRank SEO – keyword tracking for webmasters Introducing iRank, the first keyword tracking app for iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch – a revolutionary new tool
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	Description SECockpit (Search Engine Cockpit) is an SEO keyword research tool for internet marketers. SECockpit generates keyword ideas from an entered seed keyword phrase. SECockpit then automatically gathers and combines data from different sources, so that its possible to display:
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r	Description By Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie C Stricchiola Published by O’Reilly Media (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518868/)
	Description Developed by Search Commander, Inc. for SEO Automatic, this app evaluates some important fundamentals regarding on-page Search Engine Optimization.
	Description Free tips and advice on SEO (search engine optimisation) to help you increase your website’s position in search engines.
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	Description SpyderMate SEO Scorecard *Reveal site-wide weaknesses
	Description Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – How to Optimize Your Website for Internet Search Engines by Samuel Blankson
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	Description SEO Analysis Tool provides in depth technical details about a given domain name. This tool will also give clues on how to improve your SEO Ranking.
	Description • A Collection of 27 Professionally Recorded Videos – This complete video series will teach you everything you need to know about search engine optimization.
	Description A simple , effective and efficient App which checks your website page rank on major search engines like Google, Bing , Yahoo , Alexa and Alltheweb. In addition to the above the App also displays the number of backlinks and indexed urls for any given domain from major search engines.
	Description With ”SEO Post”, all important and current SEO news, Google Webmaster Help videos,podcasts, SEO, SEO-SEO events and job opportunities to read with a tap to see and hear.
	Description This application lets you get your latest Analytics stats on your iPhone. The app is built around 3 screens :
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	Description With this app you can quickly and easily an idea of ​​whether and how your site is optimized for search engines and how much information can be found with respect to the three major search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing your site.
	Description Factory Seo is an App for everyone have the need to find the source code and the on-page details of a web page.
	Description A simple , effective and efficient App which checks your website page rank on major search engines like Google, Bing , Yahoo , Alexa and Alltheweb. In addition to the above the App also displays the number of backlinks and indexed urls for any given domain from major search engines.
	Description This tool will check backlinks of your website.
	Description “Serps” is a tool for SEO that let’s you check Google Serps from your iPhone and iPad This application generates ranking-reports for specific keywords and your domain.
	Description The Link Juice App is the first of its kind. This search engine app is every SEO specialist’s best friend in one simple, tidy and easy to use interface.
	Description SEO Statistics provides a quick SEO audit of any website. To use, simply type a domain name into the search bar and choose your results.
	Description How can you make it easier for people to find your website? And how can you convert casual visitors into active users? SEO Warrior shows you how it’s done through a collection of tried and true techniques, hacks, and best practices. Learn the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization (SEO) theory, the importance of keyword strategy, and how to avoid and remedy search engine traps. You’ll also learn about search engine marketing (SEM) practices, such as Google AdWords, and how you can use social networking to increase your visibility. Ideal for web developers, savvy marketers, webmasters, and anyone else interested in SEO, this book serves not only as an SEO tutorial, but also as a reference for implementing effective SEO techniques.
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	Description This application is an essential web ranking tool working with the most common search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo…).
	Description SEO Holmes shares information about SEO industry from all over the web which is being collected from elite resources. At SEO Holmes we’re investigating every single SEO technique, scam and spam and come to you with results and proofs. Giving recommendation on which techniques to adopt and which not to follow and discover scam websites and companies. Our mission is to try cleaning up the most online spaces we can from black-hat techniques, duplicated content, spam and scam. It’s a hard mission we know but it’s not impossible. Our main strategy is to discover these suspicious websites and companies, publish their techniques and let online users know about them. This way none to be betrayed by their strategies.

SOPA and PIPA are acronyms for the most opposed pieces of legislation ever proposed.

The U.S. Government and aggressive, greedy corporations from the entertainment industry (such as Universal Media Group) and the software industry (such as Microsoft) have proposed this legislation in an effort to curb piracy on the internet and an attempt to maximise their (already) astronomical profit margins.

The wording is so broad that it effectively gives the U.S Government and corporations the power to wipe out entire online industries, such as social media websites and other content sharing platforms, if they are seen to be infringing copyright in any way – even if it was contributed by a single user. They make the content sharing websites responsible for strict moderating of user submitted content and failure to comply will likely result in the shut down of the entire website.

In a nutshell, here are some real-world examples of possible implications of the legislation:

• Entire blogs and blogging platforms could be shut down because of user’s copyright infringement.
• Entire social networks and forums could be shut down because of user’s copyright infringement.
• Video and photo sharing websites could be shut down because of user’s copyright infringement.
• Innovation would become scarce as content sharing development possibilities would be severely limited.
• Payment processors will be forced to cut ties with any infringing website they work with.
• If successfully passed, similar legislation will likely propagate to other countries.

WTF is PIPA?

PIPA stands for the Protect IP Act and if passed, will give  U.S. corporations and the government the ability to take legal action against any website they see as enabling copyright infringement, whether of U.S. origin or not.

It can force internet service providers to block access to any website or block advertising revenue from any website including those supporting them.

WTF is SOPA?

SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act and has the most dramatic and far reaching consequences.

If passed, SOPA has the potential to allow Government and Corporations to shut down any website with any copyright infringing content, on a global scale.

They will also have the power to force websites to remove links to websites that infringe their copyrights.

It would work in conjunction with PIPA and will allow private corporations to create blacklists of websites that appear to break their copyright policies. These corporations will be able to directly contact a website’s payment processor with a notice to cut off all payment involvement with the website in question. The payment processors and infringing website will then have five days to act before it gets shut down indefinately.

This has an effect on everyone, not just the U.S.

The American Government has a great deal of control over the internet as most services people use for content sharing are hosted in the U.S. Google for example, is hosted in the U.S. as are YouTube, Flickr and many others. Therefore the far-reaching consequences of these legislations spans worldwide, not just the U.S.

SOPA and PIPA are the contentious pieces of anti piracy legislation currently working their way toward a vote in the U.S Congress and Senate.

On January 14th the White House issued the following statement, tentitivly outlining the presidents opposition to the acts.

“Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small”, and “We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet.”

Stop Online Piracy Act

SOPA proposed as a means of defence of  the U.S entertainment industry against foreign websites who host illegal content. So this includes movies, music, videos and so on.

The bill would allow with a court order the website to be stripped in the U.S of website links, payment processing and advertising.

Effectively starving the website out of existence.

Protect Intellectual Property Act

PIPA is the companion legislation to SOPA  focusing on protecting intellectual property and copyrights. PIPA would enable Domain Name System Blocking. This U.S law enforcement agencies could stop the offending website being found when you search for it’s name.

Effectively taking the website out of existence.

What this all really means

Protection of movies and music videos is one thing. But here is the rub Hollywood and the record companies cannot sell without the internet. People share links to content they love.  Equally internet users need a source of content which can be shared.

The problem with both bills is that the actual wording is so vaugue that if a prosecutor chose every individual who share content or links to content they had not created would be guilty under the new laws.

That would account for nearly all of the Earths internet users.

The penalties are up to 5 years imprisonment for 10 offences in 6 months.

But they can not arrest all of us right?

No this would be incredibly costly and time consuming.

They Do not have to

But what can be done is the persecution of websites and service we all take for granted as part of our modern online life.

So Facebook, Twitter, You tube, Reddit and thousands of other websites where we all share thoughts ideas and content everyday.

These websites would be culpable for our actions and with  a single court order be taken down.

This is one of the impacts on the U.K that the legislation will have. The other that we may follow suit with similar legislation here.

Innovation and Creativity

Why is the web important and why protect it from this legislation? The web is the breading ground of commercial innovation and the driver of the modern global economy.

The problem with the legislation is not that it wants to restrict illegal sharing of movies and music. But rather behind it is the drive to control how and where you spend your money.

Supporters of the legislation often cite the case against Google where they settled $500 Million for allowing websites which sold brand pharmaceuticals from Canadian websites to American consumers at low prices.

The legislation is designed to protect corporations from this kind of activity.

Here is where the legislation gets nasty. It really uses fear to control your economic behavior online. Fear of prosecution for individuals.

The burden of proof does not fall on the accuser but on the accused.

Simple shared community resources like Wikipedia are criminalized because they share links to other resources. If we share links to those Wiki pages of subjects and topics we are interested in then we are guilty too.

In any society the lurch toward undemocratic control of it’s people begins with legislation. Legislation that starts out to combat one problem but is so vague the door is open to miss use of the law.

Truth is the Legislation allows scope for and the legal precedent to control what information you see and share online.

That is the problem with SOPA and PIPA by being deliberately vague they can be used to do much more than stopping illegal file sharing.

The entertainment industry in Hollywood and the major record labels operate on a 20th century model. By applying  old school thinking and business practices to a 21st century problem you end up with legislation which can never work.

For those of you who can remeber Vietnam look up ‘Agent Orange’  it was a pesticide and fungicide designed to destroy the jungle vegetation where North Vietnamese troops could move and fight freely.

By spraying the jungle these troops would have nowhere to hide and be easy pickings for U.S troops.  It did not work Agent Orange was toxic and responsible for deaths and mutations among U.S service personal.

But you can see the parallels in thinking remove the jungle and we win..remove the internet and we win.

For those who want to find out more…

SOPA -Wikipedia 

PIPA- Wikipedia 

Press Perspective – Why SOPA is Bad

Law Enforcement – Why SOPA is Good

WSJ – Understanding SOPA

How the SOPA Opera could kill the internet

Wikipedia – Agent Orange

Forbes – Spotify The SOPA Alternative

The following is an email I received this morning from Fight for the Future Team.

It gives a great insight into people power and encouragement that no matter how little we can contribute we can defend our human rights.

If you were wondering what all the blacked out sites were round the t’internet or why you could’nt get on Wikipedia this is why.

You can still get involved even if you are not an American Citizen – And You Should!!!

Here’s the email:

- ————————————————-

Today was nuts, right?

Google launched a petition.  Wikipedia voted to shut itself off.  Senators’ websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them.   NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before.  Tech companies and users teamed up.  Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms.  The free network defended itself.  Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.

The really crazy part?  We might even win.

Approaching Monday’s crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA.  Last week there were 5.   And it just takes just 41 solid “no” votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate.  What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.

But don’t trust predictions.  The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass.  Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don’t understand why–so they’re easily duped by superficial changes.  The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical.  Here are two things to think about:

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week.  Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators’ offices, until they vote “no” on cloture.  If your site participated today, consider running a “Call the Senate” link all next week.

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators’ district offices.  We don’t have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we’re too exhausted! any takers?).  So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote “no” on cloture.  These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

That’s it for now. Be proud and stay on it!

–Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.

___

P.S. Huge credit goes to participants in the 11/16 American Censorship Day protest: Mozilla, 4chan, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, and thousands of others.  That’s what got this ball rolling!  Reddit, both the community and the team behind it, you’re amazing.  And of course, thanks to the Wikimedians whose patient and inexorable pursuit of the right answer brought them to take world-changing action. Thanks to David S, David K, Cory D, and E Stark for bold action at critical times.

P.P.S. If you haven’t already, show this video to as many people as you can. It works! http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

——————————————-

END OF EMAIL

——————————————

The President has bowed to pressure from internet users human rights groups and leading online business and declared publically that the White House will not support these acts.

Interesting to see today to see reports of Rupert Murdoch attacking Google as leading lights in online piracy. For Murdoch the fact that on You Tube trailers for the latest Mission Impossible movie can be found with advertising was enough to enrage the Old Man.

Apparently Google steals content then makes money from the self same content.

As we all know SOPA gives the U.S agencies the ability the act internationally. So Questions of sovereignty are raised. You bet if Japan or Russia  proposed these powers that Congress and senate would not have the fleets mobilized and ready for war for the ‘Attack on our constitution.’

Murdoch claims he searched for the latest Mission Impossible movie and found websites where there where supposed free links.

Quick search and first page is the official movie site and reviews.  No piracy links.

Either Google moved fast to kick the moral Zimmer frame  out from under Murdoch or the links where not there. Google says it spends in the region of $60 million each year to combat piracy.

Perhaps the big M has a share in the latest MI movie, or was more likely contemplating how he reinstates his shattered reputation after his employees hacked the mobile phone of a murdered school girl and deleted voice mails leaving her parents believing she was actually alive.

Careful of who you believe in the great SOPA DOPE debate. Their are vested interests all round pushing agendas. This is not how a sane society goes about creating legislation.

Check out the companies who line up in support of SOPA 

It’s this fear that fuels the Patent Protection Industry and potentially restricts innovation.

Every day there are thousands of Patents being registered in order to protect ideas.  Just recently we have heard that IBM are passing “giving” Google over 200 of their patents in a deal (as covered by Bill Slawski IMB Assigns Patent Filings to Google).  This is being seen as a part of a strategy that many large companies adopt (not just Google) to build-up their Patents Portfolio.

What is the Point to Software Patent Protection?

In these days of exponential advancements and innovation, are patents not being outdated by the speed of creation before they come into legal being? and is it a potentially restrictive practice to innovation and advancement?

Is the purpose of a Patent to scare off anyone else from creating something, and therefore prevent competition from the outset?

When you build up a patent portfolio, are you also secretly hoping that someone does infringe something and create a product that the whole world uses, just so that you can step in and claim the rights to the original idea?

A Patent takes over a year to protect.  In that time innovations can come and go.  If you add to this the time it takes to develop a product and it’s life cycle, you could be looking at least 5-10 years.  A lot happens in 5-10 years.

With the speed of advancements continuing to increase, a lot more will happen in the next 5 years than did in the last 10.

Can Patents Restrict Innovation?

I am quite possibly being naive but it seems to me that the people writing the patents can not possibly account for every variation in a future idea and so may blanket out an entire industry from ever developing.

Innovations these days can be so complex that a person can create something with no knowledge that there is a patent pending that unwittingly has it covered.

So I am left to wonder what is the intention of those patents who file patents?

Brand Identity, Copyrights, and Trademarks I get.  They are things that have been done and have a future to be established.  Patents in physical products like a new improved design for a pair of scissors I also get.  But the patent for a concept not yet materialised, especially in the software, science and technology fields I really struggle with.

I just can’t help but think that somewhere in a laboratory (maybe many) there are solutions to Aids and Cancer, that will never see the light of day because a drug company has it covered by a patent they bought, and they are making just way too much money from selling their drugs.

My Advice to Innovators of Software – Just Go Ahead Anyway

The thing about creative innovation is that you will always evolve uniqueness and originality.

Even if my/your ideas get covered by some loose patent, by the time any legalities kick in, we are intelligent and creative enough to innovate them further, side step the legal letter of the law, and move onwards and upwards.