1. You a big fan of aggressive IP enforcement? Like to think a well-litigated market is a healthy market? Hate those little entrepreneurial nuisances like “competition from emerging media?”

    Well, then, you would have loved the early 20th century.

    Because you had to get Thomas Edison’s permission to make any movie. Then you had to pay him.

    Pretty sweet, huh?

    Motion Picture Patents Company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Since the 1890s, Thomas Edison owned most of the major American patents relating to motion picture cameras….Since 1902, Edison had also been notifying distributors and exhibitors that if they did not use Edison machines and films exclusively, they would be subject to litigation for supporting filmmaking that infringed Edison’s patents.

    ….

    Many independent filmmakers, who controlled from one-quarter to one-third of the domestic marketplace, responded to the creation of the MPPC by moving their operations to Hollywood, whose distance from Edison’s home base of New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and covers the area, was averse to enforcing patent claims. Southern California was also chosen because of its beautiful year-round weather and varied countryside, which could stand in for deserts, jungles and great mountains.

    ….

    Another reason [for the MPPC’s decline was] overestimation of the efficiency of controlling the motion picture industry through patent litigation and the exclusion of independents from licensing. The slow process of using detectives to investigate patent infringements, and of obtaining injunctions against the infringers, was outpaced by the dynamic rise of new companies in diverse locations.

    ….

    The end came with a federal court decision in United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. on October 1, 1915, which ruled that the MPPC’s acts went “far beyond what was necessary to protect the use of patents or the monopoly which went with them” and was therefore an illegal restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

    So, to summarize.

    Early 1900s:

    • Maniac entrepreneur creates monopolistic business models plus means for legally enforcing them.
    • People balk, running away from the center of power in order to create a sunny, guerilla-run safe haven.
    • Maniac gets all mad about his system breaking and sues/blames everybody he can find.

    One hundred ten years later:

    • Maniacs still try to imitate and enforce Edison-like, legally-enforced monopolies.
    • People still balk and run away from the center of power to create sunny, guerilla-run safe havens.
    • Maniacs still get all mad about their system breaking and still sue/blame everybody they can find.

    Yep. Even today, the maniacs win for a while. But those safe havens have gotten surprisingly mobile, and increasingly difficult to un-safen. Funny how that works.

And, then, you were all...

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    Merlin Mann about patent enforcement over...last one hundred years. There’s a whole...
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