Today we had two interesting
meetings with two very different companies that both touched on something that
has been a common topic of discussion and explanation on our trip. Our first meeting was with a company called
Sportvision who does virtual reality for sports broadcasting and is best known
for doing the yellow “first and ten line” on all professional and most college
football games. Sportvision surprised me
in a couple of ways. Firstly, I didn’t
really think about not only all of the computer and programming work that goes
into doing some of these services (for instance using cameras and computers to
detect and track baseballs and players) but also the math and physics that some
of Sportvisions services require. Take
for example some of the information that is displayed during a baseball
games. Not only does Sportvision track a
baseballs position and speed, but from this data they have also found an
algorithm to determine the spin on the ball using its speed and trajectory. Never before had I thought about all of these
intense calculations and work that went into some seemingly simple data displayed
on an info graphic during a sports game.
One
thing that our contact at Sportvision Mike talked about that tied into our
second meeting of the day was the idea of intellectual property and patents and
specifically the roles of these things concerning the use of contractors. In an environment that is competitive and crowded
as the software industry, intellectual property and patents become extremely
critical to maintaining an edge. So when
contractors are involved in developing this IP, it could become extremely
difficult and frustrating when you move onto a new company and project but
might not be able to use the knowledge or ideas you developed previously.
Our
second and final meeting of the day was with the law firm Fenwick and West
where we met with a team of patent litigation lawyers who explained to us the
ins and outs of patents, filing them, and defending or attacking them in
court. The main thing that I got out of
this meeting was that patents and the patent system (as far as the software
industry goes) is incredibly flawed.
Firstly they explained a group of people called “patent trolls” who
collect seemingly old and useless patents en masse and then use them to sue
large companies over incredibly loose infringements (for example one of these
groups sued twitter for a patent concerning two-way radios for truckers under
the grounds that their patent included the idea for social media) in hopes that
the large companies will settle rather than pay millions in legal fees. There is seemingly no way out of these legal
battles for the companies who are being sued as they either have to settle or
go to court and even possibly lose due to the loose and broad nature of some of
these patents, which is also the second flaw in the patent system. Because the system allows for some patents to
get approved that are incredibly broad and vague, companies are able to sue
each other and waste large amounts of time and money and intellectual power
over fighting each other rather than focusing on collaboration which could help
both parties involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment