“Alhamdulillah,” my companion commented as we sped past the
less fortunate commuters just meters away recognizing that the difference
between arriving at dinner on time or hours late was providently decided by a
traffic impulse a mile earlier.
This morning, I glanced at the news on my way to my early
morning workout. Blackberry had filed a
patent infringement lawsuit against Typo Products. Blackberry geniuses Jason Griffin, John
Holmes, Mihal Lazaridis, Herb Little, and Harry Major had convinced U.S. Patent
examiner Monsour Said to grant them a patent on “a handheld messaging device
for wireless e-mail that is optimally configured to facilitate thumb-typing
with thumbs, comprising a keyboard having a plurality of keys representing the
letters of the alphabet said keyboard integral to the hand held messaging
device….” Apparently neither the
Blackberry engineers nor the patent examiner were familiar with the theorem
from 1913 set forth by French mathematician Emile Borel who examined the
probability of the infinite number of monkeys on the infinite number of
keyboards reproducing works of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Undoubtedly, said French monkeys on said
keyboards would have used “thumb-typing with thumbs” in 1913 making Blackberry’s
infringe-able invention in 1998 highly anticipated and not inventive. As if 100 year old French monkeys aren’t
reason enough to dismiss this frivolity distracting the venue of insanity also
known as the Northern District of California Court, the “revolutionary” product
(their characterization) created by Typo Products representing the “culmination
of years of development and research” (their characterization) that allows
iPhone users to use a keyboard affixed atop the flat screen is a retrofit snapped over the iPhone casing and therefore
fails Blackberry’s first claim of being “integral” to the device.
As I’ve done for decades, I had the opportunity to sit down - this time in Egypt - with aspiring entrepreneurs – a term originally used to described the manager
of a theatrical production or a circus (do I sense a French theme in this
post?). This group was working to
eradicate from Egypt the horrific legacy of war in the form of vast tracts of
land filled with landmines and, compliant with the misguided advice of business
consultants who favor more monkey than mathematician, sought to reassure me
that their ‘invention’ was ‘patented’.
These patents, they argued, were part of the value proposition of their
endeavor. Having begun my day with
Canadian monkey business, I was disheartened to see passionate young Egyptian
men ‘pitching’ an illusion that had distracted them from the legitimate and
laudable endeavor upon which they had embarked.
Listening to these gentlemen detail the gruesome scourge of
lost lives and limbs throughout Egypt courtesy of Norwegian Nils Waltersen
Aasen’s invention of the modern anti-personnel landmine on the eve of World War
I, I was struck by the ironies of the day.
Nearly 100 years ago, Aasen was made an honorary colonel in the French
army and was awarded the status of Chevalier in the Legion d’honneur for his
anonymous armaments. This inventor of “the
automatic soldier” set in motion a century of death that my Egyptian friends
sought to destroy with a ‘patented’ automatic mine detector. Both of them promoted their efforts as ‘inventions’. Both sought speculative investors to fund
their novelties. Separated by a century,
neither fully contemplated the trajectory of their endeavors – ignoring the
ample lessons from history and oblivious to the sustainability of their efforts
in the future.
Far more dangerous to humanity than buried landmines is the
proliferation of distracted intentions.
There’s no question that the gentlemen I met today are zealous about
ridding Egypt and the rest of the world of hidden agents of death and
destruction. There’s no question that
they’ve undertaken considerable time and effort to develop technical solutions
that can go a long way in addressing a problem that plagues millions of acres
and kills or maims thousands each year.
And with 155 signatory countries to the Ottawa Treaty who agree that
they will not use, develop, manufacture, stock-pile or traffic and trade
landmines, their effort is certain to appeal to the morality of a vast majority
of humanity. So why is it that these
young men so willing to serve humanity believe that their effort is served by
laying cognitive ‘landmines’ in the illusory landscape of innovation? What evidence could anyone point to that
supports the hypothesis that patenting the method to rid the world of landmines
actually serves humanity more effectively than collaborating with humanity to
achieve the same outcome? The
answer. None.
As I’ve stated before, one of the most prolific deterrents
to the success of human enterprise is the reflex to force every impulse into a
consensus structure or form. We pretend
to celebrate creativity in technical adaptation and engineering, for example,
but we find anathema equivalent creativity in business models or the
provisioning of the same. Figure out the
angulation of keys on a typewriter modeled after the 1868 U.S. Patent 79,265
awarded to QWERTY inventors Sholes, Glidden and Soule so that opposable thumb
primates can tweet to one another while driving and you’re celebrated as worthy
of infringement defense. Suggest that
you consider a business approach other than the broken VC model of the failed
U.S. and European inefficient capital roulette wheel and you’re crazy. Why?
Because with conformity comes control.
And with control comes the ease of reinforcing incumbencies. And with incumbencies comes the maintenance
of the status quo – a status quo that has, for 100 years, accepted the fact
that people who don’t matter in places that don’t matter randomly trigger
forgotten landmines. And, like the
axiomatic silent tree that falls in the earless forest, the landmine that is
never detected by the invention that never gets funded that kills the farmer
that never was considered is something that the status quo never hears because
it doesn’t make a sound in the Silicon Valleys of the Knowledge Economy.
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Dave, Egypt was, is and will always be...The group you met is made of believers of the cause. The cause that there is still a bright tomorrow come what may, good internationl samaritans such as yourself who want to help for the sake of humanity irrespective of race and religion and compassionate patriots who will constantly put their convictions and integrity above anything else, believers that their role is to also lend a hand to their fellow countrymen to see the sum of their country better and flourishing. It is always such a privilege, honor and delight to have you amongst us, Egyptians!
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