What should we do with dark IP?

Answer: Open it! 

My friend Layne Hartsell sent me a link to an article on Yahoo news "Anti-Troll' Marblar Unites NASA Patents, Samsung to Crowdsource New Products".

Marblar CEO Daniel Perez said that although many companies' research and development departments spend millions of dollars on such patents, more than 95 percent of them sit unused.
"They're just kind of laying dormant," he told ABC News. "But what if people saw the patents for a special type of material from NASA or a unique laser from Oxford? What are some new ways that we can incorporate these patents into new products?"

I digested the text and put some comments on it, you can access it through Diigo HERE.

Marblar is a new tool for mining and valuing dark IP. What value Marblar brings to the market? They bring dark IP to the surface, from different sources, and they put in one place. The huge database of patents also gets sorted and refined using the users of the website (so they crowdsource that work too). They also ease licensing/royalties agreements between at least 3 parties: the owners of the IP (NASA for example), applications developers (the crowd), and companies that have the capability to put products on the market, (Samsung for example).

I see here old school mentality trying to adapt to the new. These are people who still value IP, who don't understand the open innovation game, who don't realize its potential, or who simply can't play it in their current setting. They have spent a lot of money developing all sorts of technologies and are now trying to value them in a different way. In other words, they feel that the IP they're sitting on surpasses their capacity to put it into practice, to develop its full potential, and they are essentially outsourcing (by crowdsourcing) applications development. This is already recognizing that they (closed corporations) aren't innovative enough. This is recognizing that the creativity economy will be driven by the multitude (the crowd, in their terms). But they are still holding on to their patents because they feel they should get a return on their investment and, most importantly, because they don't know how, or they can't play the open game.

If you ask my opinion, I would put all this dark IP into the public domain, especially the one developed with public funds. This will do a lot more good for the local economy!!

If I was a large company like Samsong, I would re-purpose my business core into a value network management group. Don't need intermediaries like Marblar. Samsong has the resources to become a locus of open innovation, an attractor of bright minds, by providing the space, the equipment, and the proper incentives for an innovative ecosystem to grow around their mission.

But I am not a large company and I am with the 99%, which is now merging into open value networks, powerful (I believe) economic entities, capable of bringing ideas to market. Watch the video below where I explain the open value network model.



Open value networks like SENSORICA also have strategies to mine dark IP. You can take a look at our approach in THIS document.

In my opinion, Marblar is only a transitory system. This model is missing something extremely important, the dynamics of open innovation, which is beneficial for society at large, but also for individuals who engage in it IF we give ourselves the proper tools, like a value accounting system, and a p2p production framework like the one proposed by the open value network model. Nonetheless, it is refreshing to see that Marblar implements a rudimentary value accounting system with their "marble" points, which has the effect to turn competitive product development into large scale collaborative product development. This is precisely the dynamics we're nurturing in entities like SENSORICA, to turn product development into a long tail process.

But systems like Marbler are setting up a candy economy (see THIS post for the definition) and are furthering the netarchical capitalism agenda. SENSORICA is setting up a commons-based peer production system, in which ALL revenue is redistributed in a FAIR way to ALL the participants. The Marblar scheme treats participants as resources, as the crowd, as a mass that can be organized to produce new ideas for the big guys to exploit and rip all the profits, giving a candy back to the crowd (see my post Why I don't like crowdsourcing). SENSORICA is empowering, see participants as equipotent peers, is inclusive, is fair. Which one feels better? Which one do you think will grow faster?

The new world will not be uniform or monolithic. As in the old world, there will be oppositions or antagonistic systems in the new world too. Netarchical capitalism, which is in fact a new form of feudalism is gradually defining itself and growing in opposition to peer production. Those who own our most important resources are looking for ways to transfer their assets into the new economy and to preserve their power. They are building platforms that they can control, and are hoping that the rest of us will get trapped in there or become dependent. The p2p or the multitude movement is building p2p infrastructures parallel (that fulfill the same functions) to these centralized and controlled platforms, with the hope to free the individual. We need to distinguish between being able to co-create value using a platform owned by someone, and being able to co-create value in an environment that is not owned or controlled by anyone, as autonomous and equipotent peers. In both cases we co-create value, we collaborate, but I prefer not having someone to randomly decide if I'm in or out...

By t!b!

Open source hardware meets the p2p economy

We are at this particular moment in history when we can say with certainty that open source hardware (OSHW) is economically viable. The video below tells the success story of Adafruit Industries. Barely formed, this business model relying on OSHW might already be obsolete. A new model, the open value network, is already threatening to transform the landscape of the open source economy. This article explains why.

Most people find it counter-intuitive that companies that sell high tech open source products can survive in a highly competitive capitalistic environment, giving away their recipes, AND allowing (even encouraging) everyone else to copy them, WITH THE RIGHT TO MAKE COMMERCIAL USE. If you don't believe that this is possible stop wasting your time arguing against it. It is real, it is here, you better understand it fast before the world becomes a strange place for you.

The business around open source innovation cannot be learned in school. It belongs to a new economic paradigm. Old arguments don't apply because the semantics and the logic are not the same. Some time ago, we published the article How to play the open game in the present and future economy, which tries to capture the essence of sustainable open source innovation. This article is constantly revised, so we encourage you to revisit it from time to time.   

The most successful ventures built around OSHW, like Arduino, Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc., can only be understood within their larger ecosystem. We can identify two main structures: a commercial entity and a community. The commercial entity is a classical form, usually a corporation or a co-op. It takes care of manufacturing, insures quality, structures and integrates the feedback from the community into new products, nurtures the community, performs legal functions, integrates all the transactional logistics (storage, shipping, payment), and provides services. The community plays different roles: early adapters for products testing and providing feedback, consumers, propose new features , spread the buzz, educate new members of the community and even provide technical help, etc.

What we see in the case of OSHW is a greater integration between a commercial entity and its market. Traditional commercial entities maintain a provider-consumer relationship with their markets: some "smart" individuals within the firm study what consumers might need, pass that to a team of engineers to make it, and put it for sale with a team of marketing wizards who will make almost anything look like the perfect fit. If the firm was right about the need, which is not always the case, customers pay for it and take it, and ask for service if needed. Service is provided by the commercial entity in exchange of customer loyalty. In this approach, the consumer is educated about what he needs and wants, after the "smart guys" have made the market study, decided on the general need, and offered a one-fit-all solution. This is obviously the extreme case, or what was widely practiced 20-15 years ago.  Today, traditional corporations build communities around their brands, and they try to absorb more feedback from their consumers. In the case of OSHW, individual consumers drive design and development.

This integration between the commercial entity and the market in the prevalent OSHW models is made possible by the internet technology. But as we saw above, there is still a clear distinction between the commercial entity and the community. For example, a community member who proposes a new design that becomes commercially successful is not rewarded with a fair share of the profits made by the commercial entity. I call this the "candy economy", meaning that the members of the community around a OSHW company stick with it and contribute mostly for intrinsic motivations, and a small present (a candy) or a token of recognition from time to time.

Is this division between the commercial entity and the community necessary? Or is it an impediment for a better arrangement?

The open value network model abolishes the distinction between 

the commercial entity and the community!

The open value network is a model for commons-based peer production. See SENSORICA as an example.

read SENSORICA business model 2.0

The diagram above depicts the structure of a value network. The physical and the virtual infrastructure, as well as the tools and the equipment used in R&D and in production are part of a pool of shareables, legally owned by a custodian, which is bound by a contract to act in the interest of the community, obeying a set of predefined rules set by the community. All the information and the knowledge generated by the value network become part of the commons (there is no intellectual property). Affiliates (agents) rely on their know how to create value (products), using these resources. This value (products) is exchanged on the market for some form of revenue. The revenue is redistributed among all affiliates in proportion to their contributions, using a value accounting system. The barrier to participation to value creation processes is very low. In that sense, the value network is open. Value creation is so widely defined that it encompasses activities usually performed by members of the commercial entity and the community, in the prevalent OSHW model cited above. Therefore, the two structures, the community and the commercial entity are merged together at the level of value creation.

The open value network model distinguishes between different types of agents, based on their degree of involvement/participation. Thus, we can distinguish between active affiliates (those who take part in value creation) and unaffiliated observers (those who know what's going on in the value network). If we go back to the prevalent OSHW model cited above, we can say that the owners and the employees of the commercial entity, as well as the community members who provide feedback and new design ideas, or who actively propagate information about products are ALL active affiliates.

We also need to note that active affiliates are those individuals who participate in value creation AND who decide to log their contributions within the value accounting system. Participation in the value accounting system is NOT mandatory. Someone can elect to contribute to the value network without expecting something in return. Thus, the open value network integrates a gift economy with a market-oriented economy.

That is all fine on the value production side, but what about the distribution side, or the market side?
All the transactional logistics (for the exchanges between the value producing network and its market) and the legal aspects associated with it are moved into what sencoricans call the "Exchange firm", which can be embodied as a non-profit, with the sole purpose of serving the value network.

So why is the open value network a menace to current OSHW business models? Because by abolishing the distinction between the commercial entity and the community, value networks like SENSORICA threaten to drain these communities associated with OSHW-based firms of their talent!   

More on the open value network model

The open value network model departs from capitalism for 3 main reasons:

• No economic cast, no division between owners and workers, between those who own the means of production and those who provide work. The commons takes care of that. 
• No clearly defined frontier between the system of design-production-distribution and the market, the system rewards every contributor to value creation in proportion to his/her contribution. The value accounting system takes care of that. 
• Reappropriation of labor. Active affiliates who are involved in value creation are not exchanging their labor for wages, they are in fact accumulating equity, which gives them rights to the future revenue generated by exchanging the value they create with the market. Thus the individual is always the owner of his work. 

The value accounting system allows value networks to go beyond the gift economy AND beyond the candy economy.

By t!b!

By AllOfUs

Leadership? What's that?

I am trying to understand how networks respond to problems. I use the presentation below to structure my understanding. I am pursuing this reflection in the context of SENSORICA, which is an open value network. The presentation will continue to evolve...

See also the discussion on Next Edge.

By t!b!

By AllOfUs

Multitude, or p2p initiatives get funded in Europe

Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation
Fabrizio Sestini By

AllOfUs

Revolution 2.0: structure and processes

On thestructureandprocessesofrevolution2.0 discussiondocument from Suresh Fernando

By AllOfUs

How value networks can articulate with the present economy - an example in food preparation and distribution

Yesterday I had a conversation with my friend Paul about the advantages of open value networks (OVN) over classical structures, including co-ops.

picture comes from this website

Context

Paul is involved in #occupy Montreal and they are now organizing a center for preparation and distribution of vegan food in Montreal. They also want it to be very local. This operation would require gathering products from different local farmers, cooking/preparing, packaging and distributing raw or prepared food. 

Question

Should they create a co-op or an OVN? 

My answer 

They can have a co-op embedded within a value network. 

The role of power relations in a p2p economy

The #occupy movement, which is a surface manifestation of a deeper Multitude movement, is in fact a refutation of power. Not only of the "power in place", i.e. big banks, governments, etc. but of what we call "instituted power", the kind of power your boss has over you. The consensus decision making process, a form of direct democracy that has been adopted by the #occupy movement, is the most obvious affirmation of this refutation of instituted power relations, which until now has been seen as a necessary structuring mechanisms of society. 

Where is this coming from? Was it there before? Is this pure Utopia? Or is there something fundamental happening, which makes instituted power relations lose their importance?  

We often hear that instituted power relations are tolerated by people because they are believed to be essential to organize us into efficient and effective groups, to achieve complex goals. Some say that without instituted power relations society would simply brake down, collapse. Go tell that to an anarchist... 

Value Networks, about commercializing their products

We take the example of a specific value network, SENSORICA.

The problem

One of SENSORICA’s main reason for existence is to provide for its members/affiliates the means of subsistence and well-being. This is to say that the surplus value that is created by the network must be exchanged on the market against other values, which are to be redistributed to participants based on their relative contribution. This redistribution is done according to the value accounting system, to which all members must adhere. The goal here is to establish a channel of distribution for SENSORICA’s products. The problem is that there are laws and regulations which makes it difficult for a non-legal entity like SENSORICA to sell certain products. Someone must take the blame if those products don't respect established standards, and our society doesn't know how to interface with things like SENSORICA.

Solution 

In the current situation, we need to create legally recognizable forms to channel products through them. This is actually the role Tactus Scientific Inc. plays for the Mosquito Scientific Instrument System, designed for the scientific instrument market segment.

Re-Occupation 2.0?

What do we do next?  The question for revolutionaries in North America is to figure out how to activate the anaesthetized. But why are we anaesthetized? There is a realization, at least to some extent, that we are the ones responsible for the global ills; the reification of individualism and the exporting of capitalism and ‘democracy’, yet the vast majority of people are too ‘comfortable’ to do anything more than nod their head when presented with the evidence. Why is this? In short, most people don’t feel enough pain on a personal level to motivate them to take risks... If this is so, do we need revolution?

Yes, because we are living within a lie, and this cannot be healthy...

         Read more...

By Suresh
(more notes by Shresh)

How to play the open game in the present and future economy

This is the fifth draft; it will evolve based on your feedback.
First published on 6/19/12. Last modified on Oct 10, 2024.

Come back later for more...  

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More and more solutions to our problems today come in the form of open artifacts, i.e open source software and hardware, created by online communities and networks. Traditionally, most of these communities have relied on voluntary participation or some type of gift economy, i.e. the developers do not expect a direct or immediate tangible reward for their contributions. These open artifacts have been regarded as marginal, mostly intended for amateurs and hobbyists. How can one expect serious things to come out from loose organizations that don't use the prescribed governance and methodologies, and don't have access to large budgets? At least that was the unadvised belief, until we realized that critical infrastructure, like the Internet, runs mostly on open source software, created and maintained by these unorthodox organizations. The helicopter drone, Ingenuity, which is part of the Perseverance mission to the planet Mars, operates on Linux, which is an open source operating system. Bitcoin, runs on open source software and is maintained by an open group of people, who can be practically anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Since the launch in 2009, no one has succeeded in hacking Bitcoin, despite the astronomical reward, ranging in the tens of billions of dollars, if we only consider the abandoned accounts of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the network. So some open artifacts developed by unorthodox organizations are pretty serious. There are also lots of crappy ones, as there are crappy products offered by serious companies.

Developing open artifacts (based on open source technologies) relying on unorthodox organizations and being able to make a living is what I call playing the open game.

There are a few important components to the open game... 

 

First, there's the nature of the solution, or more precisely, its intellectual property regime. Open source means that no one can create a temporary economic monopoly on a particular solution, as it is the case with products based on patented technologies. The immediate reaction of some people is: how can one make money developing open source technologies. My first reaction to this question is to point to the obvious: 

• IBM has invested billions of US dollars in Linux and other open source technologies. ref
• Google has gained mobile dominance by opening Android, the mobile operating system. 
• Tesla has engaged in a hybrid IP strategy, open source patented.  

It is obviously possible to generate wealth while developing open source technologies, if the business model is not simple and linear. Then one can dive into some examples to understand the second order and even the third order positive effects on the overall business. In other words, in most cases, whatever is open source is not the product, but by open sourcing some technology in the IP portfolio, these companies produce some effects within their ecosystem, which they can harvest or leverage for their core business. In the case of Google, opening Android increased its adoption rate, while propagating some core Google functionalities, thus putting Google services in billions of mobile devices, which then could be monetized using Google's core business model. We also see a second order kickback pattern with online services like Google and Facebook for example, where free access is given to a digital service (search or connecting and interacting with people), while making money from selling users' generated data or attention. So we need to stop thinking about business as a simple and linear process, product-exchange. 

Now, the previous examples are easier to understand for most people, since they can relate the story to their own work experience. But what about people who develop Tiki for example, an open source wiki CMS groupware? The model here is most probably less known by commons people, but it is the best known by those who use open source technologies. The wealth generation model is similar to Red Hat, the poster child, based on support, training, and consulting services around the core open artifact, which is offered for free. 

 

At this point, I find that is it important to raise to your awareness the fact that the wealth generation model is not the same when the technology is software or hardware. It is beyond the scope of this post to dive deeper into this distinction, but if you're interested, we can discuss in the comments.

We can go even further into more esoteric wealth generation models, some of which are not even well understood by people who participate in the development of open source technologies. You have probably vaguely sensed by know that I deliberately use the term open artifact instead of product and the expression wealth generation instead of business model. The reason for that is to avoid, as much as possible, what I call cognitive interference. When we say product people think about commodity, something that you can buy/sell on the market. But you cannot sell the Linux operating system, because the open source license gives the right to anyone to make a copy, use and modify. In this IP regime, it becomes an abundant, non-rivalrous resource, like the air that we breath. One cannot sell it, its price is zero according to the law of supply and demand. Even though, unlike the air, we need to deploy efforts to produce functional software, once it is made, its costs of reproduction (copy/paste) and distribution (download) are negligible. This is not the same for open source hardware, which has higher costs for reproduction and distribution. But since everyone has access to the design, anyone can make it too. I also like to say that open artifacts disseminate, they are not distributed as products through the market. In other words, software can be found online and downloaded by people and in the case of hardware, anyone can download the model and make it themselves, which has become much easier nowadays, with the use of digital fabrication techniques (3D printing, CNC, etc.). So what about the expression wealth generation? When we say wealth most people think about money and I want to avoid this association. In more esoteric models, people are seeking other forms of wealth, for what they are, or for a later transmutation into money. For example, someone may want to contribute to an open source project to learn new skills, to develop new relations with people that have specific skills or share specific values, or to build reputation.

 

 

The second component of the open game story is the type of organization that produces the open artifact.

...

 

 

Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of new economic models that brake away from the gift economy, directly rewarding those who contribute (with time, financial capital, social capital, ...) to open projects. The open artifact is gradually becoming sustainable. The first step in this direction can be illustrated by Open Source Ecology, which designs open hardware for farming, construction and manufacturing. The designs are  entirely open and free, but the Open Source Ecology community is not interested in commodification, i.e. market exchanges, their designs made with DIY (Do It Yourself) in mind, destined to be produced by the user, or very close to the point of use. In the case of Open Source Ecology their model for subsistence is based on revenues in fiat currency, from donations or educational services.

Open crowdsourcing is another model in which designers, part of an (open) community, are rewarded to complete a project. This scheme doesn't only rely on donations or voluntary participation, since those who contribute are rewarded in exchange with some symbolic gifts (tokens of recognition), reputation tokens, job opportunities, etc. Arduino is an example of such model, a hybrid between the open (value) network OVN and a traditional business, which relies on a vast community of enthusiasts to propose new designs, find and eliminate bugs, engage in promotion, etc. 

There are also closed and non-transparent crowdsourcing initiatives, such as prizes, in which only the best contributors are rewarded. Contributors are often placed in competition against each other. The resultant designs or artifacts are closed and remain under the control of the initiator. We are definitely against this new form of human exploitation, as you can see in this post. 

Sensorica is based on a more radical model, referred to as an open value network (OVN), which implements commons-based peer design production. It is in fact a mix between a gift economy and a transaction-based, or market economy. Sensorica can produces open artifacts that can either be exchange on the market or disseminated as DIY open designs. Various forms of rewards (including revenue from market exchanges or donations) are redistributed to all contributors in proportion to their contributions, based on a Benefit Redistribution Algorithm, which is at the heart of the Network Resource Planning and Contribution Accounting system (NRP-CAS).