I'm saying that tech got ahead of the patent office in the 90's, and that combined with a zeal to 'own the road' as a business model had companies patenting anything and everything. That of course then spawned a huge patent trolling industry which has had a significant chilling effect on companies.
A very real consequence of this was "datasheets." Prior to the great patent rush semiconductor companies published datasheets which described their chips in great detail. This allowed engineers to write software to use the chip and build systems with them. By the late 90's the "datasheet" for the interesting chips in a system (sound chips, video processor, GPU, etc) had devolved into a description of electrical signals, pinouts, thermal data, and just enough information to verify the chip was functioning. Detailed information about programming was only available under NDA and sometimes only with a binding purchase agreement in place.
Being particularly frustrated by this when writing a driver for a video chip, I used every ounce of influence I had to talk to the guy at the company where the chip was made who "owned" that decision (which is to say he could have said, 'let anyone have the data sheet' and it would have happened). His response was that they didn't release the data sheet because while they didn't believe they violated anyone's patent in their designs, it was impossible to prove that they didn't (you can't prove a negative and all that) and so they took the expedient route of restricting the number of people who "knew" how their chip did what it did to reduce the attack surface for patent trolls. This has been, apparently, the standard operating procedure for over a decade now.
The combination of the 20 year window (which means even if someone patented something its expired by now) and an improvement in the ability of patent examiners to deal with "tech" (we've now got examiners who were in high school in 1995 so they understand at a much better level novelty when it comes to tech). Means tech companies can engage with individuals with less risk, and that using techniques "everyone knows" or uses is much less likely to come bite you back.
No idea how big a damper it will turn out to have been, but I'm watching for the signs ...
A very real consequence of this was "datasheets." Prior to the great patent rush semiconductor companies published datasheets which described their chips in great detail. This allowed engineers to write software to use the chip and build systems with them. By the late 90's the "datasheet" for the interesting chips in a system (sound chips, video processor, GPU, etc) had devolved into a description of electrical signals, pinouts, thermal data, and just enough information to verify the chip was functioning. Detailed information about programming was only available under NDA and sometimes only with a binding purchase agreement in place.
Being particularly frustrated by this when writing a driver for a video chip, I used every ounce of influence I had to talk to the guy at the company where the chip was made who "owned" that decision (which is to say he could have said, 'let anyone have the data sheet' and it would have happened). His response was that they didn't release the data sheet because while they didn't believe they violated anyone's patent in their designs, it was impossible to prove that they didn't (you can't prove a negative and all that) and so they took the expedient route of restricting the number of people who "knew" how their chip did what it did to reduce the attack surface for patent trolls. This has been, apparently, the standard operating procedure for over a decade now.
The combination of the 20 year window (which means even if someone patented something its expired by now) and an improvement in the ability of patent examiners to deal with "tech" (we've now got examiners who were in high school in 1995 so they understand at a much better level novelty when it comes to tech). Means tech companies can engage with individuals with less risk, and that using techniques "everyone knows" or uses is much less likely to come bite you back.
No idea how big a damper it will turn out to have been, but I'm watching for the signs ...