La Ley de Metcalfe: Definición

Metcalfe's law 

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n²). First formulated in this form by George Gilder in 1993,^[1] and attributed to Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law was originally presented, circa 1980, not in terms of users, but rather of "compatible communicating devices" (for example, fax machines, telephones, etc).^[2] Only recently with the launch of the internet and Web 2.0 design did this law carry over to users and networks as its original intent was to describe Ethernet purchases and connections. ^[3] The law is also very much related to economics and business management, especially with competitive companies looking to merge with one another.

Contents

• 1 Network effects
• 2 Limitations
• 3 Business practicalities
• 4 Modified models
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Network effects

Metcalfe's law characterizes many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet, social networking, and the World Wide Web. Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Reed Hundt, said that this law gives the most understanding to the workings of the internet.^[4]Metcalfe's Law is related to the fact that the number of unique connections in a network of a number of nodes (n) can be expressed mathematically as the triangular number n(n − 1)/2, which is proportional to n²asymptotically. In more simple terms, if there are 5 telephones, the most number of connections that can be made can be found by substituting the number into the equation which in this case equals 10. The law is abundant and existent due to the ability of internet users to link together. If the internet were for information posting only, Metcalfe's Law would be a mere imaginative concept. Websites and blogs such as Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace are the center of this law taking effect. Forty five percent of Americans in 2005 said the internet had played a huge role in a major decision in their life as a result of this social networking.^[5]. Some of the major decisions involved buying a home, buying a car, inquiring medical help, and discovering a career. Interconnecting two networks is said to greatly exceed the power of the two separate, individual networks.

The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases. Goods characterize the first component or intrinsic network effect. Services fall under the second component of network effects known as complementary.^[6] A social networking site works the same way as the fax machine described above. The greater number of users with the service, the more valuable the service becomes to the community. Deriving from Metcalfe's Law, every new "friend" accepted or added on these social networking sites makes the user's profile ever more valuable in terms of the law. Positive and negative outcomes take place with all network effects involving a service of this sort. New jobs, relationships, and opportunities arise with more people coming together, however, if not used correctly, services of this type can lead to distant relationships.

Limitations

 In addition to the difficulty of quantifying the "value" of a network, the mathematical justification for Metcalfe's law measures only the potential number of contacts, i.e., the technological side of a network. However the social utility of a network depends upon the number of nodes in contact. If there are language barriers or other reasons why large parts of a network are not in contact with other parts, the effect may be smaller.

Business practicalities

With Metcalfe's Law the way it is described, all companies would theoretically combine with another partner. This would create more users involved in the company both on a consumer and supplier basis. This is not the case however. Much of the time, only companies of equal equity are willing to interconnect with one another. In the case of a larger network or business, and a smaller network or business, the larger feels the smaller one is benefiting on a much larger scale. The larger business gains little in comparison to the small company as the large has already developed a reputation whereas the small company is feeding off their previous success.

Modified Models

Within the context of social networks, many, including Metcalfe himself, have proposed modified models using (n × log n) proportionality rather than n² proportionality.^[7] Reed and Odlyzko have sought out possible relationships to Metcalfe's Law in terms of describing the relationship of a network and one can read about how those are related. Tongia and Wilson also examine the related question of the costs to those excluded.

Wikipedia

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Briscoe et al.: La Ley de Metcalfe está equivocada

Metcalfe's Law is Wrong

Communications networks increase in value as they add members--but by how much? The devil is in the details

By Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, Benjamin Tilly . IEEE Spectrum

Of all the popular ideas of the Internet boom, one of the most dangerously influential was Metcalfe's Law. Simply put, it says that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of its users.

Illustration: Serge Bloch

The law is said to be true for any type of communications network, whether it involves telephones, computers, or users of the World Wide Web. While the notion of "value" is inevitably somewhat vague, the idea is that a network is more valuable the more people you can call or write to or the more Web pages you can link to.

Metcalfe's Law attempts to quantify this increase in value. It is named for no less a luminary than Robert M. Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet. During the Internet boom, the law was an article of faith with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and engineers, because it seemed to offer a quantitative explanation for the boom's various now-quaint mantras, like "network effects," "first-mover advantage," "Internet time," and, most poignant of all, "build it and they will come."

By seeming to assure that the value of a network would increase quadratically--proportionately to the square of the number of its participants--while costs would, at most, grow linearly, Metcalfe's Law gave an air of credibility to the mad rush for growth and the neglect of profitability. It may seem a mundane observation today, but it was hot stuff during the Internet bubble.

Remarkably enough, though the quaint nostrums of the dot-com era are gone, Metcalfe's Law remains, adding a touch of scientific respectability to a new wave of investment that is being contemplated, the Bubble 2.0, which appears to be inspired by the success of Google. That's dangerous because, as we will demonstrate, the law is wrong. If there is to be a new, broadband-inspired period of telecommunications growth, it is essential that the mistakes of the 1990s not be reprised.

The law was named in 1993 by George Gilder, publisher of the influentialGilder Technology Report . Like Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 to 20 months, Metcalfe's Law is a rough empirical description, not an immutable physical law. Gilder proclaimed the law's importance in the development of what came to be called "the New Economy."

Soon afterward, Reed E. Hundt, then the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, declared that Metcalfe's Law and Moore's Law "give us the best foundation for understanding the Internet." A few years later, Marc Andreessen, who created the first popular Web browser and went on to cofound Netscape, attributed the rapid development of the Web--for example, the growth in AOL's subscriber base--to Metcalfe's Law.

There was some validity to many of the Internet mantras of the bubble years. A few very successful dot-coms did exploit the power of the Internet to provide services that today yield great profits. But when we look beyond that handful of spectacular successes, we see that, overall, the law's devotees didn't fare well. For every Yahooï»' or Google, there were dozens, even hundreds, of Pets.coms, EToys, and Excite@Homes, each dedicated to increasing its user base instead of its profits, all the while increasing expenses without revenue.

Because of the mind-set created, at least in small part, by Metcalfe's Law, even the stocks of rock-solid companies reached absurd heights before returning to Earth. The share price of Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif., for example, fell 89 percent--a loss of over US $580 billion in the paper value of its stock--between March 2000 and October 2002. And the rapid growth of AOL, which Andreessen attributed to Metcalfe's Law, came to a screeching halt; the company has struggled, to put it mildly, in the last few years.

Metcalfe's Law was over a dozen years old when Gilder named it. As Metcalfe himself remembers it, in a private correspondence with one of the authors, "The original point of my law (a 35mm slide circa 1980, way before George Gilder named it...) was to establish the existence of a cost-value crossover point--critical mass--before which networks don't pay. The trick is to get past that point, to establish critical mass." [See " " a reproduction of Metcalfe's historic slide.]

Metcalfe was ideally situated to watch and analyze the growth of networks and their profitability. In the 1970s, first in his Harvard Ph.D. thesis and then at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Metcalfe developed the Ethernet protocol, which has come to dominate telecommunications networks. In the 1980s, he went on to found the highly successful networking company 3Com Corp., in Marlborough, Mass. In 1990 he became the publisher of the trade periodical InfoWorld and an influential high-tech columnist. More recently, he has been a venture capitalist.

The foundation of his eponymous law is the observation that in a communications network with n members, each can make ( n –1) connections with other participants. If all those connections are equally valuable--and this is the big "if" as far as we are concerned--the total value of the network is proportional to n ( n –1), that is, roughly, n2. So if, for example, a network has 10 members, there are 90 different possible connections that one member can make to another. If the network doubles in size, to 20, the number of connections doesn't merely double, to 180, it grows to 380--it roughly quadruples, in other words.

If Metcalfe's mathematics were right, how can the law be wrong? Metcalfe was correct that the value of a network grows faster than its size in linear terms; the question is, how much faster? If there are n members on a network, Metcalfe said the value grows quadratically as the number of members grows.

We propose, instead, that the value of a network of size n grows in proportion to n log( n ). Note that these laws are growth laws, which means they cannot predict the value of a network from its size alone. But if we already know its valuation at one particular size, we can estimate its value at any future size, all other factors being equal.

The distinction between these laws might seem to be one that only a mathematician could appreciate, so let us illustrate it with a simple dollar example.

ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH

Imagine a network of 100 000 members that we know brings in $1 million. We have to know this starting point in advance--none of the laws can help here, as they tell us only about growth. So if the network doubles its membership to 200 000, Metcalfe's Law says its value grows by (200 0002/100 0002) times, quadrupling to $4 million, whereas the n log( n ) law says its value grows by 200 000 log(200 000)/100 000 log(100 000) times to only $2.1 million. In both cases, the network's growth in value more than doubles, still outpacing the growth in members, but the one is a much more modest growth than the other. In our view, much of the difference between the artificial values of the dot-com era and the genuine value created by the Internet can be explained by the difference between the Metcalfe-fueled optimism of n2 and the more sober reality of n log( n ).

This difference will be critical as network investors and managers plan better for growth. In North America alone, telecommunications carriers are expected to invest $65 billion this year in expanding their networks, according to the analytical firm Infonetics Research Inc., in San Jose, Calif. As we will show, our rule of thumb for estimating value also has implications for companies in the important business of managing interconnections between major networks.

The increasing value of a network as its size increases certainly lies somewhere between linear and exponential growth [see diagram, " "]. The value of a broadcast network is believed to grow linearly; it's a relationship called Sarnoff's Law, named for the pioneering RCA television executive and entrepreneur David Sarnoff. At the other extreme, exponential--that is, 2n--growth, has been called Reed's Law, in honor of computer networking and software pioneer David P. Reed. Reed proposed that the value of networks that allow the formation of groups, such as AOL's chat rooms or Yahoo's mailing lists, grows proportionally with 2n.

We admit that our n log( n ) valuation of a communications network oversimplifies the complicated question of what creates value in a network; in particular, it doesn't quantify the factors that subtract from the value of a growing network, such as an increase in spam e-mail. Our valuation cannot be proved, in the sense of a deductive argument from first principles. But if we search for a cogent description of a network's value, then n log( n ) appears to be the best choice. Not only is it supported by several quantitative arguments, but it fits in with observed developments in the economy. The n log( n ) valuation for a network provides a rough-and-ready description of the dynamics that led to the disappointingly slow growth in the value of dotâ''com companies. On the other hand, because this growth is faster than the linear growth of Sarnoff's Law, it helps explain the occasional dot-com successes we have seen.

The fundamental flaw underlying both Metcalfe's and Reed's laws is in the assignment of equal value to all connections or all groups. The underlying problem with this assumption was pointed out a century and a half ago by Henry David Thoreau in relation to the very first large telecommunications network, then being built in the United States. In his famous book Walden(1854), he wrote: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

As it turns out, Maine did have quite a bit to communicate with Texas--but not nearly as much as with, say, Boston and New York City. In general, connections are not all used with the same intensity. In fact, in large networks, such as the Internet, with millions and millions of potential connections between individuals, most are not used at all. So assigning equal value to all of them is not justified. This is our basic objection to Metcalfe's Law, and it's not a new one: it has been noted by many observers, including Metcalfe himself.

There are common-sense arguments that suggest Metcalfe's and Reed's laws are incorrect. For example, Reed's Law says that every new person on a network doubles its value. Adding 10 people, by this reasoning, increases its value a thousandfold (210). But that does not even remotely fit our general expectations of network values--a network with 50 010 people can't possibly be worth a thousand times as much as a network with 50 000 people.

At some point, adding one person would theoretically increase the network value by an amount equal to the whole world economy, and adding a few more people would make us all immeasurably rich. Clearly, this hasn't happened and is not likely to happen. So Reed's Law cannot be correct, even though its core insight--that there is value in group formation--is true. And, to be fair, just as Metcalfe was aware of the limitations of his law, so was Reed of his law's.

Metcalfe's Law does not lead to conclusions as obviously counterintuitive as Reed's Law. But it does fly in the face of a great deal of the history of telecommunications: if Metcalfe's Law were true, it would create overwhelming incentives for all networks relying on the same technology to merge, or at least to interconnect. These incentives would make isolated networks hard to explain.

To see this, consider two networks, each with n members. By Metcalfe's Law, each one's value is on the order of n2, so the total value of both of these separate networks is roughly 2n2. But suppose these two networks merge. Then we will effectively have a single network with 2n members, which, by Metcalfe's Law, will be worth ( 2n ) 2or 4n2--twice as much as the combined value of the two separate networks.

Surely it would require a singularly obtuse management, to say nothing of stunningly inefficient financial markets, to fail to seize this obvious opportunity to double total network value by simply combining the two. Yet historically there have been many cases of networks that resisted interconnection for a long time. For example, a century ago in the United States, the Bell System and the independent phone companies often competed in the same neighborhood, with subscribers to one being unable to call subscribers to the other. Eventually, through a combination of financial maneuvers and political pressure, such systems connected with one another, but it took two decades.

Similarly, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the commercial online companies such as CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, and MCIMail provided e-mail to subscribers, but only within their own systems, and it wasn't until the mid-1990s that full interconnection was achieved. More recently we have had (and continue to have) controversies about interconnection of instant messaging systems and about the free exchange of traffic between Internet service providers. The behavior of network operators in these examples is hard to explain if the value of a network grows as fast as Metcalfe's n2.

There is a further argument to make about interconnecting networks. If Metcalfe's Law were true, then two networks ought to interconnect regardless of their relative sizes. But in the real world of business and networks, only companies of roughly equal size are ever eager to interconnect. In most cases, the larger network believes it is helping the smaller one far more than it itself is being helped. Typically in such cases, the larger network demands some additional compensation before interconnecting. Our n log( n ) assessment of value is consistent with this real-world behavior of networking companies; Metcalfe's n2 is not. [See sidebar, " " for the mathematics behind this argument.]

We have, as well, developed several quantitative justifications for our n log( n) rule-of-thumb valuation of a general communications network of size n . The most intuitive one is based on yet another rule of thumb, Zipf's Law, named for the 20th-century linguist George Kingsley Zipf.

Zipf's Law is one of those empirical rules that characterize a surprising range of real-world phenomena remarkably well. It says that if we order some large collection by size or popularity, the second element in the collection will be about half the measure of the first one, the third one will be about one-third the measure of the first one, and so on. In general, in other words, the k th-ranked item will measure about 1/ k of the first one.

To take one example, in a typical large body of English-language text, the most popular word, "the," usually accounts for nearly 7 percent of all word occurrences. The second-place word, "of," makes up 3.5 percent of such occurrences, and the third-place word, "and," accounts for 2.8 percent. In other words, the sequence of percentages (7.0, 3.5, 2.8, and so on) corresponds closely with the 1/ k sequence (1/1, 1/2, 1/3…). Although Zipf originally formulated his law to apply just to this phenomenon of word frequencies, scientists find that it describes a surprisingly wide range of statistical distributions, such as individual wealth and income, populations of cities, and even the readership of blogs.

To understand how Zipf's Law leads to our n log( n ) law, consider the relative value of a network near and dear to you--the members of your e-mail list. Obeying, as they usually do, Zipf's Law, the members of such networks can be ranked in the same sort of way that Zipf ranked words--by the number of e-mail messages that are in your in-box. Each person's e-mails will contribute 1/k to the total "value" of your in-box, where k is the person's rank.

The person ranked No. 1 in volume of correspondence with you thus has a value arbitrarily set to 1/1, or 1. (This person corresponds to the word "the" in the linguistic example.) The person ranked No. 2 will be assumed to contribute half as much, or 1/2. And the person ranked k th will, by Zipf's Law, add about 1/ k to the total value you assign to this network of correspondents.

That total value to you will be the sum of the decreasing 1/ k values of all the other members of the network. So if your network has n members, this value will be proportional to 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 +… + 1/( n –1), which approaches log( n ). More precisely, it will almost equal the sum of log( n ) plus a constant value. Of course, there are n -1 other members who derive similar value from the network, so the value to all n of you increases as n log( n ).

Zipf's Law can also describe in quantitative terms a currently popular thesis called The Long Tail. Consider the items in a collection, such as the books for sale at Amazon, ranked by popularity. A popularity graph would slope downward, with the few dozen most popular books in the upper left-hand corner. The graph would trail off to the lower right, and the long tail would list the hundreds of thousands of books that sell only one or two copies each year. The long tail of the English language--the original application of Zipf's Law--would be the several hundred thousand words that you hardly ever encounter, such as "floriferous" or "refulgent."

Taking popularity as a rough measure of value (at least to booksellers like Amazon), then the value of each individual item is given by Zipf's Law. That is, if we have a million items, then the most popular 100 will contribute a third of the total value, the next 10 000 another third, and the remaining 989 900 the final third. The value of the collection of n items is proportional to log( n ).

Incidentally, this mathematics indicates why online stores are the only place to shop if your tastes in books, music, and movies are esoteric. Let's say an online music store like Rhapsody or iTunes carries 735 000 titles, while a traditional brick-and-mortar store will carry 10 000 to 20 000. The law of long tails says that two-thirds of the online store's revenue will come from just the titles that its physical rival carries. In other words, a very respectable chunk of revenue--a third--will come from the 720 000 or so titles that hardly anyone ever buys. And, unlike the cost to a brick-and-mortar store, the cost to an online store of holding all that inventory is minimal. So it makes good sense for them to stock all those incredibly slow-selling titles.

At a time when telecommunications is the key infrastructure for the global economy, providers need to make fundamental decisions about whether they will be pure providers of connectivity or make their money by selling or reselling content, such as television and movies. It is essential that they value their enterprises correctly--neither overvaluing the business of providing content nor overvaluing, as Metcalfe's Law does, the business of providing connectivity. Their futures are filled with risks and opportunities. We believe if they value the growth in their networks as n log( n ), they will be better equipped to navigate the choppy waters that lie ahead.

About the Authors

BOB BRISCOE is chief researcher at Networks Research Centre, BT (formerly British Telecom), in Ipswich, England. ANDREW ODLYZKO is a professor of mathematics and the director of the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. BENJAMIN TILLY is a senior programmer at Rent.com, a dot-com company that actually made money, in Santa Monica, Calif.

To Probe Further

David P. Reed argues for his law in "The Sneaky Exponential" on his Web site at http://www.reed.com/Papers/GFN/reedslaw.html.

Several additional quantitative arguments are made for the n log( n ) value for Metcalfe's Law on the authors' Web sites athttp://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/B.Briscoeandhttp://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko.

Chris Anderson's article "The Long Tail" was featured in the October 2004 issue of Wired. Anderson now has an entire Web site devoted to the topic athttp://www.thelongtail.com.

George Gilder dubbed Metcalfe's observation a law in his "Metcalfe's Law and Legacy," an article that was published in the 13 September 1993 issue of Forbes ASAP.

An article in the December 2003 issue of IEEE Spectrum, "5 Commandments," which can be found athttp://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec03/5com, discusses Moore's and Metcalfe's laws, as well as three others: Rock's Law ("the cost of semiconductor tools doubles every four years"); Machrone's Law ("the PC you want to buy will always be $5000"); and Wirth's Law ("software is slowing faster than hardware is accelerating").

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Semillas y software con la misma patente

Semillas y software: no tan distintos

01-07-2013 - 15:46 - 

 La inminente resolución de un juicio por patentes agrícolas en Estados Unidos podría tener impacto en la comercialización de los programas informáticos.

Martín Cagliani

Cuando Vernon Hugh Bowman decidió plantar 120 hectáreas con soja, ni se imaginó que terminaría siendo enjuiciado por la compañía más importante del mundo en semillas, y menos todavía podía imaginar que su caso podía terminar repercutiendo en la industria del software. En sus palabras, “ni siquiera soy lo suficientemente grande como para llamarme granjero”.

Este hombre de 75 años se dedica al cultivo de soja en el sudeste de Indiana, en Estados Unidos. En febrero último llegó a todos los titulares porque el caso que lo enfrenta a Monsanto, la compañía de semillas, fertilizantes y pesticidas más poderosa del planeta, llegó a la Suprema Corte de Justicia de los Estados Unidos.

Lo curioso es que la resolución de este caso —prevista para el mes próximo, junto con otro relacionado con el patentamiento de organismos vivos— podría tener impacto no sólo en el futuro de los cultivos modificados genéticamente, sino también en la comercialización de programas informáticos. ¿Por qué? Por una cuestión de patentes y derechos de autor.

Los límites del derecho

Todo comenzó con una semilla de soja modificada genéticamente para resistir el herbicida Roundup, ambos patentados por Monsanto. Ahora, ¿qué sucede cuando el dueño de la propiedad intelectual vende una copia de su producto? ¿El comprador es libre de hacer lo que quiera con él?

El problema surge cuando ese producto tiene la capacidad de reproducirse; es decir, de producir copias de sí mismo. ¿La propiedad intelectual del dueño del producto expira tras la primera venta? Según la postura del granjero Bowman, una vez que Monsanto vendió la semilla patentada, la protección de la patente termina para esa semilla, ya que el objetivo natural de la semilla es producir más semillas. Este granjero de Indiana compró soja en el silo de un acopiador. Allí tenían mezcla de semillas que pequeños y medianos productores vendieron al silo. El acopiador en cuestión no decía vender semillas, sino porotos de soja. Pero que también sirven como semillas: se plantan y crecen.

Bowman plantó esos porotos y luego aplicó el Roundup de Monsanto, que contiene el herbicida glifosato, que se deshace de la maleza. Pero claro, es dañino para muchas especies de soja, así que terminó eliminando a las variedades no resistentes al herbicida. Lo único que le quedó fue la soja que contenía la modificación genética creada por Monsanto, especialmente diseñada para tolerar el herbicida que también fue diseñado por ellos. Esta variedad de soja es conocida como Roundup Ready (RR).

Según Ana María Vara, investigadora de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín especializada en controversias técnicas y ambientales, “Bowman sabía bien que a los productores que le compran semillas de soja RR, Monsanto les hace firmar un contrato que dice que no pueden replantar o que, si lo hacen, le tienen que pagar un ‘fee’. Esto es hoy la práctica habitual en las empresas que comercializan semillas: en la Argentina, se llama contrato de regalía extendida”. Y agrega: “Es decir, que Bowman intentó otro camino para sobrepasar el obstáculo de la protección a la propiedad intelectual que dan los contratos que hace firmar Monsanto: compró porotos (porque no se los compró a un semillero) y los usó como semillas”.

“Los analistas coinciden en que, a partir de la audiencia del pasado 19 de febrero, lo más probable es que la Corte Suprema le dé la razón a Monsanto —expresa Vara—. Los argumentos esgrimidos por los jueces tienen que ver, fundamentalmente, con que Bowman, con la soja que compró, tenía el derecho de hacer muchas cosas (como darle de comer a sus animales o hacer tofu), pero no replantarla, porque eso implicaría que estaba haciendo copias de la misma. Y eso no lo puede hacer porque afecta los derechos de propiedad intelectual de Monsanto.”

El tsunami de Bowman

“Monsanto versus Bowman es un caso emblemático para la industria biotecnológica”, dice Cecilia Aloise, del Departamento Legal de Clarke, Modet & Co Argentina. “La resolución de la Corte de Estados Unidos reviste gran importancia dado que definirá la interpretación del órgano jurisdiccional con relación al alcance de las patentes biotecnológicas. Es posible que el caso tenga repercusiones en otras industrias como la informática y el software, que parecieran en teoría encontrarse tan ajenas a la problemática de las semillas”, agrega.

“En el improbable caso de que la Corte sentencie en contra de Monsanto (resolviendo que la venta de la semilla importa el agotamiento del derecho sobre la patente y, por tanto, la imposibilidad jurídica de Monsanto de imponer controles y condiciones al cultivo de su semilla patentada), se abriría un interesantísimo camino no sólo para el productor agropecuario (que podría reproducir y usar la semilla patentada con la más absoluta libertad, sin depender de los términos de venta y licenciamiento de Monsanto) sino que, además, se abriría el juego para otras industrias y comunidades —como la informática— que definitivamente abogará por una aplicación análoga de la teoría del agotamiento del derecho para la replicación y copia del software”, dice Aloise.

Para Beatriz Busaniche, miembro de Fundación Vía Libre y especialista en propiedad intelectual, “hay un eje central a considerar aquí que reúne a las empresas biotecnológicas y a las informáticas, y a toda otra empresa que basa su negocio en la propiedad intelectual”. Y agrega: “La cuestión a considerar es cuándo y cómo se agota el derecho del titular de un derecho de propiedad intelectual, sea la patente de una semilla o el ‘copyright’ de un software. Cuando una persona compra un libro, el derecho del vendedor del libro se agota. La existencia de esta instancia de agotamiento del derecho es la que permite la existencia de bibliotecas, librerías de usados y todo un mercado que va más allá del derecho de la editorial, que no vuelve a cobrar”. Pero en el desarrollo de software hace ya varias décadas que se instauró la lógica del licenciamiento. Cuando se adquiere un programa no se compra ese programa, sino un permiso de uso en determinadas condiciones.

Martín Carranza Torres, profesor titular de “Derechos Intelectuales” en el posgrado “Derecho de Alta Tecnología” de la UCA, cree que “hay enormes diferencias en la manera de encarar el problema por parte de las semilleras y de la industria del software. El régimen de propiedad intelectual que protege a las semillas es el de patentes mientras que el que protege al software es el de derechos de autor”. Para el abogado, “la industria del software está intentando migrar su protección desde el insulso sistema de ‘copyright’ hacia uno más fuerte de patentes, que las semilleras ya tienen desde mucho antes. Las empresas de software están pasando por un momento de altísimo riesgo en lo que se refiere a su protección”. Con respecto a los efectos del caso Bowman-Monsanto, aclara que “la nulidad de una cláusula contractual resultante de la adquisición de una patente afectaría a los contratos futuros”.

Con respecto al impacto que puede tener en la industria informática, Aloise considera que es necesario “hacer una distinción preliminar, ya que no todos los países aplican el mismo régimen de protección a los programas de computación. Mientras que en Estados Unidos el software puede ser patentado (es decir, recibe protección por vía del régimen de patentes), en la Argentina los programas de computación quedan amparados por el régimen de Derechos de Autor”.

“En consecuencia —agrega—, si bien el caso Bowman seguramente tendrá repercusión directa en el régimen de protección del software estadounidense, en regímenes de derechos autorales como el argentino tal influencia sería mucho más indirecta y difusa. Además, una sentencia a favor de Monsanto que condene a Bowman por reproducción ilícita de la semilla patentada difícilmente tenga influencia sobre el régimen argentino de protección del software, dado que es la misma Ley de Propiedad Intelectual la que prohíbe cualquier tipo de copia y/o replicación no autorizada del software”. Pero advierte que “una sentencia en contra de Monsanto sí podría reinstaurar la discusión sobre las limitaciones de los derechos de los titulares de patentes y, en consecuencia, tal discusión podría motivar iniciativas de modificaciones a la legislación autoral”.

La edición original de este artículo se publicó por primera vez en la revista Information Technology N°188 (mayo de 2013).  

InfoTechnology

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Blank: Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything (Harvard Business Review) (2/2)

Blank- Por que el emprendimiento ultraligero está cambiando todo

Publish at Calameo or read more publications.

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Si caigo, me llevo a mi competidor conmigo

Si Samsung cae, Apple también

Las acciones de la firma de la manzana han resentido las bajas ventas del Galaxy S4 de su rival; los inversores temen que ninguna de las compañías pueda impulsar las ventas de ‘smartphones’.

Por: Philip Elmer-DeWit

Samsung redujo su objetivo
para el primer año de
100 millones de dispositivos
vendidos a 85 millones.
(Foto: Cortesía de Fortune)

FORTUNE — ¿Piensas que las malas noticias para los smartphones de Samsung son una buena noticia para Apple? Wall Street no lo ve así, según explica un analista de Bernstein, Toni Sacconaghi.

En una entrevista con CNBC este lunes, Sacconaghi citó entre las razones de la reciente debilidad bursátil de Apple (ha perdido 6.8% en una semana) las preocupaciones de Wall Street relativas a que "los productos de gama alta de Samsung quizás no cumplan con las expectativas para la gama superior del mercado de smartphones".

Sacconaghi se refiere al Galaxy S4 de Samsung, un teléfono presentado con bombo y platillo en marzo, elogiado por la prensa por haber distribuido 10 millones de unidades en menos de un mes, y que ahora acapara los titulares porque sus ventas han incumplido las expectativas.

De acuerdo con un analista de la firma de estudios bursátiles Wedge Partner, Brian Blair, esos 10 millones de teléfonos enviados fueron "muy inferiores" a la propia meta de Samsung que era de 14 a 15 millones desmartphones. Además, Blair estima que Samsung ha reducido la producción del tercer trimestre de su smartphone insignia, desde 40 millones de unidades a 30 millones, y redujo también su objetivo original para el primer año de 100 millones de dispositivos a 85 millones.

¿Y qué tiene que ver esto con Apple?

De acuerdo a Sacconaghi, Wall Street piensa que si Samsung no puede vender tantos teléfonos de alta gama como tenía previsto, Apple tampoco podrá.

CNN Expansión

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¿Por qué Lean Startup está cambiando todo? (1/2)

Why the Lean Start-up Changes Everything

by Danny Ackerman 

Why the Lean Start-up Changes Everything, an article in the Harvard Business Review by Steve Blank makes the compelling argument that mainstream adoption of the lean start-up is not only attainable, but would provide the basis for a newer innovation based economy.

He begins by comparing prevailing start-up management techniques of the past 40 years to the lean start-up and how the lean start-up would change the economy:

Using lean methods across a portfolio of start-ups will result in fewer failures than using traditional methods. A lower start-up failure rate could have profound economic consequences. Today the forces of disruption, globalization, and regulation are buffeting the economies of every country. Established industries are rapidly shedding jobs, many of which will never return. Employment growth in the 21^st century will have to come from new ventures, so we all have a vested interest in fostering an environment that helps them succeed, grow, and hire more workers. The creation of an innovation economy that’s driven by the rapid expansion of start-ups has never been more imperative.

By transitioning lean start-up concepts from the traditional technology start-up to the mainstream small businesses, Blank asserts that GDP and employment would grow. Moreover, the article mentions several reasons that hindered start-up growth and how this methodology breaks these barriers down:

1. The high cost of getting the first customer and the even higher cost of getting the product wrong.

2. Long technology development cycles.

3. The limited number of people with an appetite for the risks inherent in founding or working at a start-up.

4. The structure of the venture capital industry, in which a small number of firms each needed to invest big sums in a handful of start-ups to have a chance at significant returns.

5. The concentration of real expertise in how to build start-ups, which in the United States was mostly found in pockets on the East and West coasts.

The lean approach reduces the first two constraints by helping new ventures launch products that customers actually want, far more quickly and cheaply than traditional methods, and the third by making start-ups less risky. And it has emerged at a time when other business and technology trends are likewise breaking down the barriers to start-up formation. The combination of all these forces is altering the entrepreneurial landscape.

The reduced number of failures combined with the reduced barriers would have an impact on the entire business landscape; however, the bigger question remaining is: how does the lean start-up successfully transition to traditional small businesses? Blank gives a few examples of technology start-ups using the lean start-up methodology, and then goes on to show how business schools are leading the way on the path toward embracing this philosophy. Small Business Labs shows how the recent food truck craze is using the lean start-up:

Lean start-up approaches and methods have mostly been applied to software and internet businesses. But it's interesting to look at food trucks through the lean start-up lens:

1. Food trucks are much cheaper to start and can get to market much faster than brick and mortar restaurants.  In many ways, food trucks fit the Lean concept of the minimally viable product.

2. Food trucks can quickly and easily test new concepts, menus and recipes.  In many cases food trucks are being used as lean start-up-like laboratories to test potential brick and mortar restaurant ideas.

3. Food trucks take an iterative approach to their menus and even location based on customer feedback.  "Build-measure-learn" is a daily occurrence with food trucks.

4. Food trucks are tightly focused on their customers and interact with them every day.

This may work for certain industries with high customer availability, but what about small businesses where they do not have high customer availability or the ability to fail fast? Other ventures may not be able to have a Minimal Viable Product as Mark Andreesen stated in a talk at the lean start-up conference as noted by GigaOM,

I would serve this as a challenge for the Lean Start-up community. Especially the ones with the really audacious goals.  Sometimes they start audacious because otherwise the product will never get to market. The Macintosh, that product had to exist in its entirety for people to wrap their heads around it, he said, pointing to modern entrepreneurs like Elon Musk’s ventures as ones that can’t be done on a small scale at first. You got to get the rocket into space.

Blank does acknowledge that the lean startup is going up against the traditional business management techniques of the past 100 years; however, he concludes that the rate of disruption and rapid change in the 21^st century will be felt by all types of businesses and the lean start-up approach will allow rapid innovation and tranform business as we know it.

Infoq

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Un acelerador de negocios para el desarrollo de Tennessee

Tennessee funds new accelerator for agriculture startups

Agriculture poses a major opportunity for entrepreneurs to make money and do good, but relatively few have ventured into the space.

To bolster innovation, the state of Tennessee is funding a business accelerator, which is open to anyone with the seeds of an idea, as well as to established companies. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam (R.) frequently makes promises to the press that the state will be “number one” for agricultural growth. According to a statement, the accelerator is a “response to the challenge.”

Up to eight companies will be selected for the intensive six-month program and will receive mentorship and guidance from agriculturalists and bioscience experts. The entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to pitch to investors on graduating from the accelerator.

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The program’s focus is diverse, and entrepreneurs are encouraged to tackle ideas related to precision software, grain handling and storage, food processing, tablet apps, livestock nutrition, crop production, and more.

The overarching goal for the accelerator is to develop sustainable sources of food for a growing global population. “The agricultural innovation accelerator will create new synergies and opportunities for our region to address these global issues, while working locally to create an entrepreneurial culture in our rural area,” said Carol Reed, executive director of The Northwest Tennessee Entrepreneur Center.

However, the entrepreneurs will also have the opportunity to impact rural farming communities in their own backyard. Tennessee has a poverty rate of 15 percent, the ninth highest in the United States. Some of the most rural areas have poverty rates in the critical levels.

According to Steve Bares, executive director of Memphis Bioworks Foundation, improving the efficiency of agricultural production will “connect rural production with Memphis’ urban industrial and logistics assets.”

The accelerator was formed through a partnership between the Northwest Tennessee Entrepreneur Center and the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes bioscience businesses. The regional partners claim the accelerator has attracted quite a bit of local interest, with over 50 entrepreneurs showing up to a kick-off event this week, held in Milan, Tennessee, a small city with acres of productive farmland.

Applications for the program will be accepted through July 17. Interested in further info? Email Carol [dot] Reed [at] NWTDD [dot]org.

Venture Beat  

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¿Google engulle y elude la ley Sherman?

How Google dodged anti-trust law to buy Waze

By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz

Is this social map a Google competitor? AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

When Google, king of the mobile maps, shelled out $1 billion to buy Israeli social mapping company Waze, the first question for many was: Where’s the anti-trust ruling?

After all, Google is a leading digital maps provider, and Waze was one of the few innovators actually catching up with fellow digital cartographers Nokia, Apple and Microsoft. An American consumer watchdog wrote (pdf) to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) noting that the acquisition would “remove the most viable competitor to Google Maps in the mobile space.” The watchdog quoted the company’s CEO telling reporters “we’re the only reasonable competition to [Google].”

As of now, Google isn’t under any government scrutiny. But consumer pressure and probable complaints from competitors like Facebook, which also considered a bid for Waze, are bound to change that. Google may have also invited scrutiny by pushing the limits of a loophole in the reporting requirements of anti-trust law.

When one company acquires another, it typically needs to file a form notifying anti-trust authorities at DOJ or the Federal Trade Commission. But Google, according to law professor Steven Davidoff, relied on an exemption for foreign companies that earn or possess sales and assets worth less than $70.9 million in the US. While this is technically true of Waze, Davidoff and consumer advocates think that valuing the company at $1 billion means its US intellectual property is at least worth more than the minimum for anti-trust consideration.

Part of the challenge will be figuring out how to define the market for digital maps, which affects Google-Waze’s market share: Does Google-Waze compete just with other smartphone maps, or directly with Rand McNally’s paper atlas, or Garmin’s standalone GPS units? Is the market limited to products offering turn-by-turn directions, which would put the combined Google-Waze deal behind Telenav in terms of market share, at least in the US? Does the service only compete with other social maps that are driven by user data?

These questions will form the groundwork of any battle over the Waze acquisition. If the government does investigate and find that Google’s move was anti-competitive, it could force the company to share more data with competitors, restrict how Google integrates the two companies, or even unwind the deal entirely.

But Google was on its toes. By moving ahead of the government and not filing for review in advance, Google may have made the deal harder for authorities to pursue; they’re less likely to block a sale that’s already happened.

http://qz.com/95974

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Stratays compra a su competidor

Stratasys just acquired MakerBot, the one 3D printing firm that could have disrupted it

By Christopher Mims @mims

Turns out that giving people the ability to 3D print random tchotchkes is worth about $600 million.

You can’t 3D print money, but Stratasys just did the next best thing in buying MakerBot, the one company with the potential to disrupt Stratasys’s 3D-printing business.

The deal will be transacted entirely in Stratasys stock, and the initial acquisition price is 4.76 million shares (worth $403 million today). Depending on MakerBot’s performance, an additional 2.38 million shares could be exchanged as part of the acquisition, yielding a total acquisition value of $604 million. Stratasys is up 3.3% in after-hours trading.

MakerBot’s revenue was $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2013, so a valuation of $604 million represents an impressive multiple. But it’s not an outrageous price considering that MakerBot, with its relatively inexpensive but capable 3D printers, was already eating into Stratasys’s existing business, and in time could have represented a significant disruptive threat.

“MakerBot is giving Z Corp and Stratasys a run for their money,” said Will Gibbs, founder of manufacturing automation firm Corvus and Columba and a 9-year veteran of the 3D printing industry. “They can’t sell their $50,000 machines anymore that are equivalent to MakerBot’s” in their capabilities.

Indeed, side-by-side comparisons of MakerBot’s Replicator and Replicator 2 printers and Stratasys’s cheapest 3D printer, the Mojo, show the Replicator coming out ahead by all measures, despite the fact that the Mojo costs $10,000 and the Replicator is just $2,200. This has led some veterans of the 3D printing industry to wonder, perhaps hyperbolically, how Stratasys would survive in a world full of MakerBot Repilcators and the vast open-source community that supports them.

In acquiring MakerBot, Stratasys isn’t merely capitalizing on all the hype that MakerBot and its charismatic founder, Bre Pettis, have managed to generate for 3D printing. MakerBot managed to make itself an attractive, even necessary, acquisition by following a script familiar to many disruptive 21st-century technology companies: Start with an inexpensive system and refine it over generations until it competes with higher-end technology, but at a much lower price.

http://qz.com/96109

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