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OPINION FLATHEADBEACON.COM

LIKE I WAS SAYIN’ Kellyn Brown
GUEST EDITORIAL | The Christian Science Monitor

Black Friday’s Creep Into Thanksgiving Day
Ideas vs. Inventions

Someday, Americans will look back and remem- around Thanksgiving, the real problem with stores
Wber when Christmas came after Thanksgiving.
opening that day is that it breaks a social limit on
HEN ORACLE BOUGHT BOZEMAN-BASED Not only are more stores putting out Christmas Christmas consumerism. Crass commercialism
RightNow Technologies in 2011 it was already in- items and decorations as early as September, now has long assaulted the Christian holiday, but until

volved in a long-running lawsuit with Google, al- three big retailers – Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us recent years, it was mostly contained within a few
leging copyright and patent infringement over the search en- – will be opening even earlier this coming Thanks- weeks. Losing Thanksgiving is a step toward losing
gine giant’s Android operating system. The case dragged on giving Day in a race to launch Christmas sales.
Christmas.
and largely focused on Java technologies, which Oracle now And for the irst time, Macy’s, JC Penney and No wonder many clergy are speaking out. Evan-
owned with its acquisition of Sun Microsystem a year prior.
Best Buy will join this snatch-’em-early competi- gelical pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in
I watched the case move through the courts, partially be- tion by welcoming shoppers to their Black Friday California, for example, refers to the store openings
cause the size of the companies involved; partially because sales the day before – when many families will still on Thanksgiving as “an avalanche.”

Oracle now had a large workforce in Montana; and partially be chomping turkey or watching football.
Across the Atlantic, Justin Welby, the Archbish-
because I had acquired a layman’s obsession with patent dis- Or counting their blessings, which just happens op of Canterbury for the Anglican Church, worries
putes. In May 2012, a jury found that Google did not infringe to be the original reason for the holiday.
about the rising pressures to buy more Christmas
the patents. For its part, Oracle said it had “presented over- Last year, 35 million bargain-stalking Ameri- gifts, calling it “absurd.”
whelming evidence at trial” and appealed the ruling.
cans left kin and pie to shop on Thanksgiving, up He said: “The secular over-the-topness, every-
Long gone are the days of the cotton gin, a useful machine from 29 million the year before. Will the number thing you have to have, new clothes you have to have,
that revolutionized an industry, created by inventor Whitney reach 100 million within eight years (2021)? That new this, new that, new the other, is ridiculous, it
Eli and patented in 1794. Today’s patents, and the wars over date will mark the 400th anniversary of the Pil- shouldn’t happen. It puts pressure on relationships

them, rarely involve tangible objects like engines. Instead the grims’ thanksgiving feast.
because when you’re short of money you argue. You
arguments stem from pieces of code and even basic futuristic This new norm means retailers – and consum- get cross with your kids more easily. It spoils life.”
ideas we had growing up but failed to write down.
ers – are treading on a sacred holiday. But the com- “Be generous in a way that shows love and afec-
There are now big businesses that devote their resources mercial trespassing also puts a burden on store em- tion rather than trying to buy love and afection,” he
to buying patents and their in-house lawyers to suing com- ployees who may prefer to spend this special time said. “You can’t buy it, you can show it. And when
panies they allege are infringing them. Often these lawsuits with family and friends – even if they can earn dou- you show it, it comes back at you with interest.”
are aimed at the Apples and Microsofts of the world, which, in ble wages.
Abandoning all or part of America’s Thanksgiv-

turn, have iled their own lawsuits armed with their own col- And how badly do retailers really want to risk ing – or even abandoning one’s family on that day –
lection of patents. The two companies actually teamed up in destroying the essence of Thanksgiving? After all, in order to shop for bargains hardly relects gener-
2011 and outbid Google for the rights to 6,000 patents owned the day has long been the marker for the start of the ous afection. Perhaps the best gift this Christmas
by defunct telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Christmas season – and a reason for the start of a is not to shop on Thanksgiving. That might help en-
Networks. They paid $4.5 billion.
shopping frenzy. Lose that day and the signiicance sure that Christmas comes after Thanksgiving.
But at once these lawsuits, critics contend, are stiling in- of Black Friday may erode, and along with it higher EDITOR’S NOTE: The “Two for Thought”
novation by hampering startups; unfairly targeting end users proits for stores.
column returns next week.
instead of companies; and are obviously frivolous since many Despite these reasons to retain boundaries

of them protect ideas instead of inventions. And I agree. And
so should you.
GUESTCOLUMN | PatWilliams
Perhaps no one has covered this topic as well as Nation-
al Public Radio, which has only fueled my scorn toward the 50 Years After Kennedy’s Assassination
U.S. Patent and Trademark Oice (no, I haven’t invented any-
thing). NPR’s latest report was its most infuriating.
The episode features Jim Logan, who in the ‘90s started a Following the Nov. 25 funeral of our assassi- calf have invited me to visit the state and I will.”
company called Personal Audio. It mailed out “cassette audio nated President John F. Kennedy, the mourners’ That brief exchange has remained vivid with me for

magazines” to subscribers. It eventually failed, just like cas- cars were leaving Arlington National Cemetery. more than 50 years.
settes. But Logan dreamed that playlists and audio magazines A Kennedy aide, Pat Moynihan, and a newspaper I suppose it is called charisma, but whatever it
would one day be downloaded on electronic devices. He tried columnist, Mary McGrory, riding in the same car, is, Kennedy exuded likability. I watched as he greet-
to build a modern-day MP3 player, but he failed. He patented were exchanging sorrowful looks when Moynihan ed many dozens of the hundreds who had attended
his idea anyway.
said, “Mary, we’ll never laugh again.” She wisely re- that Denver campaign speech. He was enjoying the
Logan has since sued Apple for allowing “playlists” on sponded, “No Pat, we will laugh, but we will never moment as much as were those crowding around
iTunes (you know, the ones similar to the mix tapes you made be young again.”
him. In his speech, as with most of his public state-

in the ‘80s) and he won an undisclosed settlement. And now Three days earlier the principal of the Blaine ments, he proclaimed – not said, but proclaimed –
he is taking it a step further – threatening and suing podcast- School in Butte, Jim O’Dell, came into the class- that America “can do better” and encouraged each
ers who record their voices on microphones, some of them out room where I was teaching sixth graders and with of us to commit ourselves to make a diference in
of their garages.
great sorrow said to me, “They shot Kennedy.” assuring that this nation chart a new direction of
“I’m one of the co-inventors of podcasting,” Logan told “Where?” I asked, meaning where on his body had caring, fairness and justice.
NPR, even though he contributed none of the technology he been shot. “In Dallas,” he responded. On my An earlier presidential candidate, Adlai Steven-
and little more than an abstract idea to the U.S. patent oice, drive home for lunch, I stopped at my grandmoth- son, spoke of Kennedy’s ability to enthuse people
which somehow allowed him to own the practice of down- er’s house. I rushed to the television set and heard to action: “When Cicero inished an oration, the

loading serialized episodes to an audio device.
the horrible news that Jack Kennedy, our youngest people would say, ‘How well he spoke.’ Ah, but when
Patents are no longer used to protect intellectual property president, was, unbelievably, dead.
Demosthenes inished speaking, the people would
– at least how most of us know it. They are used as weapons to The efect upon millions of people in America say, ‘Let us march.’”
sue people and corporations to make as much money as pos- and around the world was palpable. Small knots Millions of us who remember the assassination
sible. Now someone can claim they bought some ridiculous of people gathered on the streets, people shuled, believe the public life of the nation was changed:
patent (not created the technology) of distributing Wi-Fi and heads bent. We watched television news for days. war, domestic violence including mass murders,
sue owners of hotels and cofee shops that distribute it. This is We were sufering the loss of not only a vigorous, distrust not only of our government, but also, in too

actually happening and business owners are actually paying graceful young man whose very presence promised many cases, of our neighbors, partisan anger, loss of
rather than lawyering up.
a change of direction in America and, as Cardinal civility.
“It took 121 years for us to get the irst million patents,” Cushing pronounced at the funeral, “Kennedy be- The killing of President Kennedy was history’s
Tom Ewing, an intellectual property attorney, told NPR. came the voice of mankind to interpret the issues exclamation point denoting all that came before
“Now it takes, more or less, six years to get another million of the day and to help our generations to higher lev- and much of what has happened since that hideous
patents.”
els.”
day 50 years ago.
Our draconian patent system is smothering American in- As a college student, I met Kennedy at a political Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Repre-
genuity. It’s also making us low-level criminals. I wrote this rally in Denver and will forever recall him looking sentative from Montana. After his retirement, he re-

using public Wi-Fi. And information from NPR was gleaned at me like a man looking through a pipe as he said, turned to Montana and taught at The University of
from its podcasts. Both, apparently, illegal.
“Oh, Montana. Your Senators Mansield and Met-
Montana.