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Apple is patenting Swift features

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Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#71

Post by dotuser »

kbsletten wrote: post #6
skohan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To echo a comment in the linked thread: what does the Apache license say about other implementations? If I want to create my own implementation of the Swift compiler, or create another language with optional chaining, would this license protect me? Or does it only protect the use of this implementation?

Well, given that Rust and C# also have these features I think the likelihood that the patent is upheld is unlikely. I guess they could threaten you with it since lawyers are expensive, but it seems silly to me.

one thing though, in swift you can actually mutate fields using optional chaining, e.g. person?.name = "Bob". you can't do that in c#. not sure about rust but in scala you would unwrap the optional with a foreach or something.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#72

Post by 3JPLW »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #46
uberman wrote: post #40

I don't quite understand. The patent (9,952,841) seems to be about the language swift. There is mention about language features describing the language, but I don't see a specific claim to any of them. "optionals chaining" (the feature that everyone is alarmed about) is just one of the features listed. Other features mentioned include an "IDE" and "unicode" as well as support for "functions". Am I missing something?…

This is how I interpreted it. It doesn't seem to patent a feature in as much as Swift itself. This actually seems quite legitimate from a 'patentability' standpoint. The precise mix of features coupled with syntax would definitely be patentable under existing law. This does make it risky to implement a competing compiler however.

> This does make it risky to implement a competing compiler however.

Unless, of course, you can satisfy the terms of the license and include the copyright/license and a list of changes (which is indeed a little strange if it's actually a fresh implementation). That said, if you're needing to provide the same license, then you might as well fork it and not worry about starting from scratch.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#73

Post by zamalek »

DannyBee wrote: post #69
uberman wrote: post #40

I don't quite understand. The patent (9,952,841) seems to be about the language swift. There is mention about language features describing the language, but I don't see a specific claim to any of them. "optionals chaining" (the feature that everyone is alarmed about) is just one of the features listed. Other features mentioned include an "IDE" and "unicode" as well as support for "functions". Am I missing something?…

IP lawyer here. You should ignore everything but the claims, and see what the claims say. So stare at https://patents.google.com/patent/US9952841B2/en and look only at the claims. To me, that set of claims is ... worrying

IANAL, but those claims seem to describe .Net (multiple languages targeting a common IR?), so there's prior art.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#74

Post by shmerl »

Classic Apple hoarding software patents. Even if they don't use them, this looks like a threat move. Patenting programming language features is just sick.

Questions in that thread:

> 1. If a separate open-source programming language under Apache 2.0 license implements an optional chaining feature, would it be a violation of the patent then?

> 2. What if there's a separate implementation of a Swift compiler developed from scratch independently from Apple, does mean that it's not able to implement optional chaining without licensing the patent?

> 3. Here's the most interesting part: let's say there's a fork of a Swift compiler that significantly diverged and is developed independently from Apple. It seems to me that forks like these still don't violate the patent, otherwise any GitHub fork with unmerged PRs would be a violation. But let's say Google's fork no longer wishes to contribute its changes upstream, at what point does this separate development could trigger a patent violation? Does amount of divergence have any impact, let's say 90% of the codebase changes? Does the name of project matter, if someone names their fork as "Sparrow", not "Swift" is it considered a patent violation at this point if there's no license and royalties paid for optional chaining?

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#76

Post by rhodysurf »

dotuser wrote: post #71
kbsletten wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, given that Rust and C# also have these features I think the likelihood that the patent is upheld is unlikely. I guess they could threaten you with it since lawyers are expensive, but it seems silly to me.

one thing though, in swift you can actually mutate fields using optional chaining, e.g. person?.name = "Bob". you can't do that in c#. not sure about rust but in scala you would unwrap the optional with a foreach or something.

Yeah and using optionals in rust vs swift makes rust super annoying to use because of that.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#77

Post by leereeves »

Cyph0n wrote: post #66
klq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me software patents and patents for, for example, real world engines are the same. It's okay not to like patents, but separating software patents from the rest makes no sense.

Ah, but you are overlooking the key difference: you cannot commercialize an engine without building it. With software, commercialization costs "nothing" [1]. A smaller company could come up with a unique engine design, but without patent protection, a bigger company could just drop by and take the design and build it themselves. In other words, the larger company would get R&D "for free". In the engineering world, on…

I don't think that's really different between hardware and software. Even in software, the bigger company often has a decisive advantage in marketing. The history of computing is littered with the graves of small companies crushed by behemoths.

So that might actually be an argument in favor of software patents, if they actually did protect the interests of small companies. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to implement a new idea in software without using a lot of other recent ideas at the same time, and if all the recent ideas are patented, no one will be able do anything that isn't 20 years out of date unless they have a defensive patent portfolio of their own.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#80

Post by jayd16 »

subb wrote: post #10
dmos62 wrote: post #2

These patents seem to be a countermeasure against patent trolls, since the code uses the Apache license. Quoting from link: > Apache license gives the right to use patents required to use the code (assuming the original author had those rights), and the code implementing optional chaining in the compiler is Apache licensed. So, the only thing Apple having a patent on optional chaining does is to stop frivolous suits…

I'm not too knowledgeable about patents, but maybe we need a "liberal" patent? Something that can't be used to sue other people, but protects you from being sued.

That isn't exactly how defensive patents work. Part of the deal is to build up a portfolio you can counter sue with and then force a patent sharing agreement where the two parties agree not to sue either either for any patents.

Its just a mutually assured destruction arms race. The system is broken.

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