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Apple is patenting Swift features

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Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#171

Post by kazinator »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #150
kazinator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are written to be as broad as possible. The most careful interpretation is that if anyone does option chaining anywhere, it is covered by the patent, and actionable by the patent holder. Companies that are mere consumers of IT have been sued by patent trolls, and paid up.

Take a look at the claims. The patent does not claim option chaining. It claims a few ways to implement a system that may support option chaining.

If whatever language implementation you are using implements that, and infringes, then you infringe that by running programs in that language. All unlicensed users of anything emanating from the patent infringe on it.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#172

Post by ATsch »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #122
save_ferris wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that work? If company A receives a "defensive" patent on a technology design, and company B decides to use that patented design without a license, seems like they'd be able to without any recourse. In which case, does the patent system even make sense anymore? I think that's the bigger question in the context of software.

Defensive patents are for when IBM comes after you with a stack of patents demanding licensing fees amounting to 3% of your revenue. Then you whip out your defensive patents and demand that IBM licenses your IP for 3% of their revenue. (Win-win cross licensing ensues...) Patent trolls are a different animal though. However, having some good patents may at least protect you from willful infringement (increased damages…

I feel like this is just a loose-loose situation that instead of encouraging and protecting small innovators from the power of established companies instead just locks them out. Patents are essentially MAD (except of course for the part where everyone dies if it goes wrong). Like nukes, these patents aren't actually useful. They are only necessary because everyone else has them and the people actually under threat are the less powerful people that don't. This is very different from say pharma patents, where companies seem to directly benefit from Patents in their intended way.

I wonder if it's time for a Patent Denuclearization... but I'm not exactly sure how that could look like.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#173

Post by jeremyjh »

maxdesiatov wrote: post #167
jeremyjh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.

but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then

I agree, that is the real issue. I was responding to the comment that the protections were only for "Apple's Swift".

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#174

Post by brianberns »

fabianhjr wrote: post #82

Just to bring clarity on what has been patented on one of the patents: Monad Maybe where Nothing >>= _ = Nothing (Just x) >>= f = f x Those three lines, implementing the Maybe Monad/bind operation, are commonplace in all functional languages. (They just called it Optional instead of Maybe and "chaining" instead of "bind"/>>=) ( https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/LanguageGuide/OptionalChai... ) EDIT: The second one lin…

I think they’re trying to patent the syntactic sugar that corresponds to the Maybe monad, not the concept of “bind” itself.

That said, I think there are other languages with very similar syntactic sugar (e.g. Rust), so this is still a very questionable claim.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#175

Post by takitus »

saagarjha wrote: post #157

I'm having a hard time getting a clear picture what this actually entails. I am in violation if I reimplement Swift without forking the project (i.e. a "clean room reimplementation")? If I'm designing my own language, am I no longer allowed to include optional chaining? If so, I'm pretty disappointed with this direction, since it runs counter to the entire point of accessible programming languages, including many of…

[dead]

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#176

Post by lenticular »

eecc wrote: post #56
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…

Optional chaining? You mean Apple got a patent for flatMap?

Don't you just love the USPO? They are severely understaffed for the increasing rate of patents. Any other gov't agency would just form a backlog, but instead they just approve things with little examination.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#177

Post by yellowapple »

maxdesiatov wrote: post #167
jeremyjh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.

but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then

The trick would therefore be to pull in a little bit of Apple's code so you can argue that it's a derivative work and therefore covered by the patent license grant ;)

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#180

Post by erikpukinskis »

abtinf wrote: post #139
DannyBee wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP lawyer here. No, that is a correct interpretation. The reason it doesn't matter is because of this: "then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work" As the owner of the patents, Apple doesn't need this license to have rights to those patents. They have rights otherwise. Now, it would terminate the rights they have to other people's patents under the license. (IE if a contributor submitted…

Is there a potential for a kind of legal armageddon one day if companies had a real incentive to fight each other over one of these massive Apache-2-based open source projects? For example, with Swift, IBM is a major code contributor and runs significant portions of the project. IBM is one of the largest patent holders in the world. If Apple and IBM ever had a patent dispute involving swift, wouldn't that naturally l…

The worst case scenario in any patent fight is you are forced to

A) give some chunk of your profit to someone else while you

B) reallocate development resources to invent something new that lets you keep doing business without relying on the patent

In the end, B) is valuable and A) costs money and they probably cancel out, financially.

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