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I remember when I worked at IBM Hursley research labs 20 years ago. The lab director told us all "patents are very important to IBM". I expected him to tell us that IBM made billions from licensing them. He didn't say that though. I don't think he even _mentioned_ that. Instead he stated: "It raises the entry barrier for the competition". Patents were (narrowly) created to _encourage_ the spread of knowledge. Instead…
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The problem is so many software patents just cover "do a thing on a computer," which becomes so broad nobody else can ever do that thing without infringing on the patent. Even if I have an objectively different, even better, way of doing it, software patents are used far too broadly because they tend to protect the act of doing a thing as opposed to specifically how to do the thing. This is in contrast to something l…
The software patents you described are consistently knocked-out on §101 eligibility grounds for being an "abstract concept". IMO people who advocate scrapping software patents are disingenuous - look at what Google is trying to do software copyright at the same time. Essentially, if you take Google up on software patents and copyright, there will be no protection left for software.
Not all can handle being taken to court for a claimed patent infringement of a crappy patent. It's expensive, time-consuming, and difficult. Did I mention wasteful?
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> The Constitution requires that Congress setup laws for both copyright and patent No it doesn't, it grants them the power but it doesn't specify they have to do it. “The Congress shall have Power To…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….” There is a big difference between having a power…
I don't think that's a great reading of congress' enumerated powers. The shall refers to the powers being powers that can be used when appropriate, to achieve the intended goal of the power. Must language, here, would imply a constant duty to use each power. My reading is that Congress has an OBLIGATION to promote the arts and sciences, and has the power to use copyright and patent law to achieve those goals as congr…
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Can you justify the claim that Amazon is mostly software? Is it because they hire a lot of well-paid software developers? Microsoft produces a lot of value from software, but how much new technology are they producing? Some for sure, but how much? I don't think your metrics prove the claim... Facebook has developed a software product, and earned a lot of value from advertising. They've also developed several new tech…
> Can you justify the claim that Amazon is mostly software? For starters, Amazon derives most of its profits from AWS.
I mean, this conversation can keep going - I'm not really interested in digging in deeply to find the answer, because I don't think there's anything meaningful to be found. But I do object to scratch-the-surface level analysis like "Amazon is a valuable company these days, I guess the innovation happening in software outpaces all other fields of research combined" or "AWS makes most of Amazon's profit these days, which makes Amazon a software company".
Amazon might be a software company, but it might not be; it might be a logistics company, a consumer electronics company, a retail company, a data analytics company, a media company, a server farm company... it's not enough to say that AWS makes the most money, thus it's a software company.
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As a former employee, I don't agree with that. I know it's the prevailing sentiment on HN, but it's not the truth.
Of course it's the truth. There's literally rentals on there, right now, in the town I'm currently living in, that are illegal according to local laws. Airbnb doesn't de-list them, they just pretend they don't know.
There is a large supply of housing that is available to customers that want to purchase it. The idea that two people can't make a consensual exchange of value is antithetical to a free society.
I remember when I worked at IBM Hursley research labs 20 years ago. The lab director told us all "patents are very important to IBM". I expected him to tell us that IBM made billions from licensing them. He didn't say that though. I don't think he even _mentioned_ that. Instead he stated: "It raises the entry barrier for the competition". Patents were (narrowly) created to _encourage_ the spread of knowledge. Instead…
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IBM files a lot of patent because (at least when I was there many years ago), employees and their management chain have strong economic incentives to file anything. Even interns were encouraged to file patents, and as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume. Ironically, even between technology professionals, the patents one files at IBM are great marketing material on the resume. IBM marketing itself as 'th…
> as a student it's a great way to beef up your resume Really? I wouldn't view that as a positive unless we're talking about law students I guess.
I remember when I worked at IBM Hursley research labs 20 years ago. The lab director told us all "patents are very important to IBM". I expected him to tell us that IBM made billions from licensing them. He didn't say that though. I don't think he even _mentioned_ that. Instead he stated: "It raises the entry barrier for the competition". Patents were (narrowly) created to _encourage_ the spread of knowledge. Instead…
To be fair to IBM, what your director may have been saying is that their use was primarily defensive, which it is and was for IBM. It’s not wrong for them to patent as much as they are able to, it serves an important disclosure function. When I worked at the USPTO, we used several patent databases. The US, of course, Japan, Europe, and IBM. IBM had their own database because of how significant their IP was. So while…
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At the same time AirBNB has history, that is to say, a business model, based on ignoring laws they don't care for.
As a former employee, I don't agree with that. I know it's the prevailing sentiment on HN, but it's not the truth.
My town prohibits leases under a week but that hasn’t stopped AirBnb from accepting listings there.
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I don't think that's a great reading of congress' enumerated powers. The shall refers to the powers being powers that can be used when appropriate, to achieve the intended goal of the power. Must language, here, would imply a constant duty to use each power. My reading is that Congress has an OBLIGATION to promote the arts and sciences, and has the power to use copyright and patent law to achieve those goals as congr…
IANAL, but the fact that it says nothing about an obligation (I don't even believe it's implied, but I'm not a historical legal scholar) leads me to believe you're inserting your own bias.