161–170 of 319 posts
I ask because I suspect most of these patents were approved long before these ideas were obvious. Note: I dont necessarily support software patents.
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The argument against trade secrets is that they hurt innovation by impeding the flow of information. Patents allow a company to publish their innovations without fear of someone coming along and simply stealing it. By allowing inventors to publish their information with little competitive disadvantage, we enable other inventors to build on their predecessors efforts.
That's not how software patents work in practice. They are written to be as broad and non-specific as possible, because their purpose is to be legal weapons. They are not about spreading innovation; competition, in functioning markets, is sufficient for that.
The argument you're making is basically that the system right now is broken, so we should just throw it out. I do agree that it's broken, but I argue that fixing the system is a better solution than throwing it out.
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Either you're trolling, or you're unaware that there were close to 500,000 patent applications filed in 2009 alone[1]. Let's say you have 500 able critics; that puts us at 1,000 patents to review per officer per year. Let's assume any given officer can review an application within one week with reasonable efficacy; it'll take ~20 years to review one year's worth of applications (1000 / 50; I excluded two weeks for va…
Your position is not consistent or just poorly thought out, and poorly researched. Or maybe I'm just a troll. > In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? So clearly you were saying that a week is too much time to spend on a patent. OK. I imagine that many of the proposals tha…
And to me that is one of the many problems with (software) patents: it relies on an inherently biased, subjective process to determine whether this objective, rigorous piece of thought is worthy of a monopoly.
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Your reductio ad absurdum does not accurately represent what I'm saying. I'm saying that you could possibly make software in a few minutes that could violate a patent. This is extremely unlikely with hardware of significant complexity to earn a patent.
I don't think I understand your argument. You said this: > a software idea can be thought up in a few minutes and implemented in the same. This is only true for trivial pieces of software. I agree with you that trivial pieces of software should not be patentable. But you're saying that no piece of software should be patentable, regardless of how complex or innovative it is, and there I strongly disagree.
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Software is a mathematical equation. Math isn't patentable. Edit: Since people aren't convinced of my postulate that all algorithms are mathematical equations, here's a proof sketch: All programs can be rewritten to be expressed in Haskell. All Haskell functions can be expressed as equations in the typed lambda calculus. The lambda calculus and its variants are all subsets of mathematical equations. Therefore, all pr…
Software is an application of mathematical equations perhaps, but then hardware is an application of material properties and other laws of physics. Since material properties and laws of physics can't be patented, you're presumably against hardware patents as well?
On the other hand, the numerous proofs that software is math are fairly trivial for anyone with a modest background in mathematics.
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Your position is not consistent or just poorly thought out, and poorly researched. Or maybe I'm just a troll. > In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? So clearly you were saying that a week is too much time to spend on a patent. OK. I imagine that many of the proposals tha…
Regardless of whether or not it is feasible to have 6,000 patent examiners perform this process, it still seems remarkably subjective: a given patent examiner, with all of his/her individual strengths, weaknesses, imperfections and idiosyncrasies, determines if s/he alone can solve the proposed problem and, if not, essentially says, "Aw shucks, this is patentable!" And to me that is one of the many problems with (sof…
And also recall with patents you are guaranteed another appeal to a different body if ever sued, the courts, where you can invalidate a patent. And if MS wins the i4i case the burden of proof will be even lower. And note, there is legislation going through congress right now to make it harder to win a suit, and also expands patent reexamination.
My point? The patent examiner is an important first step, but a patent that clearly has no legs should be defeatable -- if not now, in the near future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software is a mathematical equation. Math isn't patentable. Edit: Since people aren't convinced of my postulate that all algorithms are mathematical equations, here's a proof sketch: All programs can be rewritten to be expressed in Haskell. All Haskell functions can be expressed as equations in the typed lambda calculus. The lambda calculus and its variants are all subsets of mathematical equations. Therefore, all pr…
I don't agree. And algorithm is not the same thing as an equation, and I don't think your argument would stand up in court. If it were that simple to overturn software patents it would have happened years ago.
The neat part about mathematics is that your approval, or anyones approval for that matter, is not necessary. If the proofs are solid, it holds. If you want to properly "disagree", demonstrated rigorously why the proofs are flawed.
"If it were that simple to overturn software patents it would have happened years ago."
You assume that the people in the position to make decisions are competent.
Let's stipulate that the USPTO is not perfect. They do make mistakes. Patents are issued that should not be. But the existence of such patents should not be taken to be an inditement of the entire system. Few systems are perfect, but recognizing this let's further stipulate that advocating tossing the baby out with the bath water on this basis alone is impulsive.
The difficulty is in drawing a line - defining innovations which deserve protection and those which don't.
Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you have an idea which you believe to be novel. You research the field and it does indeed look novel. You look into the problem. It's non-trivial. It is going to take man-years of work to put together an implementation. But there's a problem. The technology you have to use to implement it is such that it is extremely easy to copy your work. You don't want to have to patent your work. You don't want the time and expense. Perhaps you have principled reasons why you don't want to patent it? But let's consider your options. If you don't get patent protection you are left with (a) trade secret (b) copyright. We already know that a trade secret won't work because your work will be in a form that is easily copied. Does copyright protect you? No. Why not? Because copyright only protects the expression of the work, not the underlying ideas, no matter how novel and valuable they may be. It is easy for a determined competitor to take your work and re-engineer it such that copyright is worthless.
So what are you going to do? That depends on who you are. If you are a huge company and you still don't want to patent it you can go ahead and develop and publish your progress so that it is in the public domain and a competitor can't patent in the area. You are relying on your market strength to carry the day. But what if you are a small company? Are you prepared to risk everything with no protection? It is risky enough anyway starting a company, as we are constantly reminded, but if you can so easily be ripped off, isn't it wise to think twice?
It's your decision. You may have philosophical objections to patents so strong that you just don't proceed. That is your right. But if someone else decides to proceed it seems to me that it is perfectly rational for him/her to seek patent protection. It would be crazy not to. There is plenty of recent precedent of large companies ripping off small innovators even when they have patent protection!
IMHO to evaluate 'software patents' as a class is dangerous. Our industry is too big and the use cases are too various for such generalizations to be helpful. It is only by considering categories of innovation that we can hope to make progress on patent reform is such reform is needed. A knee jerk 'all software patents are the work of satan and should be trashed' doesn't help any more than a strident declaration of IP rights by well financed patent trolls.