I voted for a much shorter period, but I want to include a much more rigorous definition of non-obviousness in there. Perhaps my idea can't be reasonable implemented, but the current system is obvious broken.
Poll: Do you support software patents?
281–290 of 319 posts
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
This intrigues me, because fundamentally I see software as a form of mathematics. Given that mathematical equations aren't patentable, I don't believe that software should be either. Moreover, it seems that we already have many things in software preventing people from copying code wholesale (SaaS, the fundamental difficulty in reverse engineering compiled binaries). As a professional cryptographer/mathematician, how…
I think there's a big difference between a process and the underlying mathematics which explains why the process works. The matrix factorization which underlies the FFT was known long before Cooley and Tukey came along, but they were the first people to say "hey, this allows us to compute the DFT in O(N log N) time". I don't think it should be possible to patent an equation , but I'm perfectly find with people patent…
Interesting: so would you consider the DFT patentable? How about other numerical algorithms? Would you agree with the decision in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson?
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a big difference between a process and the underlying mathematics which explains why the process works. The matrix factorization which underlies the FFT was known long before Cooley and Tukey came along, but they were the first people to say "hey, this allows us to compute the DFT in O(N log N) time". I don't think it should be possible to patent an equation , but I'm perfectly find with people patent…
Interesting: so would you consider the DFT patentable? How about other numerical algorithms? Would you agree with the decision in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson ?
Obviously the DFT is not patentable any more, but yes, I see no reason why Cooley and Tukey shouldn't have been able to patent it.
I think the court's decision in Gottschalk v. Benson demonstrates a level of understanding of computers typical of members of the general public in the early 1970s -- i.e., almost none at all. To say that a process carried out via software is different from a process carried out in hardware (or even more absurdly, that buying a $5 CPU transforms a process from "unpatentable software" to "patentable machine") makes no more sense than the flood of "do X over the internet" patents; hardware or software or wetware, internet or telephone network or messengers riding horses, a process is a process regardless of the components it's built on top of.
(The same "(computers|internet) are magical so we need to treat them differently" thinking also results in politicians passing silly laws concerning things like "harrassing someone via the internet" where the pre-existing laws are entirely sufficient.)
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
This John Carmack quote is relevant and shares your sentiments: "The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack
In theory that shouldn't be patentable. What John Carmack is describing is something that is obvious to a craftsperson in the field. OTOH it does still preclude John from being presented with a problem and then doing someone quite ingenious to do a great solution that seems actually quite "novel", to learn that someone else did it years before. But for patents, if you follow logical steps from a given problem then yo…
All the people who are saying evaluating obviousness of an invention is impractically hard to analyze, are failing to see that that applies to non-software patents as well.
The real problem with software patents is not that the rules (including non-obviousness constraint) are flawed, but rather that the execution of those rules is flawed. Fix the right thing please.
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#285I can't stand the idea that I might be at my computer, working with code, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all software patents. edited to add "software".
> I can't stand the idea that I might be at my computer, working with code, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all patents. I can't stand the idea that I might be in my shop/lab, working with metal/wood/plastic/chemicals, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all patents.
How about the idea that you spend months and hundreds of thousands of dollars of your own money to come up with a new product, and two weeks after you launch, another company with a lot of money releases a copycat of your product?
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#286The US
- has very strong support for software patents
- is one of the most innovative countries in the world in the software area
China
- has no support for software patents whatsoever
- has close to zero innovation in software
Can someone explain this paradox?
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that the second case is often the norm, I do have one counter-example -- I used to work for Riverbed Technology, a 9 year old company which does WAN optimization and competes against Cisco and Bluecoat, among others. Riverbed is (or was?) generally regarded as the tech leader in the market and its head start is based on a patented compression scheme. There's no question that the patent is a big part of…
....and I would say that if Riverbed didn't provide the equivalent support (lol) as Cisco or didn't have the complete integration solutions that Cisco offers, then Cisco SHOULD win out. If you innovate and you're actually better, then you should win. If not, you should go out of business. Isn't this what "free market" is all about? You can't have both.
The problem that patents are supposed to be solving is incentivising innovatoion by allowing them to profit from their innovation. The pro-patent argument would be that without patents riverbed would have been less likely to innovate in the first place and the world would have been less well off.
I don't think this is a pro/against free market. Free markets rely on some definition of property rights. This is about making those definitions.
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but the fact that it's impossible is considered a feature, not a bug, by those who use it -- it keeps the bastards employed.
That's one way to look at it. Alternatively, you could say that the point of "legalese" is to define and convey ideas more explicitly than they can be defined and conveyed in English. Try writing a contract in "Plain English" - it will necessarily be full of ambiguity and uncertainty, which defeats the purpose of having a written contract. Similarly, although programmers don't write code in "Plain English" I don't th…
The argument for specific languages for programmers is stronger because programs are intended to be interpreted by machines. I would be perfectly happy with a legalese that is opaque to the layman if it could be fully parsed and implemented by a machine.
I also believe that, by defining one's terms clearly, it should be possible to write unambiguous plain English contracts. Additionally, an English-parsable legalese needn't necessarily lead to an unambiguous interpretation when parsed as English, so long as it is unambiguous when parsed as legalese, and most of the meaning is retained when parsed as English.
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#289I can't get rid of the feeling that (software) patents are just a means of driving out competition.
For a competitor, it adds layers of unproductive expenditures (legal work), pressures competitors into piling up their own stock of patents as leverage, thus creating patents whose creative accomplishment is the application for an patent. It creates a legal mine-field of patents, more legal insecurities, making an industry unattractive to enter.
(software) patents mean more waste of money, less competition, less innovation and are turning a free-market into a oligarchy-game, where participation is impossible without being part of the big players.
Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting: so would you consider the DFT patentable? How about other numerical algorithms? Would you agree with the decision in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson ?
Obviously the DFT is not patentable any more, but yes, I see no reason why Cooley and Tukey shouldn't have been able to patent it. I think the court's decision in Gottschalk v. Benson demonstrates a level of understanding of computers typical of members of the general public in the early 1970s -- i.e., almost none at all. To say that a process carried out via software is different from a process carried out in hardwa…
Very interesting: you make a good point about hardware. If I were to take my interpretation of software being unpatentable to the absolute extreme, I would say that the microcode in modern CISCy CPUs would also be unpatentable. This could lead to an interpretation where CPUs are also not patentable.
I had an inkling feeling that the software/mathematics argument is not compelling (not because software isn't mathematics, but because the practicality of invention and patent render it different in practice), but couldn't articulate it.
I still think that software patents have turned out to be dangerously unproductive in practice and so would rather see them abolished entirely than in their current form, but I think I more fully understand my position now. Thanks, Colin, for participating in this little Socratic dialog.