Poll: Do you support software patents? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#301

Post by burgerbrain » Tue, May 17, 2011, 12:16 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #241

burgerbrain wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your argument requires universal incompetence by litigators and/or decision-makers." Incompetent and or comprimised. Yes.

So basically you think the entire patent system is a giant conspiracy?

No. Cooperation between individual entities is not required. All that is required is that a certain critical mass of the people involved be too incompetant to understand the math, too corrupt to care, or just malicious.

Seeing as we're talking about lawyers and politicians here, I don't think this is all to stunning.

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#302

Post by burgerbrain » Tue, May 17, 2011, 12:22 PM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #234

Locke1689 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical devices (even models thereof) are applications of physics equations, not physics equations themselves. These have been ruled time and again as being patentable. Algorithms are mathematical equations. They cannot be patented.

Software = math, math can't be patented, therefore software can't be patented. I know the mantra. I just don't buy it. Math provides the building blocks used to produce creative (and sometimes very innovative) solutions to problems in the form of software. Material properties and laws of physics similarly provide the building blocks used to produce creative solutions to problems in the form of physical devices or mec…

Since we can mathematically demonstrate software to be math, let's take that off the table. Arguing that part is idiotic.

That leaves the patentability of math. Man I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time and convince Pythagorous to patent his little triangle formula in the context of architecture. I could make a killing.

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#303

Post by haikurion » Tue, May 17, 2011, 12:22 PM UTC

seanp2k wrote: post #210

podperson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted for the "abolish all" option despite the fact I'm actually in favor of patents in general and don't think software should be distinct from hardware, but the situation has gotten ridiculous (as has the situation with patents in general). I think that software should only be protected by copyright if the source code is placed in escrow and made available when the company goes belly-up or when the (strictly limi…

>"the odds of such a thing occurring would be as remote as the odds of doing the same thing in your backyard workshop with a lathe." No. The difference is that PHYSICAL TANGIBLE things exist in the "analog" realm have infinite possibilities. Things that exist in the digital realm have a finite number of possibilities, and if you limit yourself to a particular subset of things you can even possibly do (such as those t…

There are many flaws here. While a digital (or discrete) space (or realm of infinite possibilities as you put it) has a limited size as a function of the allowed length,

1. The length can be infinitely long, therefore the number of possibilities can be infinitely long.

2. For all practical purposes the space is so large it is infinite. How many possible permutations of 1s and 0s can you get in a 1024 KB program. Many.

3. If we go into the more practical example you raised I doubt there is much difference between the variance in resulting table legs and digital storage applications. If anything, I would say there would be more variation in the software, simply because the high cost of iteration and experimentation (and stricter physical constraints) have narrowed the design space of table legs, in a way which is much less apparent in software.

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#304

Post by coffeeaddicted » Tue, May 17, 2011, 1:07 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #143

mrcharles wrote: post #16

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 software patents. edited to add "software".

Me neither. But what about the opposite case - you work on something for a long time, and then make a breakthrough. Genius! You apply your breakthrough to do something awesome and release it out into the world. Someone else notes, it, reverse engineers it, and has a better marketing operation than you so they make $$$ and you get nothing. without patents, how do you protect your genuinely original work? I'm not a fan…

Please don't mix up copyright and patents. I'm pretty sure if this poll would be about copyrights you would find out that a lot more people here do in fact like the copyright system. Copyright prevents stealing code, everyone who does copy code knows he is doing that. But you have basically no chance knowing when you break patents until someone does sue you or by having patent-lawyers which go over all your code all the time and look for potential trouble.

Coding is a creative process - I write pages of code each day and every single line and idea I use in there might be covered by a patent of which I haven't heard yet. How is that supposed to work? We don't have patents for writing, music, painting, etc. although you could use the same arguments about original work and the danger of people ripping it off (we do have copyright!).

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#305

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 17, 2011, 1:18 PM UTC

petegrif wrote: post #259

simpleTruth wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO a reasonable test is: If a patent can be used to sue one company it may be patentable. If it can be used to sue 100 companies working on separate products it's probably obvious. Basically, you can't prove 1 person did not read it. But, you can be positive 100 people did not read it. Now clearly this depends on the number of people working on the problem. So, while 100 is excessive in most fields, somewhere around…

That is clearly not a reasonable test. In fact it is almost certainly a great test for someone having innovated in a valuable way. If you file a worthless patent then no-one will be interested in your innovation and there will be no-one to sue. If however you file something valuable you would expect to potentially have lots of people to sue. In your example the question arises, why have so many people trespassed on t…

[deleted]

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#306

Post by simpleTruth » Tue, May 17, 2011, 1:19 PM UTC

petegrif wrote: post #259

simpleTruth wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO a reasonable test is: If a patent can be used to sue one company it may be patentable. If it can be used to sue 100 companies working on separate products it's probably obvious. Basically, you can't prove 1 person did not read it. But, you can be positive 100 people did not read it. Now clearly this depends on the number of people working on the problem. So, while 100 is excessive in most fields, somewhere around…

That is clearly not a reasonable test. In fact it is almost certainly a great test for someone having innovated in a valuable way. If you file a worthless patent then no-one will be interested in your innovation and there will be no-one to sue. If however you file something valuable you would expect to potentially have lots of people to sue. In your example the question arises, why have so many people trespassed on t…

Your ignoring the obvious case where someone got a patent for an obvious solution. The US patent office has long ignored that test and billions have been wasted as a direct result of this. If you patent pushing email to a portable device and I patent pulling email from a portable device there are not a lot of options left to auto populate email on a cellphone.

The basic issue is computing is a rapidly evolving filed and while the obvious mouse traps have been patented the obvious ways of using a database or the internet have not.

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#307

Post by mrcharles » Tue, May 17, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #245

mrcharles wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's too much room for error, if you let there be a line between what is and isn't patentable with respect to software. Better to leave it open and let the cards fall where they may. Software patents actively restrict technological development.

Why is it better to leave it open? You both agree that there is major variation in how much "effort" goes into producing patentable work. Your problem is you want a very clear-cut definition specifying what is patentable, and since effort is hard to measure, you'd rather just throw out all patents. You assume this would be better than the current situation (which, I think, takes the other extreme - most things are pa…

Ultimately it would be better because it would eliminate patent trolling and foster software innovation. Right now a lot of innovation is hamstrung by software patents. I don't think any company should have the right to enforce what software someone makes, at all, ever.

Half of the tech industry with respect to software is finding something someone else is doing, and building on that but making it better.

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#308

Post by cperciva » Tue, May 17, 2011, 2:05 PM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #290

cperciva wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mathemati…

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

I absolutely agree with you here. The current state is a horrible mess. Where I differ from most people here is in my belief that software patents aren't inherently a bad idea but that the problems are merely with their current implementation (and thus I'd like to see them fixed rather than abolished).

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#309

Post by joeburke » Tue, May 17, 2011, 8:02 PM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #293

billmcneale wrote: post #286

The 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?

I think you're reducing a hugely multivariate system to a univariate one.

As do people who want to "abolish patents".

While the system might need some revisions, it's certainly not as broken as a lot of abolitionists are depicting. Some things are working fine, and innovation is happening at a very fast pace in the US.

Software patents can be abused but they can also be a force that encourages people to actually innovate instead of just copying what's already out there (which is pretty much all we are seeing from countries that don't have software patent laws).

Re: Poll: Do you support software patents?

#310

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, May 18, 2011, 12:10 AM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #301

anigbrowl wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you think the entire patent system is a giant conspiracy?

No. Cooperation between individual entities is not required. All that is required is that a certain critical mass of the people involved be too incompetant to understand the math, too corrupt to care, or just malicious. Seeing as we're talking about lawyers and politicians here, I don't think this is all to stunning.

Ah, if you're talking about politicians that's a completely different issue - then you have a good point, because changing the law requires getting a majority of legislators to vote in favor of reform. I'm talking strictly about litigation.