It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#31

Post by anamax » Tue, May 17, 2011, 2:11 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #22

maqr wrote: post #16

> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. It's pretty hard to drill on someone else's land, use someone else's music in a production, or use someone else's logo without realizing it. Software patents are nothing like this. Software pat…

>> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. > Software patents would be more akin to it being patented for an oil company to drill with a very hard diamond bit It's even worse than that. If you want to drill for oil on some land, then y…

> A software patent is akin to "we've patented searching for oil". No wait, why stop there, let's patent "Digging a hole in the ground". You wanna plant a tree over there? Yeah, sure, digging a hole to put it in is kinda obvious, but I've got the patent on digging holes.

Actually, it's not, and that's the sort of thing that makes folks who actually know about patents dismiss much of the software patent rants.

Take the RSA patent. It just covers the use of a specific set of algorithms to do a specific task. It does not cover using those algorithms to do other tasks or other algorithms for doing said task.

In that, the RSA patent just like the Viagra patent. If you can figure out how to use the Viagra compound to shine shoes, you can patent that, and the pharma patent doesn't apply.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#32

Post by numeromancer » Tue, May 17, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

Do not take this article too seriously. It is not an article in the old-fashioned sense, but an experiment in post-modern essaying. The paragraphs were written by 9 separate undergraduate freshman, in separate places across the English speaking world. The students had no contact with each other before or after the essay.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#33

Post by jrockway » Tue, May 17, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #31

bruce511 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. > Software patents would be more akin to it being patented for an oil company to drill with a very hard diamond bit It's even worse than that. If you want to drill for oil on some land, then y…

> A software patent is akin to "we've patented searching for oil". No wait, why stop there, let's patent "Digging a hole in the ground". You wanna plant a tree over there? Yeah, sure, digging a hole to put it in is kinda obvious, but I've got the patent on digging holes. Actually, it's not, and that's the sort of thing that makes folks who actually know about patents dismiss much of the software patent rants. Take th…

If you can figure out how to use the Viagra compound to shine shoes, you can patent that, and the pharma patent doesn't apply.

Not if Pfizer files a lawsuit about it and you run out of money before you ever see the inside of a courtroom.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#34

Post by jcromartie » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:00 PM UTC

extension wrote: post #17

"This ideation, as expressed in the patent, enabled a building block for others to build on and create more value." And right in the next paragraph... "Many industries study the IP landscape prior to releasing a product or service and either design around or acquire necessary patent rights if they need them to do their solution." So we need to hire lawyers to research whether we are inadvertently building on the idea…

This is the core of it: Dan Abelow's "ideation" has absolutely no influence whatsoever on the tech industry. Nobody cares about his "inventions". Nobody took any spark of inspiration from Dan Abelow.

But if I, sitting in a room with nothing but my own mind and a keyboard, actually WRITE THE F&#@ING CODE that is covered by one of these patents, then someone who never did an ounce of work actually implementing it will come along and demand a fee.

How can anybody think that's a reasonable system?

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#35

Post by flipbrad » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:03 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #8

I could maybe buy this line of reasoning if the inventor in question was a true visionary that foresaw in app purchasing, and laid out a roadmap for everyone to follow. But the thing is, the patent is an invention of something completely different - customer satisfaction surveys on fax machines - and has to be interpreted in the most general way possible to even approach covering what they're seeking licenses for. Th…

The other thing is that I frankly don't see many reports of people using out-of-date patents as roadmaps for anything!

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#36

Post by jcromartie » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:06 PM UTC

barrym wrote: post #29

jcromartie wrote: post #26

"Dan Abelow is an independent inventor who visualized/created metaphors, documented for the world to see (in exchange for exclusivity) and created value for doing so." Dan Abelow sounds like a self-aggrandizing jerk when he talks about himself in the third person.

I'm not sure it's written by Dan Abelow - http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/13/honan-lodsys and http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-i...

Then someone must just really like him, since he's mentioned by name on most pages.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#37

Post by jerf » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:08 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #31

bruce511 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. > Software patents would be more akin to it being patented for an oil company to drill with a very hard diamond bit It's even worse than that. If you want to drill for oil on some land, then y…

> A software patent is akin to "we've patented searching for oil". No wait, why stop there, let's patent "Digging a hole in the ground". You wanna plant a tree over there? Yeah, sure, digging a hole to put it in is kinda obvious, but I've got the patent on digging holes. Actually, it's not, and that's the sort of thing that makes folks who actually know about patents dismiss much of the software patent rants. Take th…

Yes, it is like that. Consider when Amazon successfully sued Barnes and Noble for the One-Click patent. In what way did Barnes and Noble infringe? They do not share databases. They do not share implementations. They do not share architectures. They each independently had to implement it, and given the systems we can safely assume a minimum of hundreds of manhours of implementation each, with the bulk of those hundreds of manhours not actually being the "single click" implementation but drudgery of making it work with their unique system. In each case I guarantee the relevant code in both implementations is orders of magnitude larger than the patent itself, which by simple information theory means that the patent is only a small part of the whole.

And yet, the patent is violated, and they had to stop.

Amazon does not have a patent on the implementation they have for One-Click purchasing. They have a patent on the idea of One-Click shopping. There apparently exists no alternate implementation of One-Click shopping that will not violate the patent, because by any remotely sensible standard that would permit such an alternate implementation, Barnes and Noble must be able to meet it. (If somebody had cracked into Amazon's system and sold Barnes and Noble the one-click implementation, it would have been useless to them.) This is a fundamental perversion of the system. Patents are supposed to encourage innovation by enticing people to create their own alternate solutions, but in software, and more or less only in software, you can patent ideas.

And if you want to claim that this is not true, I would ask you to explain exactly how Barnes and Noble violated the patent in any other manner, given what I've said above.

I'd also observe that this patent probably falls under this rubric, too. There's no way to implement "buying from within an app" that will not trigger litigation. This is ridiculous. As I said yesterday, maybe programmers overreact to patents vs. most other industries because we are being abused by them, but I'm willing to try living without them and worry about any problems that result later.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#38

Post by stcredzero » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #24

adestefan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't think that this is only a software issue. There's patent abuse in every industry. The problem is with the implementation of the patent system, not the idea.

If the idea can't be implemented with the kind of patent examiners we are likely to get, or with the resources one could reasonably expect, then there's a problem with the idea.

It's the implementation of patents that has legal and monetary implications, not the idea/ideals of patents.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#39

Post by anamax » Tue, May 17, 2011, 9:05 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #37

anamax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A software patent is akin to "we've patented searching for oil". No wait, why stop there, let's patent "Digging a hole in the ground". You wanna plant a tree over there? Yeah, sure, digging a hole to put it in is kinda obvious, but I've got the patent on digging holes. Actually, it's not, and that's the sort of thing that makes folks who actually know about patents dismiss much of the software patent rants. Take th…

Yes, it is like that. Consider when Amazon successfully sued Barnes and Noble for the One-Click patent. In what way did Barnes and Noble infringe? They do not share databases. They do not share implementations. They do not share architectures. They each independently had to implement it, and given the systems we can safely assume a minimum of hundreds of manhours of implementation each, with the bulk of those hundred…

> Consider when Amazon successfully sued Barnes and Noble for the One-Click patent. In what way did Barnes and Noble infringe? They do not share databases. They do not share implementations. They do not share architectures.

So? The patent is on a mechanism for one click shopping. Like all patents, the mechanism is described as abstractly as possible while avoiding prior art. (The doctrine of equivalents is settled law wrt every other kind of patent. Why do you think that it shouldn't apply to software?)

Implement one-click shopping with a different mechanism and the patent doesn't apply. The patent also doesn't cover using one click for anything else.

> In each case I guarantee the relevant code in both implementations is orders of magnitude larger than the patent itself, which by simple information theory means that the patent is only a small part of the whole.

You write that like it's important - it isn't, at least not wrt any other kind of patent. Why should software be different?

> They have a patent on the idea of One-Click shopping.

You seem to think that patenting an idea is somehow wrong. Since every patent covers an idea ....

> There apparently exists no alternate implementation of One-Click shopping that will not violate the patent, because by any remotely sensible standard that would permit such an alternate implementation, Barnes and Noble must be able to meet it.

I haven't read the claims (and I'll bet that you haven't either), so I can't say whether it covers every possible implementation, but even if it did, so what? That's the goal of every other patent as well. Why should software be different?

I suspect that you also think that "the abstract mechanism is obvious if you're trying to do one-click shopping" is meaningful - it isn't. In every other domain, novelty can come from asking a new question, such as "wouldn't one-click shopping be a good idea?" Again - why should software be different.

> Patents are supposed to encourage innovation by enticing people to create their own alternate solutions, but in software, and more or less only in software, you can patent ideas.

The above is wrong on almost every detail.

Patents have nothing to do with encouraging people to create alternative solutions. They're about disclosure and blocking free-riders. And, as I wrote above, every patent is an idea patent.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#40

Post by jerf » Tue, May 17, 2011, 9:59 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #39

jerf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is like that. Consider when Amazon successfully sued Barnes and Noble for the One-Click patent. In what way did Barnes and Noble infringe? They do not share databases. They do not share implementations. They do not share architectures. They each independently had to implement it, and given the systems we can safely assume a minimum of hundreds of manhours of implementation each, with the bulk of those hundred…

> Consider when Amazon successfully sued Barnes and Noble for the One-Click patent. In what way did Barnes and Noble infringe? They do not share databases. They do not share implementations. They do not share architectures. So? The patent is on a mechanism for one click shopping. Like all patents, the mechanism is described as abstractly as possible while avoiding prior art. (The doctrine of equivalents is settled la…

"Implement one-click shopping with a different mechanism and the patent doesn't apply."

What different mechanism? What different mechanism implements one-click shopping that isn't one-click shopping?

I'm serious. Lay it out for me. Then, if you manage to get that far, explain what your difference has that the B&N implementation didn't have. Don't just handwave.

"I haven't read the claims(and I'll bet that you haven't either)"

Wrong.

In fact...

"They're about disclosure..."

If you have any programming skills, you should go read the patent and see just how much is "disclosed". First, sit down and sketch out what you would need to implement in order to create a one-click ordering system. No, seriously, sketch out the basic systems on paper. Then go read the patent. Then boil out the legalese. Then observer that your sketch and what the patent contains has roughly the same amount of information.

You are at a disadvantage until you do this, by the way, because like I said, I have read this, and several other such patents. You need to read at least one before continuing on. And ask yourself the question, exactly how much help are these patent applications in implementing a solution to the given problem to one "skilled in the art"? This is part of the reason software patents are so stupid, they almost all completely fail this test. You cited one of the handful of counterexamples already, but an exception it very much is.

"Patents have nothing to do with encouraging people to create alternative solutions."

You need to brush up on your patent defenses if you're going to spend any time defending them. They're for the purposes of promoting innovation, and the stimulation of alternate solutions is one of the big ways they do this. It is only a recent perversion of the goals of IP that they are solely intended to serve as property and create gatekeepers and therefore allow people to block innovation as they see fit.