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It seems Lodsys was able to successfully patent the hyperlink, U.S. patent system has some serious problems. Patent trolling is not the only problem, the patent office granting patents, where the is no merit, is another big problem.
The only difference between Lodsys and large software/hardware companies like Microsoft and Oracle is the size of their litigation targets. I'm beyond convinced that the entire software patent systems needs to be abolished.
>The only difference between Lodsys and large software/hardware companies like Microsoft and Oracle is the size of their litigation targets. And the fact that MS and Oracle actually make products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what would happen if government became a result oriented organization. If the point of patents is to increase innovation, shouldn't you be able to measure innovation? And if you can't measure the impact of patents on innovation, what evidence is their to justify monopolizing ideas ? If you can't measure and observe, then what's the evidence? I would say there is none, it's entirely subjective. Unconditional…
It's not religion. You are using a different (and objectively better) standard of proof. But it's literally a billion times easier to measure things like that than it was 240 years ago, when all math was done by hand and the fastest communication was by horse. You, as a citizen, can demand results and proof. That's how any human institution evolves. Grumping on the internet about how stupid everyone is because things…
I know this is a common thing to say, but speaking one's mind is an effective way of producing results. The more people are aware of and share an opinion, the more likely one of those people will have the necessary motivation and influence to "do something" about it.
It seems Lodsys was able to successfully patent the hyperlink, U.S. patent system has some serious problems. Patent trolling is not the only problem, the patent office granting patents, where the is no merit, is another big problem.
I'm not a lawyer, but I did read through all four of their patents. There's no way Lodsys can claim patenting the hyperlink. It's ridiculous.
I don’t know if anyone has ever calculated the average density of patentable ideas in code, but if you consider, for example, that performing an online transaction with the last entered customer data (the infamous 1-Click patent) is patentable, I would very roughly estimate that there is a patentable idea every 20 to 50 lines of code. As an example, the Linux kernel (just the very core of Linux) contains more that 10 millions lines of code. If you consider a complete Linux distribution (by adding the graphical user interface and a bunch of utilities) you get at least ten times that amount, that is more than 100 millions lines of code. Using the rough estimate above, we can calculate that there are more than 2 millions patentable ideas in a consumer operating system. That is an incredible amount of complexity. In fact, it is a testament to human ingenuity that we can (sometimes) get all this code to work together.
Now code is not used side by side like an infantry of little computer processes working in parallel to make computers or phones go. It is rather organised and packaged in a huge network of building blocks, a pyramid of hundreds of thousands of libraries, APIs or functions heavily inter-dependent on each other. What’s more, the building blocks are usually not all written by the same people or organisations and their consistent and stable behavior is critical for enabling compatibility (remember, often between millions of parts made by thousands of developers).
This hierarchical and networked architecture is inevitable and the best way to organise complex information, however the stability it requires at the bottom of the pyramid means that some building blocks cannot be changed once the pyramid is built. Someone claiming ownership of the shape of a bottom block after the pyramid is built, someone having the power to force a bottom block to be removed and replaced with a different shaped one, no matter how simple and obvious this bloc is, does not have power over just this block but over the whole structure above it and all the components that depend on it. This means patent holders have a disproportionately large amount of power when they target such a bloc. They know that changing it would require tearing down, redesigning and replacing often thousands of dependent projects and probably break compatibility for millions of users of these projects. It is usually simply not an option.
This annoys me because it is scaring off people from developing for smart phones. This patent is so vague that even if I did know every patent ever made then I would not even associate it with what patent he is claiming he has violated. Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a patent for people communicating over the internet and…
Not just SmartPhones. This kind of insanity makes me question whether I should write another line of code for anything.
I was planning on developing a few paid apps to test the market over the next few months, but this combined with the other mobile patent lawsuits has made me seriously reconsider it. It's a pity the app store servers reside in the US. Otherwise i wouldn't have to worry about these things!