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I find this question very ambiguous. Either software patents (or patents in general) are a good idea or they are not a good idea. Asking whether good things have been done with proceeds from licensing software (or other) patents is a different question entirely, and inevitably leads to the answer: yes. (Of course some patent holders have used the income to do good things!)
The good patents are the silent ones, the ones broken by people who have never known of the patent, who describe it in some other but equally unique, novel and non-trivial way. Along the same lines, Red Hat (and others, even self-employed full time open source coders) may talk about implementing something useful, but not make reference to the patent. I'm sure we're heard of something that was patented for OSS, but no…
It's an interesting question, but of the several responses so far the only one that actually tried to provide an example is getting voted down. My guess is that is going to happen to any answer that provides any example of a software patent being used for good is going to get a bunch of down votes, making any discussion pointless.
Do you mean _delirium's response? That one seems to be solidly in the black by now.
How about the Google Pagerank patent? http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999 It explains the primary algorithm behind Google Search. I suppose it could have been kept as a trade secret all these years, if not for the patent system.
It might have, but it is very likely it would have been published in an academic paper anyhow (like it actually has). And in any case, no one actually reads software patents (lawyers tell you not to!), so even if it was patented but not published or otherwise documented, no one would have known about it. While the PageRank patent is definitely not a trivial patent - unlike the vast majority of software patents - it s…
Google has been a huge net positive in the development of the Internet in the last decade+. All of this development is the result of Google's dominance in search. The PageRank algorithm was where that began. Yes, things might have turned out the same without the patent. Or maybe Yahoo would have integrated the algorithm and cut Google off at its knees, and we'd all be stuck using hotmail with 2MB inboxes. I think it's unfair to simply dismiss the beneficial impact of the patent on the algorithm that started Google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe he is talking about the kind of mutually assured destruction that keep companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and IBM from suing each other. They all hold a ton of patents, and while they may infringe on each others patents from time to time, they keep it to a minimum and nobody pursues it due to the possibility of retaliatory patent action where both parties lose. Much like the Cold War.
Yes, perhaps that's what he meant, and he said "patent trolls" by mistake. In any case, that is not really a case of patents being put to good use. They might help you specifically, as a defensive measure, but only because of all the bad uses of patents overall.
I agree; it merely illustrates the flaws in the system that we have.
It's an interesting question, but of the several responses so far the only one that actually tried to provide an example is getting voted down. My guess is that is going to happen to any answer that provides any example of a software patent being used for good is going to get a bunch of down votes, making any discussion pointless.
Do you mean _delirium's response? That one seems to be solidly in the black by now.
I find this question very ambiguous. Either software patents (or patents in general) are a good idea or they are not a good idea. Asking whether good things have been done with proceeds from licensing software (or other) patents is a different question entirely, and inevitably leads to the answer: yes. (Of course some patent holders have used the income to do good things!)
Care to explain why you disagree instead of just downvoting?
So yes, the question can be interpreted in many ways, when I read it I felt the OP was trying to find examples which support the claim that the software patents are 'good' where good means they provide a net benefit to the community.
That being said, software patents are an emotional topic here and sometimes that overwhelms the conversation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but at least it's no trivial patent.
Indeed, the MP3 patents and a small number of similar ones are the only good examples of nontrivial software patents. They are, sadly, a tiny fraction of all software patents. Regarding whether the MP3 patents were a good thing or not, that is as you say debatable. It made developing the technology profitable, but it also created barriers to interoperability - for example, it is problematic for open source operating…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to explain why you disagree instead of just downvoting?
I cannot speak for the HN readership in general of course, but I suspect the downvotes come from folks who don't believe you've added anything to the conversation. It is perfectly reasonable to say 'this is an ambiguous question' if you follow up with 'I chose to interpret it this way ... and my response is ...' or 'The definition 'good' here isn't well understood, does good mean socially good or corporately good, or…