71–80 of 197 posts
Could the Gnome foundation move to France to escape software patents?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was filed in 2008, seemed granted in 2018
Yahoo Photos launched in 2000 - even if it was filed in 2008 that's ridiculous
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier. The fact that a smartphone coul…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ultimately its probably better if we move to a world where a lot of "intellectual property" expires with it's holder and passes into the public domain. I fully agree with you (and it's one of the few strongly held opinions of mine), but I'm not really sure why you would bring this up within the context of patent trolls. Patents do run out, rather quickly even. It's other intellectual property -- namely copyright --…
Many authors do some of their best work late in their lives and it would be a sad society if we stopped funding the art projects of those who got ill or aged because of inability to generate profits from them. The right interval for copyrights is larger than the zero years after death that many advocate for. It's certainly less than 75 years after death though, so there is massive room for improvement.
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high Take that further. The stakes should be high against all adjacent patent holders. Ultimately if we want to keep a working patent system it's too much work to rely on piecemeal independent cases like this, albeit a great success. The system has to self-police to be fair, and perhaps the best people to keep trolls and mischie…
> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. Aside from everything else in your argument, this is a really bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically structured to leave the selling party blameless in all but the most extreme circumstances. As a more general response: I also think the thing that makes anti-troll legislation difficult is that maki…
But this is more interesting;
>> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you.
> bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically structured to leave the selling party blameless
True perhaps. But I did not raise a point of law. This is an ethical chestnut that traces back to at least Plato. Perhaps unclear from my wording I'm implying you know the buyer to be a killer, and so it would be irresponsible to sell. Anyway, my suggested legal revision doesn't rely on whether the seller knows or not, but on the buyers legitimacy to hold the patent.
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier. The fact that a smartphone coul…
What isn't math tho? A lawnmower is just an assemblage of laws of physics. In this case, software is just an assemblage of laws of boolean algebra or something.
Giving an inventor of something a monopoly on its creation should be extremely limited.
Quite famously, the Wright Brothers original patent on the flight control mechanism successfully stifled any American company from making a plane, which became a real issue when the US entered World War One. The US quite famously had to buy planes from Europeans. This was such a huge problem that Congress passed laws to create a patent pool for aviation to stop this happening again.
Patents are unnecessary and they stifle innovation in almost all cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would not compare to my proposal directly because: “I try to license the patent to auto companies” Many patent trolls never even attempt licensing, they just wait to sue or settle. This would not remove all trolls but would be a first step.
The suit always comes after they try to license (a.k.a settle) and are denied.
Maybe patents should indeed only be enforceable by those that produce the invention (practicing entities as it was called above, not sure if that's an official term or something they came up with) and if you want royalties then you should put that in the contract when you sell the patent rather than sitting on patents without doing anything useful. That way we can have individual inventors (they are rewarded by what they make from the patent's sale) without also allowing trolls to claim to be inventors (because "NPEs" can't actually sue for infringement).
Or perhaps this should be a software thing, I don't know enough about how well this stuff worked for other fields honestly. I've only ever heard bad stories but then I also hang out with open source communities.
Edit: I realized one might think this makes the patent useless. If you can't sue for infringement as entity that doesn't produce the invention itself, any company could produce it and ignore you. Correct. However, I'm sure that if EvilCorp ignores your patent sale offer and produces GreatInvention without a license, MegaCompetitor would love to take the GreatInvention patent off your hands and license it to EvilCorp (or not and just block further use by EvilCorp). Thus the inventor can still be rewarded for the sale (incentivizing inventions), the new owner gets benefits of exclusivity for the parent's remaining duration, and it forces the invention to be available on the market (it can't only be locked away uselessly).
There's something to say for gjsman-1000's idea, or shall we say, invention
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier. The fact that a smartphone coul…
What isn't math tho? A lawnmower is just an assemblage of laws of physics. In this case, software is just an assemblage of laws of boolean algebra or something.
> Perhaps it's time for the law to adjust to the point where the stakes for the troll are high enough to make it less appealing as a business? No, that's just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Patents on software just shouldn't exist. At all. We already have established laws where you can't patent maths. An algorithm is just a function. It should be covered by the maths disqualifier. The fact that a smartphone coul…