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Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

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Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#131

Post by loup-vaillant »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
myshpa wrote: post #6

Why Software Patents are Bad, Period. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027 Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovation https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control... Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopoly https://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss... PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdf Historical rec…

I’m not sure radicalising this debate helps anyone. We are trying for a narrow victory of preserving IPR. Turning that into a broader argument about software patents plays into the opposition’s hands.

> I’m not sure radicalising this debate helps anyone.

Oh but it does. That’s in part how we ended slavery and gave women full human rights and citizenship. If anything radical ideas shift the Overton window into making progress actually happen.

The second point is that the only correct position here is the radical one: as far as I can tell, the truth here is that (i) patents do far more harm than good, and (ii) they cannot be fixed into more good than harm. Therefore, they should be abolished, plain and simple.

Less radical positions may look reasonable, be more politically acceptable… but the only reality they’d be based on would be the flaws of our human minds and the existing power structures of our society. Because of those I indeed only have the faintest hope about patents being abolished in the foreseeable future. At best I’m hoping for some narrowing down: in scope, duration, or a strengthening of due process (mostly prior art).

But I have yet to be convinced that the best course of action isn’t the complete and utter abolition of the entire patent system. Now one could argue that that patents are a useful tool in our exploitation of the South, and losing it might weaken our position and ultimately make us a tad poorer as the South emancipates. That might even be true, see what happened for the COVID vaccines. But I don’t think this argument would win any votes around here.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#132

Post by yebyen »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #88
yebyen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Obviously." I like how this is the argument for drug patents, and if you don't just simply agree with this, the only real other option is to accuse the person arguing that it "obviously" is the right decision of arguing in bad faith. ...because it's an argument in bad faith? I too don't see why drug patents are "obvious" or clear case that it is helpful enough to be in the public interest to maintain drug patents. I…

I believe the original insulin is cheaply available. But newer, faster acting, variants which are easier to administer are still patented.

I don't know much about it honestly, but this article that talks about PBMs is very interesting:

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/eli-lilly-lowers-insulin-p...

> “Even though they're dropping their list price by 70% and capping their cost to patients at $35, it’s important for us to make this very, very clear—the company is still making a profit,”

...

> During a 2019 congressional hearing, insulin makers admitted that there’s pressure to keep list prices high so that PBMs can also profit.

> PBMs favor the drugs that will yield them higher profits. By lowering prices, Lilly runs the risk of being excluded from formularies, meaning the insurance companies will no longer cover the product for their patients.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#133

Post by loup-vaillant »

gregman1 wrote: post #14
myshpa wrote: post #6

Why Software Patents are Bad, Period. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027 Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovation https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control... Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopoly https://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss... PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORY https://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdf Historical rec…

There are no software patents in EU (maybe even in the whole Europe) with exception for specially designed hardware. Idk how that works.

Here’s a thought experiment: take a look at the Tillitis Key: https://tillitis.se It’s a security dongle that can execute arbitrary programs. It’s hardware is actually a RISC-V core implemented on top of an FPGA, with some firmware on top to load the user programs.

Now the firmware is a kind of software, so patent should not apply, right? Heck one could even argue that the configuration of the FPGA should not count either, only the FPGA itself may count. There’s a problem though: the keys are locked.

They kinda have to be to deliver their security promises, and prevent the secret key in the device from leaking, either by accident or by adversarial extraction. But then what do I have? A hardened piece of… hardware actually. And all the patents that didn’t apply "because software", now do.

Or maybe they do not, I’m not a lawyer. I just wanted to highlight how fuzzy the frontier could be.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#134

Post by quickthrower2 »

kevincox wrote: post #85
d--b wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents become obvious the second they're out. This is exactly why they exist. But coming up with the stuff in the first place is what's hard. I worked in video coding back in the day, I can assure you that there are stuff in the HEVC codec that are pretty far from obvious. AlphaGo is pretty high up there too if you ask me. Whether patenting software is useful or not is a different debate...

I completely agree. Patents should be contrasted with trade secrets as that is their main "competitor". Is it useful to the general public to be shown the details of a new technology, but have it's use restricted for 20 years? Or is it more useful to prevent blocking of technology but these are going to be kept as trade secrets instead? From my point of view patents are probably harmful here. Having people be inspire…

I think network effects are already so far in favour of software companies that the patents are not really needed. Look at how AWS resells free software via it’s services for example. And anyone can copy them! And they are. But they are still the biggest by a long shot.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#135

Post by freejazz »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #109
joemullin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware that there are allegedly "bad" IPRs including the OpenSky case. The alleged "extortion" here is that VLSI, a non-practicing entity, I believe backed by a hedge fund, would lose their 20-year government monopoly and no longer be able to seek billions of dollars in court. I have no idea who or what OpenSky is, and I don't weigh in on huge corporate cases like VLSI v. Intel where everyone has plenty of money f…

> But here's the value proposition: It's just not wrong to challenge a government subsidy or monopoly. Period. Especially on computer software and hardware, because they're often wrongly granted. I see where you're coming from, but I would suggest that this is pretty much an extremist point of view on intellectual property protections. It's easy to say that the online shopping cart is a dumb patent (because it is, an…

>By the way, VLSI is the remains of a real technology company that went out of business... because its IP was blatantly copied. They had no choice but to sell out to a patent troll.

Ding ding ding - people don't seem to understand how the business model actually works... real inventors have to sell out, because unless they sell their stake in a litigation to a financier, they outright cannot afford to litigate an infringement case against one of the big companies that infringed their products and then refused to license

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#137

Post by thfuran »

jjk166 wrote: post #94
thfuran wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing important systems to fail is not without cost.

What course of action doesn't come with a cost? Fixing things well is expensive but fixing things poorly is generally more expensive in the long run.

But the point is that what fixing something well means depends on the context. Total software re-writes are rarely a good idea for large production systems, and software isn't special in that regard.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#138

Post by Zigurd »

anankaie wrote: post #128
Zigurd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pharma "research" categorization of expenses is maximized. In part to create sympathy for long patent terms, in part to obscure the role of government funded research underlying many pharma products, and in part to maximize tax benefits.

And in large part because FDA multi-stage trials are very expensive to get through and the risk of failure is high. I know it is popular to hate on the pharmacy companies right now - and deservedly so - but the research costs are not totally made up like you are implying.

Maximized is not "totally made up." You will find software companies maximizing R&D tax credits, too, for example.

A JHU study found median costs for clinical trials of $19 million.

That's expensive relative to software. If I piled HIPAA, payments processing, and whatever telcos might require for hooking up to SS7 in one app (call it "X") I doubt I could get halfway to $19 million.

But $19 million is peanuts compared to pharma revenue. I stand by the assertion that pharma gets undeserved sympathy for long patent terms.

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#139

Post by [deleted] »

joemullin wrote: post #56

I work for EFF and wrote the text of this blog post and action. On here I speak only for myself, but a couple points I want to add. 1) EFF has only filed one IPR ever, (linked in the post), against Personal Audio, to invalidate a patent asserted against podcasting. This was crowd-funded by hundreds of people. It required years of litigation beyond the IPR process itself. 2) Patent challenges should be open to all. Th…

[deleted]

Re: Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat

#140

Post by telecuda »

The most useful thing about software patents IMO is what you uncover during the patent writing process. When you’re sitting there writing the equivalent of a 10-20 page college essay on the problem background, operating environment, then all the present and future uses of something novel (the provisional stage), it forces you to think in a way that no typical product management process does. There are few (any?) other forcing mechanisms I’ve seen that produce the same results.
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