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EFF taking on software patent reform

defendinnovation.org

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Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#41

Post by BadLogInMyAss »

iwwr wrote: post #3

EFF's position is too moderate. 5 year monopoly on software ideas? If not even the EFF is willing to take an unequivocal stance against software patents, the trolls and the system will keep their legitimacy. We should not be afraid to take (seemingly) radical positions. Fear of offending the status quo is what keeps it in place. Not too long ago the idea of patenting a theorem or a gene was dubious; the moderates may…

Yep. Software patents should be abolished. They're a patent on algorithms, and the horseshit workaround to the 1970s ruling AGAINST them should've been closed long ago.

Five years is pretty much forever in software. But for software patents, five days is too long.

Very disappointing. More sham "reform."

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#42

Post by BadLogInMyAss »

rayiner wrote: post #24
iwwr wrote: post #3

EFF's position is too moderate. 5 year monopoly on software ideas? If not even the EFF is willing to take an unequivocal stance against software patents, the trolls and the system will keep their legitimacy. We should not be afraid to take (seemingly) radical positions. Fear of offending the status quo is what keeps it in place. Not too long ago the idea of patenting a theorem or a gene was dubious; the moderates may…

A 5 year monopoly on software ideas is no more ridiculous than a 5 year monopoly on mechanical ideas or chemical ideas.

It is far more ridiculous. Software patents are akin to patenting the order in which you add up your monthly bank transactions. There are patents on song playlists.

If you can't see how such offenses are different from a patent on a mechanical device, you must work in Congress.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#43

Post by loup-vaillant »

rayiner wrote: post #37
felipeko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't copyright law already cover this?

Copyright protects software, patents protect designs. For some types of software, say operating systems, the hard work is writing all the lines of code. No device driver is ground breaking, but all those devices have to have device drivers and someone has to write them. The product you end up selling is those lines of code. Copyright protects those specific lines of code you wrote. For other types of software, the ha…

Your argument works only if those who patent stuff are (i) better stuffers than most, and (ii) wouldn't have stuffed without patents. This is difficult to measure, because patents hinder those who want to build on your stuff (you want a cut, so it's more expensive to them). For instance, if ARM didn't have the monopoly over its designs, maybe people would step up and do the same work for free. The best analogy I can think of is free software, most notably GNU and Linux.

On the other hand, maybe ARM wouldn't have designed any chip at all. I don't think that would be a problem however. Technology tends to happen no matter what. Independent inventions of non-obvious stuff at roughly the same time are common. I don't know why, but it seems that when an idea is "ready", it just pops out of some earthling's head. (Citation badly needed, please.)

The idea to directly reward innovators is seductive, but I think it puts too much focus on the individual. Society as a whole doesn't need to reward something that would happen anyway. That would be a waste of resources. Not to mention the hoops you have to jump through to maintain an artificial reward system (the legal side of patents an copyright is quite expensive).

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#44

Post by speleding »

rayiner wrote: post #25

A lot of people think we should get rid of software patents entirely. I'm curious to get peoples' feedback on this: I spent years working for a wireless startup. Our innovation was in the domain of software, but our product was not software--software just drove the product (military radios). The algorithms took years and millions of dollars of research to derive, and we patented them. I think that business model is v…

Software patents exist only in the US, those business will do exactly what they've always done in the 90% of the world that doesn't have them.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#45

Post by kkowalczyk »

rayiner wrote: post #25

A lot of people think we should get rid of software patents entirely. I'm curious to get peoples' feedback on this: I spent years working for a wireless startup. Our innovation was in the domain of software, but our product was not software--software just drove the product (military radios). The algorithms took years and millions of dollars of research to derive, and we patented them. I think that business model is v…

Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use.

So there are 2 possibilities here:

1. Your algorithm really requires years and millions of dollars of research to develop, in which case you have little to worry about - your competition is years behind you and probably doesn't have millions of dollars to spend on re-developing the algorithm. Trade secrets will work for you just fine.

2. Someone can quickly and cheaply come up with the same algorithm independently from you, in which case you don't deserve patent protection in the first place.

When it comes to patents, everyone brings the "super hard, expensive to develop" case, which carries the assumption that they're so smart that no other persone on the planet can come up with the same idea.

The reality is that even the patents that survive in courts and reap millions of dollars in damages, are laughably trivial and are a result of routine work of software developers, not to mention the vast number of patents that were granted and then stricken down during litigation, but only after both sides spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on said litigation.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#46

Post by jhdevos »

sseveran wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 5 year monopoly on software ideas is no more ridiculous than a 5 year monopoly on mechanical ideas or chemical ideas.

Very different. The cost of coming up with chemical compounds is often quite large. With software most new work is done by very few people.

That will be solved in part if patents get assigned a value (on which 'damages' etc. are based) that are proportional to the work that went in. For a software product that contains thousands of good ideas, the value of each of those will be only a fraction of the value of the total product.

Then, of, course, the idea of blocking sales of a product because of infringement should also be completely abolished -- some money should be the most you can get.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#47

Post by rayiner »

kkowalczyk wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #25

A lot of people think we should get rid of software patents entirely. I'm curious to get peoples' feedback on this: I spent years working for a wireless startup. Our innovation was in the domain of software, but our product was not software--software just drove the product (military radios). The algorithms took years and millions of dollars of research to derive, and we patented them. I think that business model is v…

Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use. So there are 2 possibilities here: 1. Your algorithm really requires years and millions of dollars of research to develop, in which case you have little to worry about - your competition is years behind you and probably doesn't have millions of dollars to spend on re-developing the algorithm. Trade secrets will work for you…

> Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use.

But how do I sell it to someone without opening the code or describing it to them? With trade secrets, I'm forced to go into the business of building military radios (or whatever). What sense does it make for a small shop of wireless technology experts to go into the manufacturing business, learning how to manage supply chains, support end-users, etc?

That's the very problem patents were designed to solve 200+ years ago when they were introduced. To allow a separation of design from manufacturing. To allow the guy who invents the telephone to sell it to someone without going into the business of making telephones.

Think of other property abstractions, like stock. Stock allows separation of the roles of investor and manager. The CEO doesn't have to come up with the capital to buy the company, and the shareholders don't have to figure out how to run it. That's a useful separation of concerns. Patents allow separation of the roles of designer and manufacturer. ARM can focus on designing CPU's and patenting the novel features. They don't have to get into the business of manufacturing all of the different products that might contain their CPU core.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#48

Post by rayiner »

speleding wrote: post #44
rayiner wrote: post #25

A lot of people think we should get rid of software patents entirely. I'm curious to get peoples' feedback on this: I spent years working for a wireless startup. Our innovation was in the domain of software, but our product was not software--software just drove the product (military radios). The algorithms took years and millions of dollars of research to derive, and we patented them. I think that business model is v…

Software patents exist only in the US, those business will do exactly what they've always done in the 90% of the world that doesn't have them.

Software algorithms are patentable, with more or fewer restorations, in the U.S., China, The UK, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other countries.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#49

Post by jaylevitt »

DannyBee wrote: post #14
iwwr wrote: post #3

EFF's position is too moderate. 5 year monopoly on software ideas? If not even the EFF is willing to take an unequivocal stance against software patents, the trolls and the system will keep their legitimacy. We should not be afraid to take (seemingly) radical positions. Fear of offending the status quo is what keeps it in place. Not too long ago the idea of patenting a theorem or a gene was dubious; the moderates may…

So, good engineers know what happens if you try to just take a complex system and change everything at once, instead of incrementally. Certainly government does (witness the number of "hey let's start from scratch and come up with a much better system" that are 10+ years overdue and many billions over budget). The RIAA/MPAA knows too (make small-medium sized changes using bills that push in the direction they want un…

Yep. I'm reminded of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which in 1993 was a GIANT step forward for gay rights (you should have seen the elation during the March on Washington). It worked so well, it moved the Overton window so far, that 19 years later it represented all the facets of the discriminatory policies it had once replaced.

Re: EFF taking on software patent reform

#50

Post by rayiner »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #43
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright protects software, patents protect designs. For some types of software, say operating systems, the hard work is writing all the lines of code. No device driver is ground breaking, but all those devices have to have device drivers and someone has to write them. The product you end up selling is those lines of code. Copyright protects those specific lines of code you wrote. For other types of software, the ha…

Your argument works only if those who patent stuff are (i) better stuffers than most, and (ii) wouldn't have stuffed without patents. This is difficult to measure, because patents hinder those who want to build on your stuff (you want a cut, so it's more expensive to them). For instance, if ARM didn't have the monopoly over its designs, maybe people would step up and do the same work for free. The best analogy I can…

Your argument assumes that the world of "stuff" resembles GNU/Linux. Very broadly useful things that lots of people have the expertise to contribute to, where the costs of contribution are low.

Most stuff doesn't look like that. Nobody is designing transmission power control loops in their free time, nor are they designing chemical processes to remove impurities from natural gas before combustion. You gotta pay someone to do that, and it's very expensive to do so.

Also, patents are often construed as a reward for innovation, but I don't think that's the only way to look at them. I think a better way to look at them is like other abstract types of property, e.g. stock in a company. Patents, like stock, allow division of labor and specialization. Nobody is designing high-performance CPU cores in their spare time, but Samsung could pay someone to do it. Without patents, they'd keep the design a trade secret, and NVIDIA, Apple, etc, would pay someone to make their own designs and keep those as trade secrets too. Patents (and copyright), allow a single company, ARM, to specialize in designing CPU cores, by creating property which can be the subject of transactions between ARM, Apple, Samsung, etc. In such a scenario, the patent isn't a "reward" for innovation, but simply a legal abstraction that makes certain types of business arrangements practical.

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