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Even experts get it wrong

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Re: Even experts get it wrong

#101

Post by chc »

shasta wrote: post #45
irahul wrote: post #4

The dude attacking Mojang isn't looking good. > Its amazing to see so many people loyal to this game maker. Good on him. Eh, didn't take the time to consider some of us are against the patent bullying, and not just fanboys. > 1. I am not the inventor of the patent in question. > 2. The personal attacks are a bit much don't you think? As long as people aren't doing anything illegal, I don't see why they should refrain…

Patents are there to stop people stealing a technology you invented Actually, that's exactly the purpose of patents. Patent legislation casts a wider net only because there's no effective way to assess the validity of someone's claim that "I invented this independently and was uninfluenced by your invention." You and notch are in the technically wrong column on this one. Compare to: "Life jackets are there to prevent…

Ignoring the "stealing" vs. "infringement" red herring, you're still misrepresenting patents.

The motivation behind patents was to get inventors to reveal their inventions. Prior to patent law, inventors just kept everything a secret. This meant that inventions would get lost and had to be rediscovered later on. So in exchange for revealing their "secret sauce" to the state, inventors get a temporary monopoly on their invention.

As for the idea that you could never, ever tell whether somebody invented the same thing independently from another, I don't understand why you'd think so. In the extreme case, if it's the 16th century and two people living on different continents invent the same thing days apart, you can be pretty darn sure that neither copied the other. Information didn't travel that fast. But this doesn't matter in patent law, because its purpose it not to prevent the "stealing" of inventions. Its purpose is to encourage disclosure by awarding a temporary monopoly on an invention.

This is in contrast to copyright, where it is a valid defense to say you created your work independently.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#102

Post by charonn0 »

shasta wrote: post #45
irahul wrote: post #4

The dude attacking Mojang isn't looking good. > Its amazing to see so many people loyal to this game maker. Good on him. Eh, didn't take the time to consider some of us are against the patent bullying, and not just fanboys. > 1. I am not the inventor of the patent in question. > 2. The personal attacks are a bit much don't you think? As long as people aren't doing anything illegal, I don't see why they should refrain…

Patents are there to stop people stealing a technology you invented Actually, that's exactly the purpose of patents. Patent legislation casts a wider net only because there's no effective way to assess the validity of someone's claim that "I invented this independently and was uninfluenced by your invention." You and notch are in the technically wrong column on this one. Compare to: "Life jackets are there to prevent…

The purpose of patents has nothing to do with theft or personal property rights. They are a voluntary grant of special protection to the inventor by rest of society; society promises to grant the inventor exclusionary protections for a period of time, after which the idea ceases to be exclusive. That is the reward that society is willing to pay for those of us who use the advantages which society provides to create new things.

At no time does the patented idea become property, and therefore, by definition, it cannot be stolen; every patent holder owes his/her/their patent to society, not the other way around.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#103

Post by anthonyb »

belorn wrote: post #99
dllthomas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademark isn't there to prevent theft of brilliant brand names; it's there to prevent confusion. That's an entirely different endeavor than either patent (protecting ideas) or copyright (protecting creative expression).

This is a lost truth on most people. If something trademarked can be used in a context that does not result in the consumer being confused, then the owner automatically loose the trademark. Its a consumer protection law, not an anti-competition law.

They don't lose their trademark, they're just not allowed to sue where the use isn't confusing.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#104

Post by anthonyb »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80
eli wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are folks using patented technology without permission of the owner who nevertheless did not intend to infringe a patent -- that's exactly what's happening here with Mindcraft! For the sake of argument, imagine I can prove that I came up with an idea for something on my own. I'm completely unaware that it has previously been discovered and patented. I did not even think it was an idea that could be pa…

That's like arguing that you thought it was legal to kill someone using radioactive isotopes and therefore you had no illegal intent. Patent infringement is defined by the corpus of protected inventions and being unaware of the locus of infringing actions is not a defence against infringement. If you make sufficient disclosure part of the patent system then this is the only way to do things really. If you don't requi…

It's completely different. For starters, there's the "reasonable person" test. No reasonable person is going to think that murder is legal.

Intentionally infringing a patent is punished much more harshly, and it's impossible to keep up with the millions of patents that are published, so being intentionally unaware is actually a decent legal defence.

And yes, this does mean that patents are generally pretty useless for software.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#105

Post by dllthomas »

anthonyb wrote: post #103
belorn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lost truth on most people. If something trademarked can be used in a context that does not result in the consumer being confused, then the owner automatically loose the trademark. Its a consumer protection law, not an anti-competition law.

They don't lose their trademark, they're just not allowed to sue where the use isn't confusing.

This depends, I think. My understanding is there are some caveats when something gets really well known, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Trademark law isn't always executed perfectly (see some of the behavior of the Olympic Committee, for instance). The fundamental purpose, however, remains to avoid confusion.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#107

Post by mikeash »

verroq wrote: post #21

Notch knocking down a strawman frontpages on HN.

"Strawman" means to make up a silly opposing position and then attack it, rather than attacking your actual opponent. It does not apply when your actual opponent is silly.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#108

Post by wtracy »

eli wrote: post #53
jcromartie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention Uniloc doesn't even have technology. They do not create or sell software.

Devil's Advocate mode They create a market for patents which benefits everyone who invents something and patents it. If your startup has a useful patent then (even if you never use the patent) your company is made more valuable because trolls like this exist. Investors will consider how much that patent is worth on the market when valuing your company. And how would you implement a system that prohibits patent troll…

I've certainly seen the proposal raised that you should lose a patent if you don't bring it to market.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#109

Post by wtracy »

terhechte wrote: post #43
estel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're selling to the US (as Mojang is), then you can be bought to trial there.

What would be the worst that could happen then if I'd just ignore it and decide to never visit the US again nor sell anything to the US again?

He could get locked out of using any U.S.-based payment processors on his website.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#110

Post by hardwear »

jowiar wrote: post #83
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> within the term of the patent, the likelihood that anyone else independently invents the same thing is sufficiently small // The problem then is that there is little to no incentive for the applicant to share the idea. If it's something no one will come up with, then you can keep it secret and benefit from an indefinitely extended monopoly. The quid pro quo of patents is early information about new inventions in ex…

Any good examples? I'm having trouble thinking of something that: 1) You can benefit more from as an industrial secret than as a patented invention. 2) Society is harmed by the lack of public disclosure.

Imagine a manufacturing process, and a transformative invention that makes the product 10 or 100 times cheaper to make than any method that does not use the invention. The invention is used in-house, and there is no advantage to be gained from licencing the invention. Distributing the process to be closer to raw materials or customers conveys no advantage over centralized production. Given such a situation, the company with the invention is likely to bet they can keep it secret longer than the term of a patent.

Of course I cannot give any specific examples. They are currently secrets, or they are secrets that died with the company or died with the obsolescence of the product.

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