Even experts get it wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#121

Post by DanWaterworth » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 6:29 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #104

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Also, I'm not a lawyer, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also patent infringement if the following happens:

A patent is filed for technique X by company A,

Company B use technique X having created it independently,

The patent is issued to Company A,

Company B is now infringing upon Company A's patent.

Company B could not possibly have committed patent infringement intentionally, because the patent they infringed didn't even exist when they went about implementing their product.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#122

Post by belorn » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 6:52 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #120

radarsat1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn't property, I can't hold on to it, I can't touch it, and I can't steal it. You don't have any right to an idea over any other human. This is an abstract construct which attempts to create an artificial commodity where there isn't one. Apart from "holding on to it," what you say in the quote sentence is true for pretty much any property. In a strict sense, property is what you can defend. However, in order st…

Another example is stock ownership, i.e. partial, tradeable ownership of a venture. No, you can't hold it in your hands[1], but people understand that it's property in all the relevant senses and can be meaningfully said to be "stolen" (e.g., if the votes you make with your shares are ignored). [1] The stock certificate doesn't count; that's a representation of the property, not the property itself.

The stock certificate does count: 1) Its legal tender, 2), if you loose the certificate then you loose the property.

Its like trying to argue that money are not property, just representation of property.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#123

Post by yohui » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 6:59 AM UTC

shasta wrote: post #118

chc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

After researching this briefly, it seems that the earliest "patents" in England weren't awarded to systematically encourage anything in particular, but were merely monopoly grants given by the monarch for whatever reason (e.g. as reward for X, I'll give you a monopoly on Y for 20 years). The French apparently developed a system that treated inventions as property. Regardless of the historical motivation for patents,…

Not a legal scholar, but isn't the US transitioning to first-to-file?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_inve...

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#124

Post by anamax » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 7:22 AM UTC

DougBTX wrote: post #67

anamax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Most other crimes require intent, patent infringement does not. Huh? Patent infringment consists of using some technique without the permission of the owner. There's intent all over that. Are you suggesting that folks are using techniques without the intent to use said techniques? Or that they aren't intending to use them without the permission of the owner? (Yes, you can argue that they didn't know that they need…

> Patent infringment consists of using some technique without the permission of the owner. There are different punishments for patent infringement with and without intent, so by definition you can have patent infringement without intent.

> There are different punishments for patent infringement with and without intent, so by definition you can have patent infringement without intent.

Nope. There's just a more serious penalty when you continue after being informed.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#125

Post by anamax » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 7:27 AM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #64

anamax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Most other crimes require intent, patent infringement does not. Huh? Patent infringment consists of using some technique without the permission of the owner. There's intent all over that. Are you suggesting that folks are using techniques without the intent to use said techniques? Or that they aren't intending to use them without the permission of the owner? (Yes, you can argue that they didn't know that they need…

I intend to implement things I invented all the time (usually fairly trivial things, undeserving of patents). Many of them have probably been invented before, but because they are trivial, I am not infringing anything. If one of them happened to be slipped by the patent office, now I am infringing. Would you say that I intended to violate the patent? Is it incumbent on me to read every single patent granted and make…

> Is it incumbent on me to read every single patent granted and make sure I'm not doing anything that might use any of them?

Basically, yes.

> Over 40k software patents are granted each year. If I spend 20 minutes on each (which is optimistic), it will take me a year and a half to read a year's worth if I do nothing but read 24x7. Obviously, expecting me to keep up on that and still do any development is absurdly unrealistic, and so it is not appropriate to call my failure to do so "negligent".

Do you think that "ignorance of the law" is a reasonable excuse? I ask because there are far more laws and regulations than there are current patents....

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#126

Post by bobsy » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 8:44 AM UTC

Firstly.. I doubt anyone saw "Scrolls" and thought "The Elder Scrolls". Hell, when I think "Skyrim" I don't think "The Elder Scrolls."

Patents should protect against idea theft.

I would like Patents to be like math. If you show all your working out you are mostly fine. This way, if you are taken to court you have documentation which shows each step of development that got you from A to B. This would include missteps etc.

This would allow two people who have the same idea to not be infringing a patent.

It would still be for the judge to interpret. It may be the case that person B started work on their product after the release of person A's work. There work may be dubious.

At least this would allow someone to create a similar product via their own initiative without being in breach of patent they were unaware of.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#127

Post by anthonyb » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 9:28 AM UTC

DanWaterworth wrote: post #121

anthonyb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Also, I'm not a lawyer, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also patent infringement if the following happens: A patent is filed for technique X by company A, Company B use technique X having created it independently, The patent is issued to Company A, Company B is now infringing upon Company A's patent. Company B could not possibly have committed patent infringement intentionally, because the patent they infrin…

Not sure in that case. If B can prove that they were using it first, then it's possibly prior art (or else obvious) and A's patent may be invalidated.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#128

Post by repsilat » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 11:42 AM UTC

Someone wrote: post #100

chimi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep saying it isn't stealing. According to Merriam-Webster: Definition of STEAL transitive verb 1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully and Definition of APPROPRIATE transitive verb 3 : to take or make use of without authority or right Why do opponents of IP rights keep saying it isn't stealing? There's nothing in the definiti…

Why do you pick meaning #3? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appropriate (emphasis added): 1 : to take *exclusive* possession of Also: why are you calling copying 'taking'? If I sit down at the Mona Lisa, paint a copy, and take that home, do I steal it?

> Why do you pick meaning #3?

Surely we should be allowed to take whichever definition best matches the intended meaning. The fact that there are other definitions that do not suit our purposes should have no bearing on the "correctness" of our language.

An example. If someone takes issue with me saying that a soldier was "pinned down", I might defend my use of the idiom by saying that they were unable to move because of enemy fire. The question, "Why do you pick that particular definition, when the term can also mean 'fixed in place with literal pins'?" seems a little silly.

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#129

Post by repsilat » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 11:50 AM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #92

chimi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep saying it isn't stealing. According to Merriam-Webster: Definition of STEAL transitive verb 1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully and Definition of APPROPRIATE transitive verb 3 : to take or make use of without authority or right Why do opponents of IP rights keep saying it isn't stealing? There's nothing in the definiti…

Laws are not about dictionary definitions or personal interpretation. They are a formal specification and that formality is what we call "legalese". I'm not a lawyer, so I would probably mess up the explanation, but fortunately I saved the link to it, so you can read it straight from the lawyer who explained it right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696526

When people call copyright/patent infringement "stealing" or "theft" they usually don't mean to invoke the legal definitions of those words. The fact that this conversation occurs so often should make it clear that there are a number of people whose personal idiomatic definitions of those words include "illegal getting-of-things".

People are entitled to their personal definitions, and the fact that the legal definition is different is immaterial. When a reckless driver crashes their car into a kid, the kid's mum calls the driver a "murderer", and we don't consider them "wrong" (because the guy's crime is actually called "vehicular manslaughter".)

Now, it's fair to argue that using these defintions of "theft" is prejudicial, and that it's also fair to argue that people should refrain from that usage to minimise ambiguity, but it's not fair to argue that they should stop using a word because it doesn't agree with some "authoritative" definition (except in legal contexts, of course.)

Re: Even experts get it wrong

#130

Post by repsilat » Wed, Jul 25, 2012, 11:54 AM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #108

eli wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The usual counter-argument is meant to go that companies full of smart people should be able to think up clever inventions all day and sell them to people who know how to build and market them. I'm not sure it really pans out in reality, though.