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A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

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Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#71

Post by killerstorm »

somat wrote: post #23
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

I don't think patents are inherently evil, however they certainly can be used for evil. But The basic idea is sound. If you invent a novel mechanism and publish it the government will grant you exclusive economic exploitation rights to that mechanism for the next 25 years. After that it is now fair game. It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second, the guy in first place…

> the guy in first place has to spend all that time and effort to develop the thing

The problem is that patenting something doesn't require one to put a lot of time and effort - just to produce few pages of text and diagrams. So it might be sufficient for somebody to have a general idea.

Then 25 years is too much.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#72

Post by killerstorm »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #3
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

Software patents, no. They're just evil.

Suppose you came up with AI algorithm which is better than transformers and such. Your options are:

1. publish it e.g. as a paper or open source, letting all big AI labs to use it for free

2. keep it secret

Are you saying that it's evil to have a secret third option of making the algorithm public but forcing AI labs to share profit if they use it?

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#73

Post by StingyJelly »

dlcarrier wrote: post #4
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

I used to think they were entirely useless, but since then I've learned of many instances where a much better technology is developed because the first iteration is patented. For example, the Wright brothers biggest contribution to aviation was suing everyone using wing warping ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war ) which greatly advanced the adoption of the much more advanced ailerons. Software…

The fact that some innovations succeeded despite having to tiptoe around patents is more of an example of survivorship bias.

When we get something working first, there are probably some optimal partial solutions there. Working around the patent means having to do some things inefficiently while being able to provide better efficiency or cost of the overall system.

In my work, I all too often see that the obvious optimal solution we come up with turns out to be patented and we are spending time on finding least bad worse solution. (unless our patent lawywers manage to pussh through a patent for the same thing with different wording, like measuring period instead of measuring frequency)

In some cases it is not possible. For example, 3D printing was held back for 20 years just because of sleeping patents.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#74

Post by breakingcups »

senshan wrote: post #26
nemomarx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions o…

Right, but I thought it matters only if you sell something globally. Linux is distributed for free, so the burden of patent compliance is on the user, isn't it?

Distributing something for free doesn't mean you don't have patent obligations if you do it in the country that patent is valid in. On top of that, many corporations do sell their distribution of Linux.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#75

Post by boomlinde »

somat wrote: post #21
dlcarrier wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think they were entirely useless, but since then I've learned of many instances where a much better technology is developed because the first iteration is patented. For example, the Wright brothers biggest contribution to aviation was suing everyone using wing warping ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war ) which greatly advanced the adoption of the much more advanced ailerons. Software…

The wright brothers patent was not on wing warping, it was on controlling a vehicle in the air. In short the Wright brothers did not invent the aeroplane they invented how to control a aeroplane. https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Sh... "We wish it to be understood, however, that our invention is not limited to this particular construction, since any construction whereby the angular relations o…

I don't think patent law should be concerned with what inventors "deserve" in some moral sense. I think their purpose should be socially practical.

The socially practical effect of working patent law is that it incentivizes inventors to publicly document their inventions by offering limited exclusive rights to the invention. To that end, an overly broad claim to hypothetical inventions which are not actually documented in the patent is detrimental and instead stifles innovation.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#76

Post by basilikum »

killerstorm wrote: post #72
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software patents, no. They're just evil.

Suppose you came up with AI algorithm which is better than transformers and such. Your options are: 1. publish it e.g. as a paper or open source, letting all big AI labs to use it for free 2. keep it secret Are you saying that it's evil to have a secret third option of making the algorithm public but forcing AI labs to share profit if they use it?

Not OC, but yes.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#77

Post by basilikum »

bitwize wrote: post #24
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

Software patents may be what saves the field. Currently copyright as an IP protection for software has been rendered near meaningless by AI. If I can get one AI to reverse engineer Photoshop, and another to implement the produced spec, I have a copyright-clean version of Photoshop. Patents protect the idea of a particular program. And in the post-AI world, it's the idea that holds the value, not the implementation. I…

> If I can get one AI to reverse engineer Photoshop, and another to implement the produced spec, I have a copyright-clean version of Photoshop.

You won't get this, otherwise we had tons of LLM written photoshop alternatives already. And if it would work, that would be a good thing.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#78

Post by PunchyHamster »

dlcarrier wrote: post #4
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

I used to think they were entirely useless, but since then I've learned of many instances where a much better technology is developed because the first iteration is patented. For example, the Wright brothers biggest contribution to aviation was suing everyone using wing warping ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war ) which greatly advanced the adoption of the much more advanced ailerons. Software…

Well if the best examples you could come up with are:

* from 100 years ago, one that would happen anyway because tech progresses, patents or not

* one that that wasn't correct one as they didn't patent VRRP (which was another open source competition to it), they tried to patent troll it

and both of them were "proper use", not "we will try to make our patent as wide as possible so we can stifle any competition"...

I think the claim of being entirely useless, at least in most spaces is very valid. There are some techs that take years and millions (medical drugs come into mind), but vast majority of patents are just stifling technical progress, and especially on software side

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#79

Post by account42 »

fluoridation wrote: post #16
SoftTalker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent of the patent system is to encourage publishing innovation in exchange for rights to it for a period of time, and then everyone gets to use it. IMO the biggest problem has been granting patents for inventions that at least in retrospect seem non-novel or obvious. I get that there's a grey area there at some point, but "one click ordering" is one that comes to mind. Just because someone hasn't done it exact…

>the biggest problem has been granting patents for inventions that at least in retrospect seem non-novel or obvious. I don't agree that that's the biggest problem. I think the biggest problem is that patents are abused to stifle competition by refusing licenses or putting untenable fees on them. No one would have cared about Nintendo's D-pad patent if they'd just put a reasonable license fee on it. On the other hand,…

It would be better to allow codec patents only on the encoder. Once you have encoded data, there is only one valid way to decode it so everyone should be able to implement that. That is, the general decoding mechanism at least - you could still have novel implementation details.

Re: A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

#80

Post by PunchyHamster »

somat wrote: post #23
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

I don't think patents are inherently evil, however they certainly can be used for evil. But The basic idea is sound. If you invent a novel mechanism and publish it the government will grant you exclusive economic exploitation rights to that mechanism for the next 25 years. After that it is now fair game. It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second, the guy in first place…

> But The basic idea is sound. If you invent a novel mechanism and publish it the government will grant you exclusive economic exploitation rights to that mechanism for the next 25 years. After that it is now fair game.

No. it is no way shape and form, good. 25 years is eternity in tech. The impact of the tech is not all that much related to investment either. You are just stifling any competition in the market

> It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second, the guy in first place has to spend all that time and effort to develop the thing, and the guy in second just has to copy the guy in first. To rectify this social injustice the patent system was developed, where the government would grant and enforce economic exploitation rights of the mechanism to the inventor.

It has completely wrong structure for that. First, the duration. Second, the way you can patent vague idea, not actual concrete implementation. It is not used to stop competition from just copying your product, it is stopping anyone in market to compete.

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