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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

#81

Post by PunchyHamster »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #32
_carbyau_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A patent was meant to give a solo genius a way to treat their idea as something tangible, at a time when logistics was much slower and the world revolved around the physical. Maybe they try to develop it themselves, maybe they sell the idea to a big corporation that has the resources to implement it. Either way, genius begets profit, and the world gets genius ideas... in theory anyway. But a genuine idea back then ne…

A patent is meant to encourage people and companies to share the details of their inventions, instead of keeping them secret. In return the inventors get protection for a certain number of years.

we're getting patents intern could re-invent from scratch in a week in whiteroom

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

#82

Post by account42 »

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…

> It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second

Sometimes it is significantly harder. Often it's just a matter of luck

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

#83

Post by PunchyHamster »

Asooka wrote: post #65
unfitted2545 wrote: post #2

Are patents a necessary evil?

I think of them as legalised marijuana. It is not good for you, but if it were made illegal, there will be criminal organisations providing the service. Without patents, we would be mired in NDAs dictating which company can talk to which other company about what technology, and quite possibly several open-source developers passing away in mysterious circumstances. So I see it as unavoidable evil. The patent system ma…

It's more like legalized crack, it's almost never used for any remotely positive use

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

#84

Post by benj111 »

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…

Further. In fields like medicine, you have a huge upfront research cost. Patents allow them to recoup that research cost.

Patents (and copyright) aren't bad. It when it becomes too broad. Not reflective of the effort involved, or too long lasting when it becomes an issue.

Fwiw, early steam engines were also patented, and that slowed down development until the patents expired.

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

#85

Post by benj111 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #56
somat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course you shouldn't be able to patent an entire discipline! I can't comprehend your point of view here. And a million people had the idea of "controlling a vehicle in the air". Patents aren't for vague ideas, they're for specific mechanisms.

> I can't comprehend your point of view here

It isn't their pov. 90% of computing patents are basically 'X on a computer'

Eg the Amazon 1 click buy patent

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

#86

Post by benj111 »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
mulmen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you don't think they deserve exclusive exploitation rights to that discipline for the next 20 years? 20 years is the midpoint between the Wright Brother’s flight and operational jet fighters. They won the race but it was very much a competition. If Orville and Wilbur didn’t cross the line first then Maxim or Langley would have. They all built on George Cayley’s work. So no, I don’t think the first one to file a…

The Wrights were about 5 years ahead of their time. The Wrights went about it as an R+D project and calculated what the design must be, while the other developers were doing seat-of-the-pants designs which worked about as expected.

Except we don't do wing warping anymore, or take many design cues from the wrights at all.

Hard to say they were ahead when they were in an evolutionary dead end.

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

#89

Post by benj111 »

WalterBright wrote: post #51
natpalmer1776 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. Unfortunately in my own ruminating on the topic the only practical alternatives seem to be one or more variations on the scary boogey man of socialism.

> The incentive to create and invent is often largely financial, however that incentive need not be constructed as “winner takes all” rather we should lift each other up in our mutual accomplishments. The Wrights definitely were in it for the money. The government project was the Langley Prototype, which cost 20 times more than what the Wrights spent, and fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement. > the scary b…

>For good reason. Socialism's track record is pretty bad. They're always running out of other peoples' money.

Define socialism. Isn't the collectively owned road outside your property essentially socialism? Would that work better if it were privately owned?

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

#90

Post by nemomarx »

amelius wrote: post #67
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…

Is this the "install third-party software" checkbox in the Ubuntu installer?

I thought those were just the closed source drivers from Nvidia, Intel, and so on. But those vendors might have licenses for this kind of patent, especially Nvidia?
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