One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
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One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
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Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#2What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits?
Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer engineers are not?
I understand the ramifications of software patents. But the problems with software patents are the same for patents in every other field. Why is software special?
Why are we narrowing the conversation to software? Patents for software, like any other field require research and development, they save time and money, they make things more efficient, they improve life for countless individuals, they do require risk, innovation, and yes reward to survive.
That's what patents are for. They are to reward the risk takers. In the case of software patents, the reward goes to the programmers who take the risk to write all the code that will be patented. They aren't "abstract" ideas, they are lines of code that are concretely typed into a computer. They convert information from one form to another. They control the physical world in previously unidentified ways.
To say software patents are invalid or software can't be patented really puts software programmers at a disadvantage relative to other fields of science and innovation. Why should pharmaceutical companies, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and all other disciplines have the right to patent their inventions -- but not software engineers?
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#3What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
What if civil engineers could file a patent that looked like that following:
A method and system for crossing a body of water via a constructed object. The customer starts on one side of the water and walks across the object to the other side.
Your average software patent is roughly equivalent to a patent on the concept of a bridge. If there are useful software patents, they've been overshadowed by the large number of abusive ones.
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#4What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
Because it has been so abused.
I would not have much trouble with a patent on the concept of public/private keys, but patents today are too expensive to get, obscure to read and cover extremely simple material.
In addition software patents lasts way the equivalent of several hundred years because the field moves so fast, imagine that basic concept behind the steam engine was still patented today.
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#5What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
When you sell a mechanical tool, the user can take it apart and construct a similar tool on his own. This will take the advantage of innovation done by the engineer without paying him much. The patent protects the engineer from this exploitation. The users cant take apart a closed source software and reconstruct it. Now a days with few of the arm cores I have worked with, you cant even step through some proprietary code which is running. When you already have protection why would you want a patent. Another thing is the large companies abusing the patents and threatening some new companies.
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#6What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
Patents, like copyright, are not a theoretically pure framework like physics or maths. They're a very pragmatic give-and-take agreement designed to achieve a certain result. According to the US constitution, that aim is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts".
In-so-far as software patents do not achieve that aim, they are worthless.
(the same, btw, could be said of copyrights, but not, interestingly, of many other kinds of patents)
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#7Open source proponents need to realize that, while it is possible for the Supreme Court to enter a ruling making software non-patentable, this likely is wishful thinking.
The authority for patent laws ultimately comes from the Constitution and finds its implementation in statutes passed by Congress. There is nothing in either the Constitution or in the existing patent statutes that expressly allows courts to limit process or business method patents (the type at issue in the case before the Supreme Court) to those that pass the so-called "machine-or-transformation" test imposed by the lower court. Thus, it is by no means assured that such a relatively narrow test will be upheld. If it is not, then the looser standards likely will be back in play, meaning that a broad variety of process patents (include software-related) will be capable of being granted.
For those interested, this case has generated huge interest in the tech world and, as of a couple of months ago, at least 44 such companies had filed briefs with the Court (for what it is worth, most of them favor rejecting the lower court's ruling and thereby letting more process patents be issued). A good summary of the positions appears here: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/briefs-in-bilski.htm....
I am not saying that software patents shouldn't be abolished - just that such a result is highly unlikely to come from any ruling in this case.
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#8What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
What if civil engineers could file a patent that looked like that following: A method and system for crossing a body of water via a constructed object. The customer starts on one side of the water and walks across the object to the other side. Your average software patent is roughly equivalent to a patent on the concept of a bridge. If there are useful software patents, they've been overshadowed by the large number o…
Are you sure that's the typical software patent?
Some famous law-suits were about patents that are far less trivial than your bridge example.
For example, Pixar holds a patent on Monte Carlo sampling, and has sued or threatened a number of companies that used any sort of randomization in their rendering algorithms. This despite the fact that Monte Carlo methods have been known and used for many decades before Pixar was started. The issue here is not that the concept of Monte Carlo integration is trivial, but instead that Pixar's contribution to it is so tiny compared to the previous state of the art that it should not give them a "right" to own the whole field.
Similarly, some lawsuits were about compression algorithms if I remeber right. Same issue here - it's not that a given compression algorithm is trivial, it is more the fact that it is probably a tiny increment on the top of existing compression techniques, and anybody that also builds on the known ideas should not be threatened by loosely related patents.
Of course, patents are a problem that should be addressed, but I don't think trying to prove that software patents are somehow different than others is the right way.
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#9What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
It is not exactly the same transformation as you said. Information and matter are for practical purposes fundamentally different. You can't just copy a device a million times over with near-zero cost, and you also can't change mechanical devices with the same facility that you can change bits.
Patents for software do not save time and money, nor do they make things run more efficiently, nor do they improve life for countless individuals. This is simply not the case.
Also, patents are not made in specific lines of code - patents would be a smaller problems if they did. They do patent abstract ideas.
To put simply, the main difference is that (besides the fact that most software patents are bogus) since software is pretty much a set of ideas and nothing else (as opposed to hardware where you have a few ideas and a lot of work worrying with beauty, physical constraints, durability, etc) a good team of programmers will have a few hundred good ideas in the course of writing any non-trivial piece of software - which means that patents can kill free software (since it is unlikely that people working for free would want to license software patents), and also make commercial software projects impossible (even if you have the money, having to license patents from 100 different companies would surely be discouraging - specially for a small company).
Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind
#10What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits? Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer eng…
What if civil engineers could file a patent that looked like that following: A method and system for crossing a body of water via a constructed object. The customer starts on one side of the water and walks across the object to the other side. Your average software patent is roughly equivalent to a patent on the concept of a bridge. If there are useful software patents, they've been overshadowed by the large number o…
Were it not for prior art, I'm sure the design for a bridge could be patented. And then someone would invent a truss bridge, a covered bridge, an arch bridge, a cable stayed bridge, etc. each getting a patent because each improves on the state of the art. You can patent just about any physical implement. The reason "obvious" stuff (physical equivalents of OneClick) are not patentable is due to prior art dating back to the stone age. Now computers have opened up a land rush on pure mathematics, which used to not be patentable but now is through clever wording. IMO this needs to be resolved by legislation (whichever way you come down on the debate.) The existing patent framework is just not designed for it. So bringing it up before the supreme court is a good step forward.