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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

#11

Post by tsally »

chancho wrote: post #10
tsally wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The design for an implementation of a bridge, not for all bridges. Most software patents try to patent all bridges.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#12

Post by prodigal_erik »

chancho wrote: post #10
tsally wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

"Land rush on pure mathematics" is exactly right. They're being allowed to essentially claim the entire problem, rather than a specific solution which happens to be better than well-known alternatives the industry is still free to use.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#13

Post by cabalamat »

grellas wrote: post #7

Open 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 pr…

> 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.

You're probably right. The best way for a person to help get software patents abolished, IMO, would be to join their local Pirate Party -- http://www.pp-international.net/

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#14

Post by jberryman »

swombat wrote: post #6
fnid wrote: post #2

What 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…

Exactly. It's important to remember that both copyright and patents are instances of the public willingly ceding, in very specific cases, some of their constitutionally-protected freedoms (in the case of copyright, freedom of speech) because doing so is seen to have a positive net effect for society (the creation of more art, better technology).

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#15

Post by akeefer »

miloshh wrote: post #8
tsally wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Well, I'm biased because my company is basically being sued over a patent that is, essentially, about as broad as bridge building (i.e. someone else essentially claims to have patented the idea of storing insurance claims in a database. Seriously.)

But they are fundamentally different in that software is already protected by copyright the same way any other creative work is. Copyright and patent protection are two sides of the same coin that are there in, according to the US Constitution (European theory on the origin of IP rights is different), to provide an incentive to create new things. Unlike a chemical formula or a mechanical invention, the software itself is already protected by copyright, just like a novel or a painting is. It's basically the only thing that I can think of that's protected by both copyright and patent protection.

In many ways, patenting a software system is far more akin to patenting a novel or a how-to book (I'm patenting the idea of a hero that fights an evil villain, and I'm patenting the idea of explaining to people how to fix a leaky faucet).

Again, patents are constitutionally granted on a pragmatic basis rather than on the grounds of some inherent right, so I think it's a perfectly valid to attack them on the grounds that they do more harm than good, and it's also perfectly valid to point out that they are categorically different than patents on mechanical or chemical inventions.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#16

Post by fnid »

igorhvr wrote: post #9
fnid wrote: post #2

What 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 c…

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.

I didn't say patents do that, I said software does that.

I do not believe software is "just a set of ideas." If that was the case, why do we need engineers to take an "idea" for a software system to implement that system? Building an idea with software takes time, experimentation, trial and error. Mistakes are made. Algorithms are optimized.

Do you really believe that software vendors don't worry about beauty and durability of their software product the same way manufacturers of physical products do? In a lot of cases, we have "designed obsolescence" of mechanical products, so I can't avoid disagreeing with your statement there.

The whole point of patents is to share the knowledge learned in the process of going from an idea to an invention that implements the idea. The problem with sharing the knowledge is that it becomes more difficult to capitalize on all the effort that went into building the invention. You let others know of the invention and how it was built so they can use that knowledge to further improve the world, while also protecting their ability to feed themselves while they work on more ideas to improve the world.

I know many believe software should be free, but the ability to kill free software is one of the benefits of patents. If a company or an individual makes some software worth patenting and then someone decides to give away that same software for free, then the patent holder should be able to kill that free software.

I don't believe that free is somehow more moral than not free. I don't see anything immoral about selling software. In fact, the motives of many who give away free software could be argued less moral than those who sell it.

Why is there an association between people who sell software and "bad" software vendors? A lot of proprietary software vendors are good people who want to create companies and employ more software developers to write more code and make the world a better place. I don't believe not showing all of your cards, or code as the case may be, makes you a bad person or a bad company.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#17

Post by akeefer »

fnid wrote: post #2

What 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…

Honestly, how many actual software engineers do you know that are in favor of patents and that think it will help them protect their invention, rather than being terrified of accidentally running afoul of someone's patents? And how many cases of software patents have you actually seen used to protect the little inventor from the big bad corporation trying to steal his idea, rather than used by patent trolls to extract money from whoever has deep pockets, by big corporations as anti-competitive tactics against startups, or by big corporations against each other in a kind of mutually-assured destruction detente?

I think that the historical record is pretty clear that software patents are a huge net negative for the industry and do much more to harm innovation than they do to protect it.

How many startups wouldn't be started if people couldn't patent their software, and merely had to have it protected by copyright? Hardly any (probably just ones that deal with things like video encoding). How many startups will be sued out of existence by big corporations or patent trolls due to ludicrous patents, and how many startups won't be started at all because the landscape is already a patent minefield? A whole lot more.

Patenting isn't an inherent right, it's a pragmatic right granted by the government in order to encourage innovation and openness by providing people with temporary monopoly rights in exchange for sharing their inventions. Software patents serve neither to foster innovation nor to foster information sharing, since software patents themselves are pretty much universally unreadable, unenlightening, obvious garbage.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#18

Post by SamAtt »

tsally wrote: post #3
fnid wrote: post #2

What 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…

I'm not saying the patent system doesn't need repair but I don't think the problems are as broad as your example lays them out to be. Whenever someone tries to make such a broad patent it's almost always knocked down by the prior art clause (the example you gave would only work if no one had ever put a piece of wood over a puddle to get across before)

I personally favor the establishment of some kind of universal license fee that prevents patent holders from hoarding an innovation or charging ridiculous prices for others to use it. That way those who created a concept still get their just due while not being able to prevent anyone from using their patents to innovate.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#19

Post by fnid »

akeefer wrote: post #17
fnid wrote: post #2

What 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…

Honestly, how many actual software engineers do you know that are in favor of patents and that think it will help them protect their invention, rather than being terrified of accidentally running afoul of someone's patents? And how many cases of software patents have you actually seen used to protect the little inventor from the big bad corporation trying to steal his idea, rather than used by patent trolls to extrac…

The problems you mention aren't unique to software. How many mechanical engineers look at a device and think it is obvious? Or they read a patent and think, "This is unreadable, unenlightening, obvious garbage?" Lots I'm sure.

To answer your question. Mint.com patented their software. Yext.com has patents. Lots of startups patent their software and the algorithms that give their companies a competitive advantage.

My argument is that software isn't a special case in the field of innovation. If someone can patent a solar panel that extracts 10x more energy from the same area, then why shouldn't a company be allowed to patent a software algorithm that can compress data stored on disk to 10% of its original size? Ultimately, math and science are behind both inventions.

I also do not agree that it is pretty clear that software patents are a huge net negative. You'll have to provide evidence for that. If you do that, you'll also have to show that patents for software are more negative than patents for mechanical devices or designs in all the other fields if you think software patents should be disallowed, but not patents in other fields.

The question is, why don't we disallow ALL patents? Think of all the lives that would be saved if pharmaceuticals could be sold at generic prices!

There's something really wrong with the philosophy, religion perhaps that motivates a group of software engineers to think their work isn't valuable and shouldn't be protected and isn't worth paying for. The arguments just don't seem rational and my experience with the world tends to discount all the arguments in favor of degrading the field of software engineering to that of garage bands just hacking out code because they love it. Eventually those hackers run out of money and need to eat.

Perhaps there is some idea that software engineers should just really really love what they do! They should love it so much they don't care if they get paid. It's as if getting paid for what you do makes it work. That's not true though. Athletes get paid to do what they love. Lots of doctors and lawyers love what they do. I think it's totally fine to get paid to do what you love.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#20

Post by akeefer »

fnid wrote: post #19
akeefer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, how many actual software engineers do you know that are in favor of patents and that think it will help them protect their invention, rather than being terrified of accidentally running afoul of someone's patents? And how many cases of software patents have you actually seen used to protect the little inventor from the big bad corporation trying to steal his idea, rather than used by patent trolls to extrac…

The problems you mention aren't unique to software. How many mechanical engineers look at a device and think it is obvious? Or they read a patent and think, "This is unreadable, unenlightening, obvious garbage?" Lots I'm sure. To answer your question. Mint.com patented their software. Yext.com has patents. Lots of startups patent their software and the algorithms that give their companies a competitive advantage. My…

I disagree . . . the fundamental differences are that 1) copyright already protects software, 2) any given software program could literally fall afoul of hundreds or thousands of patents, 3) the patents themselves do little to encourage innovation, and 4) that duplicating a software system is a far different process than copying someone's drug formula, such that patents are unnecessary.

On balance, patents do more harm than good to companies and their engineers.

The companies you mentioned don't patent for competitive advantage, they patent so that when they get sued by someone else they can countersue. That's what everyone does; if you don't have patents and someone sues you, you can't fight back.

Patents on pharmaceuticals do encourage innovation, because the one essential element is the chemical formula (to a lesser extent, the process to produce that chemical), which would easily be copied without protection. A given software application consists of thousands of lines of code and thousands of algorithmic decision (often hundreds of thousands or millions); if you knew that someone was using an XOR in order to flip bits, it doesn't exactly let you copy their system. My argument is that patents on software don't encourage innovation because they don't increase the protection that's already there, and the threat of other people's patents is constantly looming and stifles innovation.

Look, I'm a software engineer, and I know a lot of other engineers, so I'm not discounting my own or anyone's work or saying it's not valuable and that people shouldn't get paid for it. What I'm saying is that patenting isn't a useful or appropriate mechanism of protection, that copyright combined with the inherent difficult of duplicating the thousands of features in someone else's application is barrier enough, and that patents actually hurt entrepreneurs and software companies and make it harder for engineers to get paid for their work.

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