One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by gnaritas » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 5:59 AM UTC

evgen wrote: post #40

gnaritas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what patents are for. They are to reward the risk takers. That isn't what patents are for. The intent of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions to the public for the benefit of all. Rewarding the inventor is the incentive that make this happen, makes it work, not the goal.

According to my copy of the US Constitution the purpose is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." and whether this promotion is intended to reward inventors or to convince them to disclose (or both) is open to a great deal of interpretation. Of the two proposals made regarding IP during the drafting of this document one was strictly copyright and the one that covered patents was very clearly about in…

Science and Arts are public things, promoting their benefit is for the public good. If the goal were about giving inventors a payday, they wouldn't be required to disclose their inventions to the public at all, they'd just be given ownership of the idea forever. One could argue it was designed to help them both I guess, but when founding a nation, it's the nation and thus the public that you're looking out for. Giving a payday to inventors just doesn't make sense as a goal, but it makes perfect sense as an incentive to achieve a large goal.

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

#42

Post by cwp » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 8:34 AM UTC

gills wrote: post #37

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…

So you throw out the ambiguous and obvious patents. It doesn't mean you throw out the entire IP framework. This is akin to the folks who claim we should go back to physical gold as money because fiat money has been abused. Fiat money isn't evil, it's incredibly useful, but we've failed to stem the corruption in our government that allows it to be abused. My point is that the abuse of a system does not make that syste…

Who said "inherently evil?" On the whole, I'd say that software patents do more harm than good, and should be eliminated on that basis. I agree that it's not inherently evil doesn't mean we should do it.

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

#43

Post by yason » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 8:38 AM UTC

While reading these comments, someone quoted well that: "The intent of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions to the public for the benefit of all." This sounds like a good principle. Instead of applying the traditional patenting method to software, we should find the equivalent of that principle in software world.

So, patents apply to implementations, right? Also, code itself is the design, right? And yet, so far we try to describe the implementation with vague words of mostly English language, and to bend the boundaries by making it as broad as possible. Doesn't seem to work too well.

In real world, you can patent an implementation of a bridge -- effectively the design of its construction if it's novel. You can't patent the underlying, generic bridge-construction principles. Code is design.

I think the principle could apply analogously to software patents by opening the source of a proprietary implementation, and then licensing interoperability with the patented implementation. In other words, that spells like kind of a code-escrow for an exclusive licensing rights for limited time.

The patent would only apply to forks or third-party implementations that are compatible with the patented implementation. If you invent a clever protocol, you could require money for compatible implementations: this would hopefully incentivize opening proprietary implementations.

On the other hand, if someone takes your ideas and builds his own implementation, you would not be entitled to anything: that someone will be required to build his own market share, compete with your implementation and user base from the ground up, and effectively do the same work that you have already done -- just to get on par with you.

Complete codebases and unit tests could be required to make it easy to verify the compatibility or incompatibility of programs potentially based on the patented codebase.

Reviews for novelty would be much easier to arrange if expert programmers could study the working code and compare it to earlier implementations. That is, as opposed to lawyers trembling with the words and semantics of patent applications.

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

#44

Post by loup-vaillant » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 10:40 AM UTC

evgen wrote: post #38

loup-vaillant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right by saying that all patents should be treated the same. Now depending of the field, their effect may differ. In the pharmaceutical sector, they rise the price of medicine. In the food sector, they allow Monsanto to patent crops, herds, and then sue farmers for their not-even-transgenic goods. In big industries (with big players), it just wastes time and money through cross-licensing, and preve…

> In the pharmaceutical sector, they rise the price of medicine. In the pharmaceutical sector they make new drug discovery economically possible. Were it not for patents we would not have a tenth of the new drugs and treatments available to us today. Marketing costs (an unreasonable expenditure IMHO) and testing costs are completely outrageous and there are so many promising drugs that wash out in stage two or stage…

You may be right, but I seriously doubt it. If I recall correctly, Rick Falkvinge said that research represents 15% of the costs of pharmaceutical firms, and that 2/3 of it (10% of the total) are actually dedicated to the patent system. That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?).

Now, what kind of drugs pharmaceutical companies will do research on? Cure for rare illnesses? Cure for illnesses widespread in poor countries? This is good for their image, but not their wallet. Far more lucrative are cosmetics, and widely useful medicine in developed countries. Just see the ads, they are likely to match their sells.

I may be wrong on each point, but if I'm right, pharmaceutical companies could reduce their costs down to a third of what it is now, while remaining just as useful. Get rid of patents, and the costs could go down further.

Now if pharmaceutical companies really can't survive in the current world without patents, this still isn't a reason not to ditch them. Specifically, nothing prevents direct state intervention (like spending some of the taxpayers' money). If you are against that, remember this is already happening (at least in the EU), and that patents are a quite intrusive form of state intervention.

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

#45

Post by evgen » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 3:50 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #44

evgen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the pharmaceutical sector, they rise the price of medicine. In the pharmaceutical sector they make new drug discovery economically possible. Were it not for patents we would not have a tenth of the new drugs and treatments available to us today. Marketing costs (an unreasonable expenditure IMHO) and testing costs are completely outrageous and there are so many promising drugs that wash out in stage two or stage…

You may be right, but I seriously doubt it. If I recall correctly, Rick Falkvinge said that research represents 15% of the costs of pharmaceutical firms, and that 2/3 of it (10% of the total) are actually dedicated to the patent system. That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?). Now, what kind of drugs pharmaceutical companies will do research on? Cure for rare illnesses?…

You and Rick are incorrect. The pure research part is, as stated, a small part of the costs, but 2/3 of that amount is not dedicated to patent applications, and of the remainder the bulk of it is taken up by the costs of testing. Marketing is a large part of the costs, but it is not the largest component.

> I may be wrong on each point,

You are.

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

#46

Post by loup-vaillant » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #45

loup-vaillant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right, but I seriously doubt it. If I recall correctly, Rick Falkvinge said that research represents 15% of the costs of pharmaceutical firms, and that 2/3 of it (10% of the total) are actually dedicated to the patent system. That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?). Now, what kind of drugs pharmaceutical companies will do research on? Cure for rare illnesses?…

You and Rick are incorrect. The pure research part is, as stated, a small part of the costs, but 2/3 of that amount is not dedicated to patent applications, and of the remainder the bulk of it is taken up by the costs of testing. Marketing is a large part of the costs, but it is not the largest component. > I may be wrong on each point, You are.

I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well?

Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.

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

#47

Post by derefr » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

stonemetal wrote: post #35

akeefer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just arguing against patents on software, not patents in general. Novels aren't protected by patents, yet people still manage to write books. Athletic training techniques aren't patentable, yet people still manage to innovate and share knowledge there. Recipes are only protected by trade secrets, yet people manage to innovate when it comes to food; people publish cookbooks, restaraunts come out with new dishes. F…

When the only way to protect knowledge is to make it secret then you literally get knowledge that die like Damascus steel did. It was so advantageous to protect how it was made that now a thousand years after it was first created we have no clue how it was made(or how we have lost nuclear missle secrets because the secret was to well kept.) Just think of how secretive Google is. If it weren't for the patent system ho…

The difference is that source code is the recipe, not the steel. When a company "dies", their trade secrets aren't destroyed, but rather left laying out in the open for anyone to find.

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

#48

Post by dminor » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 4:34 PM UTC

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…

> There is nothing in either the Constitution or in the existing patent statutes that expressly allows courts to limit process or business method patents

Except that they basically didn't exist before the StateStreet case. The court has signaled that it may be willing to reconsider its previous ruling, so there is definitely hope.

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

#49

Post by anamax » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Actually, Pixar has a patent on certain uses of randomization in rendering. In patent-speak, randomization is the mechanism and rendering is the result.

I mention patent-speak because patents are the use of mechanism to accomplish result.

Would you object to a patent on certain uses of a lever to close a gate? (Ignoring novelty issues - closing gates with levers is well known now, while using randomization in rendering was presumably new when Pixar did their thing.) In patent-speak, the lever is the mechanism while closing the gate is the result.

If not, then you're arguing that a lever as a mechanism is somehow different from randomization as a mechanism. If so, you're pretty much arguing against all patents (using mechanism to accomplish result).

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

#50

Post by anamax » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 5:43 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #44

evgen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the pharmaceutical sector, they rise the price of medicine. In the pharmaceutical sector they make new drug discovery economically possible. Were it not for patents we would not have a tenth of the new drugs and treatments available to us today. Marketing costs (an unreasonable expenditure IMHO) and testing costs are completely outrageous and there are so many promising drugs that wash out in stage two or stage…

You may be right, but I seriously doubt it. If I recall correctly, Rick Falkvinge said that research represents 15% of the costs of pharmaceutical firms, and that 2/3 of it (10% of the total) are actually dedicated to the patent system. That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?). Now, what kind of drugs pharmaceutical companies will do research on? Cure for rare illnesses?…

> That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?).

Marketing includes giving away free/discounted drugs, telling doctors when a drug works, and telling people that the problem that they have might be curable.

Which one do you want to cut?