I'm disappointed by the number of software patent apologists on this thread. The effort or the cost required to accomplish something in software is not a good argument for being granted a government monopoly on your type of solution. Code itself can be copyrighted and does not have to be shared. Novelists spend years on novels, have their exact words copyrighted, but don't expect to be granted "patents" on the ability to tell certain types of stories. We need to free programming from these illegitimate shackles. We programmers deserve to have the same freedoms as writers when we sit down to tell our stories in code.
The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
111–120 of 134 posts
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#112There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…
I don't disagree with your premise per-say, but, I do think its pretty easy for me, personally, to dismiss some of these positions wholesale.
1) I agree with
2) Computer technology moves at such a breakneck pace and is generally so hard to reverse engineer that this point doesn't hold water for me. We know that google's search algorithm works, ok, but can we reverse engineer it from the outside? The answer seems to be no, so why protect it with patents? Even if we could, by the time we were done google would already be on to the 'next big improvement', there is no catching up in software short of a drastic stumbling in the incombent, should we really protect the incombant from messing up?
3) The entire concept of going to college for software related endeavors is in such peril straits that I don't think we should even consider the affects or impacts of academia on software development, it's well in past at this point regardless of the patent situation.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#113Personally if the implementation is simple given the task, and the idea is obvious, or combines two existing concepts in an obvious way... it shouldn't be patentable... Anything that is a virtual representation of something real, in terms of software is an obvious idea, and shouldn't be patentable. In fact, for the most part, I can't really think of anything in terms of software, that doesn't have corresponding unique hardware for the past 20 years that is worthy of a patent.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#114When I was younger and far more innocent I would do things because of the sheer love of doing, learning and discovery. I'd spend hours, no, days, wiring chips together, writing code, testing, soldering, dreaming, inventing. In college I even published a paper on some work I did in robotics when pushed my my prof's to publish. It was great. I'd like to think I "invented" a few things in the process too. Then I was "bo…
If the price of patent filing was to increase it would increase the barrier for people that don't have a lot of money. Filing in the US starts at $390. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm . I picture a person without a job and lots of time on their hands coming up with something truly unique and amazing, only to be met with an even larger barrier to entry to make sure some big company can't rip o…
If patents were very expensive and someone with no money invents a novel cure for cancer in their garage the next step is to go find money to both get a patent and make the thing happen. If they don't have money and come up with a real --useful, marketable-- invention they'd have to go get money to make it a reality anyway.
Again, as I said in my note, not well thought-out at all.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#115The fox once wanted to partner with hen, so it went to the farm.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#116When I was younger and far more innocent I would do things because of the sheer love of doing, learning and discovery. I'd spend hours, no, days, wiring chips together, writing code, testing, soldering, dreaming, inventing. In college I even published a paper on some work I did in robotics when pushed my my prof's to publish. It was great. I'd like to think I "invented" a few things in the process too. Then I was "bo…
If the price of patent filing was to increase it would increase the barrier for people that don't have a lot of money. Filing in the US starts at $390. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm . I picture a person without a job and lots of time on their hands coming up with something truly unique and amazing, only to be met with an even larger barrier to entry to make sure some big company can't rip o…
Okay, how about the lesser of 10% of the patent owner's monthly income or $10,000 to file? From there, it would be another $10K for the first 5 years, and $50K for 3 5-year extensions? Then the filing can be modest.. and upon approval, will be about the same to cover 5 years, and have to re-up at a higher cost.. assuming the patent is actually worth keeping active by then.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have worked in defense. Getting a patent was like "Oooh, that's cool". Finding out if there were patents in the way to do anything was weeks of supporting legal's searches. I'm sure someone, somewhere, at some level, likes patents. I don't think it's engineers though.
I also worked in defense. The company was run by engineering PhD's and the end result of millions of dollars of R&D and man-years of labor was a set of patents. Your line engineers aren't going to get super excited about patents, because they're not compensated for their innovation (that's a separate rant), but it wasn't my assertion that they'd come to a rousing defense of software patents. Rather, they're not going…
As far as pure software development (not using at that point integrated custom hardware) as an idea to form, I haven't seen anything in over twenty years that deserves a patent. That includes audio, video and other compression systems that build on algorithms that are over two decades old. Those systems that tightly work with specialized hardware are a bit of a different story.
As far as any system that is defined only in software, and capable of running on a generic computer, with generic input/output devices of today are not, imho, patentable. Anything that involves an obvious idea implemented in an obvious way is not patentable, of which the incredible majority of software is. Again, exception to interfacing specialized hardware...
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#118I'd be interested in seeing software patents come with source code and unit tests. The tests, in particular, would help delimit the breadth of the claims which seems to be what the USPTO feels it needs help with. Once they have executable unit tests, it seems like it would be possible to automate the search for prior art.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how this situation is an issue of patents, really. A company that is decidedly keeping its prediction technology secret to gain an edge in a market which is entirely about being better at prediction than the other guys is not going to patent and therefore open source their technology no matter what happens to the patent system.
Patents exist to encourage inventions to be published, in exchange for exclusive licensing rights of the invention. Their entire purpose is to be an alternative to trade secrets. So it is fair to say that effective patents are those that are best at convincing people that they should publish their work instead of keeping it secret, and that there will be no financial impact to them doing so.
I understand that, but in the examples given in this thread of CS areas that are lacking published research, it is pretty clear that companies develop technologies in secret because secrecy provides them with more value and serves as a better protection against competitors than patents would. You just can't make a financial firm share their trading recipes that have any sort of value. We're lucky they don't patent trading/financial versions of 1-click-to-buy.
Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community
#120There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…
>R&D into new computer algorithms is a non-trivial investment, frequently requiring years and millions of dollars. There is a tendency among programmers to discount the level of effort required to develop a new computer algorithm that materially extends the state-of-the-art even though most could not develop such algorithms themselves and have never been involved in such R&D. Organizations that make this investment d…
The litigation is very damaging, it's also true however that research is being doubled/tripled/etc as it's done in private by multiple organisations and kept as trade secrets, which is inefficient when you consider the world as a whole.
It's just that we can't presently see any regulation based solution for that.