Apple is patenting Swift features • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#121

Post by lmilcin » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

oflannabhra wrote: post #101

Chris Lattner has commented on the OP: ----- Disclaimer: I'm not an apple employee and not am not lawyer, this is just my understanding of the situation having spent lots of time talking to lawyers and other experts about this: I agree with much of the sentiment that software patents are often silly and the system is broken in many ways. This patent is a reasonable example of that (patenting syntactic sugar for monad…

What you misread is that the patent is awarded to Apple, not Swift. Apple is not being released under Apache 2 license and Apple is not restricted to using the patent only for Swift. If they decide tomorrow to have another language that is not being released under Apache 2 license then there is nothing stopping them from using this feature as the patent is already theirs.

Also, has anybody noticed that every single language in existence borrows features from some other language FOR FREE? If all languages started patenting their features then we soon will be completely boggled with lawsuits or unable to invent new, better languages as they will not be able to use already established convenient features.

There are only this many simple convenient ways to denote programming language features. There is limited number of single character operators and ways you can organize them. Granting patents to single characters is just stupid.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#122

Post by pnw_hazor » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #16

subb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too knowledgeable about patents, but maybe we need a "liberal" patent? Something that can't be used to sue other people, but protects you from being sued.

How would that work? If company A receives a "defensive" patent on a technology design, and company B decides to use that patented design without a license, seems like they'd be able to without any recourse. In which case, does the patent system even make sense anymore? I think that's the bigger question in the context of software.

Defensive patents are for when IBM comes after you with a stack of patents demanding licensing fees amounting to 3% of your revenue.

Then you whip out your defensive patents and demand that IBM licenses your IP for 3% of their revenue. (Win-win cross licensing ensues...)

Patent trolls are a different animal though. However, having some good patents may at least protect you from willful infringement (increased damages)

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#123

Post by maxdesiatov » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #110

black-tea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could even implement the feature in a dynamic language like Python or Lisp for a particular application. Does that mean the application is infringing the patent because they didn't use Swift?

no.

Could you please elaborate on this? Is there any direct confirmation of this? There wasn't any single answer from anyone affiliated with the Swift core team on this specific point. Or from any lawyer for that matter.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#124

Post by pnw_hazor » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #116

maxxxxx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just publish all your findings and establish prior art and you should be ok. Or is there more to it?

How can you guarantee that the person publishing their findings won't change their mind later and apply for a patent?

In the US they have one year to file. In UK, EU, and most other countries public disclosure bars them from filing a patent application.

But there is no way to really be sure. Because they may have filed something before or after (within the 1 year) public disclosure.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#125

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

This is why the D programming language is Boost licensed. Many other languages are adopting D features we could have patented, but did not and will not.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#126

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #15

hdra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not the only thing, no? Doesn't it also prevent e.g. other people/company from including that feature in their own programming language that doesn't use Swift at all?

Yes. This, exactly. By patenting this language feature Apple has very clearly stated that they are "making a claim of ownership" as it were of this feature across all languages and non-derivative implementations. ...which is a perfect example of why software patents shouldn't exist in the first place. One could implement this feature in any number of novel, unique ways therefore the patent is nothing more than a clai…

Patents _are_ supposed to cover inventions, not implementations.

They're about innovating technological abilities, and disclosing them in exchange for limited monopoly; it's not about specific products or specific implementations.

If it were just about implementations then all patents could be easily circumvented and there would be no reward in exchange for the full disclosure of a new invention.

(Design patents do cover specific implementations at the morphological level.)

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#127

Post by maxdesiatov » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #89

One strategy behind patenting open sourced inventions is to protect the users of the open source product.

Could you please provide an example? From what specifically have any patents protected users of an open source product? I know plenty of examples when patents were used to harm the users, the most notorious one being Oracle and Java. But I don't remember a single case where users of an open source product were protected from anything with a patent owned by a big for-profit company, would be happy to know a concrete example that shows that this protection outweighs the risk of a company harming open source users.

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#128

Post by carterschonwald » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

kevin_b_er wrote: post #44

carterschonwald wrote: post #3

Monads and do notation as prior art. Boring

I wish you the best of luck at defending against Apple's lawyers backed by a patent system that no longer promotes the progress of science or useful arts.

something something, i wish apple lawyers going after projects sponsored by microsoft. :)

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#129

Post by carterschonwald » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

davidgrenier wrote: post #17

carterschonwald wrote: post #3

Monads and do notation as prior art. Boring

Thank you, I was wondering if they had patented a half-assed version of monads.

option chaining definitely is that. seen in both swift and rust. and I guess in some styles of javascript too afaik

Re: Apple is patenting Swift features

#130

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Jan 25, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #108

naringas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it wouldn't be quite the same because software does not have physical material properties. IMO this difference is crucial.

So-called software patents are always drafted as machines that can perform the claimed actions. These machines are comprised of one or more hardware components, including some hardware components that can execute machine readable instructions. (There really is no such thing as a software patent.)

In Europe we do manage to make that distinction, though it is nuanced, and it specifically excludes the "program on a media" or "program in the physical memory of a computer" methods of trying to make all software appear to be physically technological.