The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community • Hacker News Board

Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community

#131

Post by codygman » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 6:43 AM UTC

wheaties wrote: post #15

powertower wrote: post #11

Software patents are here to stay. Don't fight a battle you can't win, the Patent Office is not going to throw away the billions of dollars they make on this... But you can make it so they get to keep their revenues, but we get to add rules that help invalidate patents, or limits how much the troll gets.

I disagree. If we can reclaim that algorithms are mathematical and therefore unpatentable we can regain our ability to actually innovate without fear.

How would you propose we do that? Write mathematical equivalents that are equal to patented algorithms then claim we didn't infringe on a patent but instead implemented the mathematical formula we wrote?

Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community

#132

Post by codygman » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 6:44 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #130

mbell wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how it worked ten years ago. Do you really think that has much to do with how it works today?

As of four years ago (last time I had any meaningful contact with search quality people at Google), it was a very convoluted layer cake of diverse signals and carefully tuned heuristics.

I guess that's what they needed Go (golang) for.

Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community

#133

Post by coopdog » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 8:54 AM UTC

ajb wrote: post #64

"The first topic relates to how to improve clarity of claim boundaries that define the scope of patent protection for claims that use functional language." Or to put it another way, the patent database is a broken datastructure , how do we fix it? I think it's important to take their question seriously, because if we give them serious answers it will bring home why the patent system is more broken for software than f…

I like the idea of a binary tree

Would it need to be balanced? It might be better to have to play 100 questions instead of 20 rather than pay O(n) in legal fees multiple times

Re: The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community

#134

Post by ajb » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 10:09 AM UTC

coopdog wrote: post #133

ajb wrote: post #64

"The first topic relates to how to improve clarity of claim boundaries that define the scope of patent protection for claims that use functional language." Or to put it another way, the patent database is a broken datastructure , how do we fix it? I think it's important to take their question seriously, because if we give them serious answers it will bring home why the patent system is more broken for software than f…

I like the idea of a binary tree Would it need to be balanced? It might be better to have to play 100 questions instead of 20 rather than pay O(n) in legal fees multiple times

Well, one purpose is that currently it's impossible for a small business to find what patents you might be infringing in the millions that exist. The tree doesn't need to be completely balanced, but if it degenerates to a linked list, the search problem is no better than it is now.