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The Patent Pledge

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Patent Pledge

#141

Post by damoncali »

rgoddard wrote: post #138
damoncali wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how one would defend their patented innovation without suing someone else? Or are you suggesting that the patent only be used as a counter-suit after being sued for infringement of a different patent? I mean, the whole point of a patent is to be able to sue people who are competing with you. How can that ever be defensive?

Unlike trademarks, you can hold a patent without having to defend it. You are not legally required to use it. So the choice to use it is yours. The logic behind defensive patents is similar to creating nuclear weapons as a deterrent and the theory of mutually assured destruction.

Except the superpowers with all the nukes routinely fling them at each other. Where is the deterrence?

If IBM is not deterred by Microsoft's patents, why would they be deterred by mine?

Re: The Patent Pledge

#142

Post by robryan »

beagle3 wrote: post #105
SoftwarePatent wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't get patent reform through Congress, so let's try to get a new tax through Congress? DOA.

You need a carrot for Congress. Right now, a patent reform (of the kind HN would generally like) will: a) reduce government intake in the form of patent registration and maintenance fees b) get all the lobbyists employed by current patent holders (who spend billions of dollars on those patents) working against you. Why on earth would congress do something like that? So that 0.05% of the population that actually has a…

Improves innovation which will eventually lead to more tax dollars. Although it would be a stretch to get them to take a long term view, would also probably have lawyers lobby against it.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#143

Post by colanderman »

dctoedt wrote: post #27

AlexBlox asks in an earlier comment: " does publicly stating this pledge bust any opportunity to double back (i.e. it is more legally binding than just a pledge?) " A court might well hold a company to such a pledge, on a theory of "equitable estoppel." This type of defense to an infringement charge is always highly fact-specific; here's an example of a case in which the defense succeeded: A patent owner accused a ma…

In that case, what's stopping large company X from forming a shell company of one employee which performs services for X using patents held by company Y which has made such a (potentially legally-binding) pledge?

Re: The Patent Pledge

#144

Post by gabrielroth »

pg wrote: post #134
haberman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a good example of something that would have turned out worse if there hadn't been software patents? (I know you've argued before that software patents aren't fundamentally different than patents on anything else, but to a lot of people software patents have more obviously negative consequences).

The most famous example is probably Watt's steam engine. Bolton & Watt had high development costs and could not have gotten funding without their patent. But once established they definitely used patents against smaller competitors. So it is hard to say for sure even in this case whether patents were a net win. They probably were though. The patent probably caused modern separate-condenser steam engines to happen at…

The poster above was asking specifically about software patents.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#145

Post by scott_s »

damoncali wrote: post #128
artursapek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is own the patent for defensive purposes, not aggressive. "Patent pacifism," if you will.

I don't understand how one would defend their patented innovation without suing someone else? Or are you suggesting that the patent only be used as a counter-suit after being sued for infringement of a different patent? I mean, the whole point of a patent is to be able to sue people who are competing with you. How can that ever be defensive?

If you patent an invention, no one else can. Your patent prevents other people from patenting the thing that you depend on.

If your next question is that the existence of your invention would invalidate their patent due to prior art, that would take costly legal maneuvering to establish. Is there a shortcut around that legal maneuvering? Yes, patent your invention first.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#146

Post by notahacker »

cienrak wrote: post #119
tc wrote: post #31

It's not immediately clear to me whether this solves any part of the current problem. But on reflection, I believe I understand the motivation here. Big companies that use patents as a revenue stream (MSFT, IBM, etc.) typically bide their time and bring a patent lawsuit once a new company is established and there is blood to drain. It's the threat of such a lawsuit in the future that can negatively impact investment…

A recent study found that patents per capita was the most important factor in determining the gap between the haves and have nots in a nation. http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/31/309483/patents-... What's poorly thought out about this pledge is that a shop of far less than 25 people could easily clones of web and mobile apps at scale.

I think it's implied that the companies making this pledge will tend to be the huge corporations with massive brand recognition and existing user bases that ought to be able to dominate the market unless the 25 person shop has found a way of significantly improving the product offering. In which case most of us would prefer to see acquisitions over litigation.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#147

Post by nl »

tgriesser wrote: post #88
pg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC none have actually been sued, but one has been sent a letter saying they're violating a competitor's patent. What made me start thinking about this idea was a combination of that letter, this story: http://k9ventures.com/blog/2011/04/27/modista/ and the fear that YC applicants working on education software have of the notoriously litigious Blackboard.

Interesting, it looks like Blackboard has their own interpretation of a "patent pledge," but it only covers open-source and non-commercial software. http://www.blackboard.com/About-Bb/Patents/Patent-Pledge.asp...

They did this because of the outrage from the Moodle community over some of these patents.

There was talk of a formal attempt to get some of them overturned but this pledge took a lot of the heat out of the outrage.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#148

Post by blahedo »

brianlash wrote: post #67

Because it's one line and because its implications are that important: For quantities you can count (windows, money, people...), the word is "fewer." For quantities you can't, the word is "less" The pledge should read: No first use of software patents against companies with fewer than 25 people.

No.

Your formulation is not incorrect, but pg's is correct as it stands. The word "less" has been used in a range of English dialects for both countable and measurable things, for more than a thousand years. See e.g. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h... for some excellent discussion on this issue, and actual corpus data to back it up.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#149

Post by pg »

gabrielroth wrote: post #144
pg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most famous example is probably Watt's steam engine. Bolton & Watt had high development costs and could not have gotten funding without their patent. But once established they definitely used patents against smaller competitors. So it is hard to say for sure even in this case whether patents were a net win. They probably were though. The patent probably caused modern separate-condenser steam engines to happen at…

The poster above was asking specifically about software patents.

Oops. I don't know of anything that would have turned out for the worse without software patents. But I only know about a subset of uses of software. There might be cases in pharmaceuticals or manufacturing where patents helped protect individual inventors against big companies.

Re: The Patent Pledge

#150

Post by [deleted] »

dotBen wrote: post #131

I'd like to see a different Patent Pledge. One where software engineers pledge not to participate in formal patent creation. Because ultimately, all of the software patents out there were 'authored' by a software engineer. You have to have the person that actually invented the new implementation on the document. Sure, your employment contract says that any IP you create on your employer's dime is owned by your employ…

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