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Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

patentsgazette.uspto.gov

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Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#161

Post by Gibbon1 »

linuxhansl wrote: post #99

Having my name on a bunch of software patents - and, yes, I tried to get my name off them, but was not allowed - I can fairly confidently say: There is not A single worthy software patent out there. You know, one that is "not obvious to someone skilled in the art" and that actually protects a monetary investment. Software patent are a scourge of the software industry. Patents are designed to protect costly research;…

A friend that has a degree in engineering and law who works as a patent lawyer had this to say.

Interesting physical real world problems are NP hard. That's why we have patents. Software? You can work backwards from the requirements to multiple solutions almost always. Which is why patents on software are stupid.

Copyrights are originally to protect authors because an author might create a few dozen works over a lifetime. Of which a few mich actually be worth anything. Copyrights were to protect his income and allow him to leave an inheritance behind.

Copyrights for software is stupid because most of it is mechanically generated and it goes old like last weeks fish. Quote: The source code for Windows 3.1 who cares.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#162

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

linuxhansl wrote: post #125
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has ever taken part in a software patent litigation ... or in the creation of a software patent, knows intimately that its a bunch of bullshit. The boogieman that software patent advocates raise is that IP theft and free riding will destroy America if we don't have patents. But literally nobody is creating software to get a patent on it, and software patents don't stop anyone from replicating software. Ins…

It feels more like an arms-race to me. Where I work we patent stuff for defensive purposes only, so we have something when we get sued (and we have been). Maybe that's just another boogieman, but it seems unless everybody stops nobody can.

China has basically no domestic patent litigation. The way you stop the litigation is to just remove the legal rights associated with patents. Let everything become a free for all. China is just lapping everyone else right now. The lack of strong IP rights is not hurting them. Companies over there are not suffering due to not being able to invest in technology. They invest despite not having strong IP protections. Not because they have strong IP protections. And they know they can't get a monopoly with a piece of paperwork ... a patent. So they continue to innovate at a breakneck pace just to stay ahead of everyone else.

America needs to learn how to evolve our system of industrial production. Our society of lawyers and paperpushers is going to get annihilated in the next ten years at this rate.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#164

Post by [deleted] »

freejazz wrote: post #103
linuxhansl wrote: post #99

Having my name on a bunch of software patents - and, yes, I tried to get my name off them, but was not allowed - I can fairly confidently say: There is not A single worthy software patent out there. You know, one that is "not obvious to someone skilled in the art" and that actually protects a monetary investment. Software patent are a scourge of the software industry. Patents are designed to protect costly research;…

>For software Copyright is a far better instrument. Let the one with best implementation win... That's where the cost is: Implementing, testing, shipping, maintaining. Protect that. But this is minimally protectable, and you can copy the idea just not the exact implementation. Copyright does not have a 'doctrine of equivalents' equivalent. It also supports independent creation. Copyright also does not cover functiona…

[deleted]

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#165

Post by seszett »

mkovach wrote: post #83

Setting aside the tech, which looks like an asynchronous await across a network, the interesting question is why Mistral would patent this in the US. Simple, because the patent is less about protecting an invention than doing business in the US. The US is more hospitable to software patents than Europe. A US patent also gives Mistral something useful when dealing with companies that already hold large patent portfoli…

What's absurd about a French company doing business in the US taking advantage of US law?

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#166

Post by pbhjpbhj »

linuxhansl wrote: post #125
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has ever taken part in a software patent litigation ... or in the creation of a software patent, knows intimately that its a bunch of bullshit. The boogieman that software patent advocates raise is that IP theft and free riding will destroy America if we don't have patents. But literally nobody is creating software to get a patent on it, and software patents don't stop anyone from replicating software. Ins…

It feels more like an arms-race to me. Where I work we patent stuff for defensive purposes only, so we have something when we get sued (and we have been). Maybe that's just another boogieman, but it seems unless everybody stops nobody can.

If it's really for defense you don't have to go to the expense of patenting stuff, disclosure is enough. IBM used to publish Technical Disclosure Bulletins (TDB) - I assume for patent defence.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#167

Post by keeda »

linuxhansl wrote: post #99

Having my name on a bunch of software patents - and, yes, I tried to get my name off them, but was not allowed - I can fairly confidently say: There is not A single worthy software patent out there. You know, one that is "not obvious to someone skilled in the art" and that actually protects a monetary investment. Software patent are a scourge of the software industry. Patents are designed to protect costly research;…

I've said this before, but if we look critically, we would realize copyright is an inappropriate legal protection mechanism for software. Indeed, copyright protection for software is a historical hack because people didn’t want to figure out an appropriate legal framework from scratch. You “wrote” books, you "wrote" code, let’s shoehorn software into copyright and go get lunch!

However this completely overlooks the fact that the true value of software, and theoretically what we should protect, is not the code, but the functionality it provides. Copyright explicitly does not cover functional elements -- that is the realm of patents -- and really only covers code to the extent that it has "expressive elements." Technical creativity (novel algorithms, data structures, architecture etc.) is expressly excluded.

One non-obvious and absurd implication of this is that any code that can be shown to be purely dictated by technical constraints is not protected -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction%E2%80%93filtration... via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internatio.... -- yet a simple rewrite using equivalent code constructs, like using a while-loop instead of a for-loop, can be enough to keep a snippet of code from infringing the original. (I'm oversimplifying of course, but principally this is how the law is.)

If you look back at significant copyright-related cases for software now (e.g. CA vs Altai above or Oracle vs Google), you'll realize they have twisted themselves into knots trying to apply laws intended for expressive creativity to issues that were essentially about technical creativity.

So copyright covers pretty much the literal code, and the compiled software as a "derivative work", and nothing more. Things only happened to work so far because reverse engineering and re-implementation was expensive.

But as comments in this thread are pointing it out, AI is making it very stark that the code itself matters very little. We're just now realizing how ineffective copyright has always been for code.

I have no hopes that we will figure out an appropriate IP framework for software, so I expect people will move towards other things like patents, trade secrets and trademarks. Which have their own problems, but at least they already exist and are more suitable than copyright, especially in the age of AI.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#168

Post by linuxhansl »

freejazz wrote: post #103
linuxhansl wrote: post #99

Having my name on a bunch of software patents - and, yes, I tried to get my name off them, but was not allowed - I can fairly confidently say: There is not A single worthy software patent out there. You know, one that is "not obvious to someone skilled in the art" and that actually protects a monetary investment. Software patent are a scourge of the software industry. Patents are designed to protect costly research;…

>For software Copyright is a far better instrument. Let the one with best implementation win... That's where the cost is: Implementing, testing, shipping, maintaining. Protect that. But this is minimally protectable, and you can copy the idea just not the exact implementation. Copyright does not have a 'doctrine of equivalents' equivalent. It also supports independent creation. Copyright also does not cover functiona…

Yes. And that was exactly my point. If an idea is just an idea that anyone can have under the shower, there is no value to society in granting a monopoly to that idea. There was no cost to said idea. In that case is better for society to grant a monopoly on a particular expression of that idea (an implementation).

If that idea had cost (say) a billion dollars (like in some medical research or physical research), there absolutely is value in granting a temporary monopoly in order to encourage such research in the future.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#169

Post by linuxhansl »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #166
linuxhansl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels more like an arms-race to me. Where I work we patent stuff for defensive purposes only, so we have something when we get sued (and we have been). Maybe that's just another boogieman, but it seems unless everybody stops nobody can.

If it's really for defense you don't have to go to the expense of patenting stuff, disclosure is enough. IBM used to publish Technical Disclosure Bulletins (TDB) - I assume for patent defence.

Alas, that only ensures that you cannot be sued for the disclosed invention. You cannot use it to counter-sue and reach a settlement.

I do not like it one bit, but that does seem to be state of the software world right now.

Re: Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”

#170

Post by theboywho »

The Scala[1] community has been working[2] on something similar for a couple of years now, with papers already published[3]. I wonder if Mistral is not just trying to steal this work.

[1] https://martinodersky.substack.com/p/tracked-capabilities-fo...

[2] https://github.com/lampepfl/tacit

[3] https://www.caisconf.org/program/2026/papers/securing-agents...

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