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Reminder: Today is the deadline to tell USPTO to end software patents

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Reminder: Today is the deadline to tell USPTO to end software patents

#41

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rwl wrote: post #40
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suggested text is nonsense. Software is no more "mathematics" than are circuit diagrams, chemistry nor books.

> Software is no more "mathematics" than are circuit diagrams, chemistry nor books. Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_isomorphism

Sure Some software corresponds to Some math in a contrived example. That is well-known.

How about a disk driver? a network protocol? A game where you shoot a bunny with a flamethrower?

Some Computer Scientists occasionally gain benefit from applying math to certain algorithmic software. Is that the only kind that is being patented?

Re: Reminder: Today is the deadline to tell USPTO to end software patents

#42

Post by DennisP »

tkeller wrote: post #4

There are some big companies out there with a lot of their on-the-books valuation existing in the form of software patents. If they suddenly have to mark that stuff down to zero, imagine the crash...

Most big companies (fortunately) accumulate patents mainly for defensive purposes. If software patents go away, there will no longer be a threat to defend against.

So they'll be making the same money, with less legal risk. If the market is silly enough to crash in response to that, I'll hustle out to buy as many shares in the crashed companies as I can.

Re: Reminder: Today is the deadline to tell USPTO to end software patents

#43

Post by SwellJoe »

tkeller wrote: post #17
SwellJoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only patent trolls would crash, which is almost entirely private equity. Let them crash. In fact, I'd argue that it would be a great good for the market in general to knock the wind out of the parasites who live off of software patent trolling. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. companies that make money from legitimate sources would be barely effected at all (and many tech companies who have huge patent portfolios have sp…

This is simply not true. Regardless of how, say Microsoft, uses or doesn't use its patents, they account for a substantial percentage of its value on the books. If the accountants suddenly had to revalue them to $0, it would unquestionably have a big impact on the share price.

Regardless of how, say Microsoft, uses or doesn't use its patents, they account for a substantial percentage of its value on the books.

I'd need to see some evidence of this assertion. When I was spending a lot more time researching tech stocks than I do now (now I spend 0 time researching tech stocks), I never saw a patent portfolio as a significant portion of the value of the companies I was investing in. Revenue and growth is king in tech company stocks. Book value is pretty much considered a big goose egg in software companies because they tend to have so little of it compared to old blue chips that have factories, brick and mortar stores, or infrastructure that has real world value. I'd be absolutely stunned if marking down their entire patent portfolio had more than a 1% impact on their market value, because I suspect even less than 1% of their revenue comes from patents...and revenue and growth is how people value MSFT.

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