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The USPTO Would Like to Partner with the Software Community

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

#41

Post by iskander »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #21

There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…

>Academia is already facing difficulties in computer science because much of the state-of-the-art research is being done by private companies...As a consequence, there are a number of areas in computer science where the leading academic papers are literally a good half decade behind the state-of-the-art that is buried in NDAs.

Can you elaborate on which areas of CS academia you think are more sophisticated in the corporate wilds? Other than systems work at Google, I haven't encountered any subtopics which aren't dominated by ideas from traditional research centers (either university labs or academic research units at MSR, IBM, etc...)

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

#42

Post by neumann_alfred »

manaskarekar wrote: post #36
powertower wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if the solution takes "dozen experts and millions of dollars", it should be possibly patentable. But if the solution is reproducible by an average or good programmer leading by logical steps , then it shouldn't be patentable at all.

The fallacy of this suggestion is in deciding where to draw the line.

"You can't patent obvious shit" is actually patent law, so that's not a suggestion at all... it's just not enforced very well, is it, and that's the whole "mystery".

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

#44

Post by bskap »

iskander wrote: post #41
jandrewrogers wrote: post #21

There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…

>Academia is already facing difficulties in computer science because much of the state-of-the-art research is being done by private companies...As a consequence, there are a number of areas in computer science where the leading academic papers are literally a good half decade behind the state-of-the-art that is buried in NDAs. Can you elaborate on which areas of CS academia you think are more sophisticated in the cor…

That's because you never hear about what's going on outside of the research centers- they're all under NDA.

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

#45

Post by jberryman »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #21

There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…

I'm interested in a reply to iskander's question as well as some concrete examples of new "computer algorithms... frequently requiring years and millions of dollars".

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

#46

Post by powertower »

bhousel wrote: post #34
powertower wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if the solution takes "dozen experts and millions of dollars", it should be possibly patentable. But if the solution is reproducible by an average or good programmer leading by logical steps , then it shouldn't be patentable at all.

The average programmer can't solve fizzbuzz. Therefore anything more complicated than fizzbuzz passes the nonobviousness test and is patentable.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I wasn't suggesting that the "Is a solution reproducible via logical steps?" rule to be a validating rule... It only invalidates patentability if found to be true. Otherwise, nothing.

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

#47

Post by shmerl »

jberryman wrote: post #45
jandrewrogers wrote: post #21

There are (at least) three valid perspectives on the patent situation within the software community but part of the reason so little constructive progress is made is that many people with strong opinions will often flat-out deny or reject the validity of the other perspectives because it is outside their experience. Three perspectives of which most people ignore one or more: - Computer technology is over-run with fri…

I'm interested in a reply to iskander's question as well as some concrete examples of new "computer algorithms... frequently requiring years and millions of dollars".

Yep, examples would be interesting. There are counter examples - like the open Opus audio codec, which was developed by collaboration of various engineers and which is state of art precisely because they weren't burdened by stupid patenting issues, and could instead concentrate on creating a beautiful technology.

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

#48

Post by CaveTech »

bhousel wrote: post #34
powertower wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if the solution takes "dozen experts and millions of dollars", it should be possibly patentable. But if the solution is reproducible by an average or good programmer leading by logical steps , then it shouldn't be patentable at all.

The average programmer can't solve fizzbuzz. Therefore anything more complicated than fizzbuzz passes the nonobviousness test and is patentable.

Average programmer definitely could. Average applicant, maybe not.

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

#49

Post by Barraketh »

A large problem with software patents is that feature definition and implementation have been rolled into one. Patents were designed to protect implementation - that is, you can't patent having an engine in the car, but you can patent a specific design (implementation) of an engine. In the software world I feel like that distinction has been blurred.

Even if we assume that software is patentable, the bounce back effect should not be patentable. The reason is that all the novelty is in coming up with the feature itself. I don't know whether I could come up with the bounce back effect by myself. I know for a fact that I could implement it, and so could any sufficiently strong software engineer. There is no novelty in the implementation that is worthy of patent protection.

This is trade dress all over again hiding under a different name. It should be given a different status (just like business patents), and different time frames of protection. This way we still protect truly novel research in algorithms (pagerank for example), while eliminating 95% of the patents we as software engineers find so objectionable.

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

#50

Post by Buttons840 »

bskap wrote: post #44
iskander wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Academia is already facing difficulties in computer science because much of the state-of-the-art research is being done by private companies...As a consequence, there are a number of areas in computer science where the leading academic papers are literally a good half decade behind the state-of-the-art that is buried in NDAs. Can you elaborate on which areas of CS academia you think are more sophisticated in the cor…

That's because you never hear about what's going on outside of the research centers- they're all under NDA.

Do companies want to profit from this computer science research being done under a NDA? Don't they have to release these advances in the form of a product to earn a profit?

Then show me some products which demonstrate this "cutting-edge" computer science research.

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