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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

#51

Post by jackowayed »

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…

Databases. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. have figured out a lot about how to make high-performance query execution engines and transactional storage systems and written about very little of it.

Research has caught up some, but it definitely lags.

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

#53

Post by gte910h »

rayiner wrote: post #19
gte910h wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in defense. Getting a patent was like "Oooh, that's cool". Finding out if there were patents in the way to do anything was weeks of supporting legal's searches. I'm sure someone, somewhere, at some level, likes patents. I don't think it's engineers though.

I also worked in defense. The company was run by engineering PhD's and the end result of millions of dollars of R&D and man-years of labor was a set of patents. Your line engineers aren't going to get super excited about patents, because they're not compensated for their innovation (that's a separate rant), but it wasn't my assertion that they'd come to a rousing defense of software patents. Rather, they're not going…

You mean "They won't publicly say they dislike something their company likes" That's true, for some of them. Others I can still see them saying "patents are more trouble than they're worth because they're outspoken types.

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

#54

Post by gte910h »

rayiner wrote: post #23
raverbashing wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure some engineers like patents. It makes them feel important, it's something to show to their bosses (and parents) and keep a score for promotion purposes. Managers also like patents to schmooze their bosses. "See, I did a patent, that's like, very important" Meanwhile the lawyers say "yeah, sure" while collecting heavy fees. And 90% of R&D is on the finished products (incl. code/blueprints) not on the "inventi…

I don't think that's an accurate statement of how patents function in these industries. Patents provide a framework for companies to transact in technology while protecting their R&D investment. It enables companies like MIPS and ARM to specialize in producing designs without having to develop finished products, and it allows companies to invest in open standards like LTE or WiMAX without having some Chinese manufact…

MIPS and ARM are hardware, not software.

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

#55

Post by pcl »

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…

From what I understand, a lot of the FPGA and vector calculus stuff that financial-services companies are doing is leaps and bounds ahead of the published materials. But I'm not under NDA in any related projects, so that's just hearsay.

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

#56

Post by rayiner »

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".

Think of the algorithms sitting in the base band of your cell phone. They implement things like modulation, hand-offs, power control, etc. E.g. there is some algorithm that controls the transmit power of your device to maintain the minimal transmit power necessary to close the link to the base station while you move around, walk into buildings, etc. There's another algorithm that tries to optimize hand-offs as you go from one cell site to another. Etc. These algorithms are very expensive to develop because: 1) you need very expensive people (PhD's with decades of experience) to work on them; and 2) getting them right takes a ton of experimentation and tuning with real equipment in a variety of physical scenarios.

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

#57

Post by justincormack »

jackowayed wrote: post #51
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…

Databases. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. have figured out a lot about how to make high-performance query execution engines and transactional storage systems and written about very little of it. Research has caught up some, but it definitely lags.

That has happened in the past too, in many areas. eg compiler research used to be like this. But many of the companies died, and stuff was reinvented again, probably wastefully (or differently, who knows).

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

#58

Post by rayiner »

shmerl wrote: post #47
jberryman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it a counter example? Open Opus is built on patented technologies that are licensed royalty free by the original inventors (Broadcom, Xiph.org, Microsoft, etc). It certainly wasn't cheap to develop--the development cost is just being subsidized so the end result can be given out freely.

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

#59

Post by cwkoss »

chris_mahan wrote: post #52

I'm a software developer by trade, and here is my opinion: Software should be treated as language, and thus not be patentable.

This a thousand times. It totally makes sense that you should be able to copyright code. If someone uses your exact code without permission, you can ask them to pay you.

But deciding which ideas are non-obvious is clearly something the USPTO isn't capable of, and so they should just get out of it.

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

#60

Post by anonymoushn »

rayiner wrote: post #35
pekk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're demanding that the government give us artificial rents, why not just pay it directly to remove our competition, and skip all the bullshit.

You know what's also artificial? This whole idea that I can file a claim with the county clerk to a particular area of the Earth, and from thenceforth I don't have to defend my territory like every other animal on the planet--other people will do it for me with government sanction and at taxpayer expense.

In my state we cannot own land. We must rent it from a gang. I believe the rent is called "Property tax."
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