4 ms·

Would you like to expand on why you think it shouldn't be patented? Architectural optimizations are often dismissed by outsiders as being "obvious", but what t

by wsxcde 11y ago

Would you like to expand on why you think it shouldn't be patented? Architectural optimizations are often dismissed by outsiders as being "obvious", but what they don't see are all the other "obvious" ideas that don't work for various subtle reasons. I worry that if you make these techniques unpatentable, they'd become trade secrets and nobody would publish them, and we'd be worse off as a community.

beambot 11y ago
I hear that "nobody would publish" argument bandied about... but is there any evidence to back it up? These were University researchers. It's not like they're in it for the crazy-$$. In my experience, they'd publish anyway... for all the right reasons: furthering humanity, intellectual curiosity, academic prestige, etc.
- rayiner 11y ago
  University researchers like John Hennessy (current President of Stanford), who made a bunch of money founding MIPS and Atheros (both of which were valued heavily for their patent portfolios)?
  - beambot 11y ago
    The order matters. He was a professor first (did the publishing) and then founded the companies second. So there are really two questions: (1) When he was a professor, would he have still published the work even if he couldn't patent and profit from it later? My assertion: Yes, he probably would've still published. (2) Would he have founded MIPS (and made it successful) w/o the patents? I don't know, but that was beyond the scope of my claims. ;) Or perhaps: If he hadn't patented it, but just published... then would other companies have picked up his technology (for free) and integrated it into their products, resulting in a net win for society anyway?
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Because of the 1-year publication bar, you basically have to prepare a patent application concurrently with publication. So in practice publishing and patenting are simultaneous. You also have to consider the prospective impact of the rule. Would smart ambitious people go into the PhD/academia track if they couldn't parlay research into a business opportunity? Many wouldn't. Of course patents aren't a necessary condition for turning research into a business. But for hard R&D type businesses, they're a pretty important criteria to getting investment.
- wsxcde 11y ago
  Anecdotally, having worked at AMD and Intel, both companies have lots of internal knowledge about what it takes to produce a high-performance x86 processor. Some of it comes out as patents, but if you outlawed that, I guarantee you none of it would be known to the public.
georgemcbay 11y ago
Given the incredibly long life of patents relative to how quickly the computer industry moves (still, in the post-Moore's Law era), I'd argue trade secrets would be preferable. If someone did implement this into a chip that was successful, it would take a lot less than 20 years to reverse engineer how they did it, even if they took steps to avoid reverse engineering.

by wsxcde 11y ago

beambot 11y ago

I hear that "nobody would publish" argument bandied about... but is there any evidence to back it up? These were University researchers. It's not like they're in it for the crazy-$$. In my experience, they'd publish anyway... for all the right reasons: furthering humanity, intellectual curiosity, academic prestige, etc.

rayiner 11y ago
University researchers like John Hennessy (current President of Stanford), who made a bunch of money founding MIPS and Atheros (both of which were valued heavily for their patent portfolios)?
- beambot 11y ago
  The order matters. He was a professor first (did the publishing) and then founded the companies second. So there are really two questions: (1) When he was a professor, would he have still published the work even if he couldn't patent and profit from it later? My assertion: Yes, he probably would've still published. (2) Would he have founded MIPS (and made it successful) w/o the patents? I don't know, but that was beyond the scope of my claims. ;) Or perhaps: If he hadn't patented it, but just published... then would other companies have picked up his technology (for free) and integrated it into their products, resulting in a net win for society anyway?
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Because of the 1-year publication bar, you basically have to prepare a patent application concurrently with publication. So in practice publishing and patenting are simultaneous. You also have to consider the prospective impact of the rule. Would smart ambitious people go into the PhD/academia track if they couldn't parlay research into a business opportunity? Many wouldn't. Of course patents aren't a necessary condition for turning research into a business. But for hard R&D type businesses, they're a pretty important criteria to getting investment.
wsxcde 11y ago
Anecdotally, having worked at AMD and Intel, both companies have lots of internal knowledge about what it takes to produce a high-performance x86 processor. Some of it comes out as patents, but if you outlawed that, I guarantee you none of it would be known to the public.

georgemcbay 11y ago

Given the incredibly long life of patents relative to how quickly the computer industry moves (still, in the post-Moore's Law era), I'd argue trade secrets would be preferable. If someone did implement this into a chip that was successful, it would take a lot less than 20 years to reverse engineer how they did it, even if they took steps to avoid reverse engineering.