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What you describe is what the patent system was created for. It's pretty easy to see the benefits in encouraging the advancement of costly technology. On the o

What you describe is what the patent system was created for. It's pretty easy to see the benefits in encouraging the advancement of costly technology. On the other hand, it's software and business process "patents" that I think are harder to defend. Those are better protected IMO through Copyright as opposed to patents. OpenSource licenses (Apache and GPL, Mozilla, Eclipse) have particular provisions set aside to grant licenses to patents based on usage (BSD and MIT make no claims on patents), but Copyright is maintained. Trolls don't "use" anything, so the OpenSource license doesn't protect you from them (maybe indirectly GPLv3). I think it would better the industry if we properly talk about which types of patents we have issues with.

gutnor 11y ago
What I don't understand with software patent and business process is that we have basically given up the "non-obvious to people of the trade" requirement. You only need to see once, the "slide left to right to unlock" feature to be able to reproduce it in your platform without having to look at any piece of code. The idea is not obvious, but the implementation very much is and that's what patent are supposed to protect, implementations. (I'm picking on Apple there, but that's just an example on top of my head, software patent are all like that, except exceptional algorithms that are back by math behind and are therefore ironically non patentable ) It is like the light bulb patent. If just seeing a light bulb would have allowed any electrical engineer to make one over the we in his garage, I don't think it would have been patentable.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  "Not obvious" means "not obvious on the day before the patent was filed". The point of the patent is to explain it to the point that it is that one ordinarily skilled can now implement the idea. And copyright protects implementations. Patents protect ideas.

gutnor 11y ago

What I don't understand with software patent and business process is that we have basically given up the "non-obvious to people of the trade" requirement. You only need to see once, the "slide left to right to unlock" feature to be able to reproduce it in your platform without having to look at any piece of code. The idea is not obvious, but the implementation very much is and that's what patent are supposed to protect, implementations. (I'm picking on Apple there, but that's just an example on top of my head, software patent are all like that, except exceptional algorithms that are back by math behind and are therefore ironically non patentable ) It is like the light bulb patent. If just seeing a light bulb would have allowed any electrical engineer to make one over the we in his garage, I don't think it would have been patentable.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
"Not obvious" means "not obvious on the day before the patent was filed". The point of the patent is to explain it to the point that it is that one ordinarily skilled can now implement the idea. And copyright protects implementations. Patents protect ideas.