6 ms·

Perhaps you can provide a counter example that shows the usefulness of software patents. I personally think they are absurd, as demonstrated by the OP, but am

Perhaps you can provide a counter example that shows the usefulness of software patents. I personally think they are absurd, as demonstrated by the OP, but am open to changing my thinking if proven wrong. The internet has leveled the playing field for everyone. But one of the few ways that big corporations can take advantage of their size against smaller, more innovative entities is by throwing money into a legal battle which the smaller entity can't afford to fight. Equal rights under the law. But currently, the more money you have, the equaler you get.

fnid2 17y ago
Okay, then the problem is not software patents, or patents in general, but that they unfairly tip the scales in favor of the big corporations. How do we fix that problem? That problem exists outside the world of patents and software. Monsanto patents seeds and those are just strings of DNA which are essentially just four characters repeated in a seemingly random order. And yet farmers lose their farms over those strings of four letters. Not because they were even choosing to use the seeds, corn is just pollinated by the air and some of that code got into their crop as it blew in from the neighbors' field -- a farmer who did use Monsanto's DNA. It's absurd, I know. One case on the not absurd side of the spectrum, is, as it turns out, the original case that ruled software could be patented in the first place. It was by a guy who had to fight, iirc, all the way to the supreme court to protect his right to patent his software invention. I'll try to find a link, but is a true story indeed.
- evanrmurphy 17y ago
  > Okay, then the problem is not software patents, or patents in general, but that they unfairly tip the scales in favor of the big corporations. Agreed. Legal issues (patents included) tend to favor big corporations because you're more likely to win a case if you spend more money on it. I don't know about all the factors contributing to this, but I think a big one is that law (in the U.S., anyway) is difficult to understand for laypeople, and so you need lawyers to defend you, and the lawyers that cost more have higher success rates.
  - ciniglio 17y ago
    More likely, lawyers with higher success rates cost more.
    - evanrmurphy 17y ago
      Sure, but it's beside my point, which is that the small g(uy|al) would be better off if lawyers were either obsoleted by a ``Law 2.0'' or made into a purely public resource.
- zackham 17y ago
  I don't think it is fair to criticize patents on DNA and defend patents on software with the argument that DNA is just a combination of four characters - you could say the same thing about any piece of encoded information, software most notably in binary.
- lutorm 17y ago
  Dude, do not argue that software patents are ok because genome is patentable. That's going in the wrong direction.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    Well, perhaps to add more content here w.r.t. the Monsanto case, I mean, the court should have been able to determine if the wind just blew the pollen in to pollinate the plants. IANAL, perhaps an IP attorney who is knows what they are talking about can explain why that case worked out the way it does. Anyway, it's pretty unfortunate how that one example worked out, but the point I failed to make, was that the engineers who invented that wonderful corn that is immune to disease and predation and grows happily almost anywhere in the world and brings great value to the future of the world are no more or less clever than someone who assembles for loops, encryption functions, and database calls into something just as valuable to the future of computing. In a way, those are even more letters and numbers and perhaps physical systems too, just represented in code, and therefore should be even more patentable than just 4 letters repeating in a sequence. Perhaps it is another type of discrimination I am addressing. A discrimination against a new kind of intelligence. A discrimination against machine intelligence. The artificial brains and neural nets and perhaps years of training are somehow different than a solar panel that can follow the sun. I don't see a difference and I don't see any reason the law should make such a distinction. That's something that may come up in the future, but it's not really a problem now. Somewhere along the way though, We will probably start talking about giving rights to machines who have claimed their identities. We let corporations have all the rights of humans, why not individual sentient robots? But again I digress. My argument is this: If we are going to do away with software patents, we should do away with patents all together. I don't know what that world will be like and if that is the solution to these kinds of patent problems, not just for computer science, but for all fields, then I say let's do it, but don't single out software patents and axe just those.
    - lutorm 17y ago
      While the outcome of the Monsanto case was beyond absurd, that wasn't what I was referring to wrt genome patents. If you invent a lifeform, then I think it's fine that you patent it. What makes no sense to me is how the genomes of naturally occurring life forms can be patented. By the same rationale, Clyde Tombaugh could have patented Pluto, and Galileo would have patents to Jupiter's moons. It makes no sense whatsover.
- mhb 17y ago
  How do we fix that problem? Loser pays.
  - btilly 17y ago
    With loser pays the big corporation can always generate such legal fees that, even if you have a 70% chance of prevailing, you'd be an idiot to risk bankruptcy.
    - mhb 17y ago
      And why is this worse than the current situation in which the same thing can happen but there is no chance of a recovery by the loser?
kmavm 17y ago
When working correctly, patents allow information that would be a corporate secret to be more openly disclosed. In my career, I've been able to discuss technical details more frankly in blog posts and academic publications because we know that our large, well-funded competitors would not be able to abuse that disclosure to harm our business. The public good here is hard to measure from the other side, as a reader of those blog posts and papers; if it were not for IP protection, I would not willingly endanger my job or business to discuss the technology so openly.
anamax 17y ago
> Perhaps you can provide a counter example that shows the usefulness of software patents. There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. I want all useful algorithms to become publically known. Patents help accomplish that. How do you propose to get people to forego trade secret protection?
- ssp 17y ago
  There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. Which ones? I want all useful algorithms to become publically known. Patents help accomplish that. I don't think that's true. If you invent an algorithm that is genuinely novel and you get a competitive advantage from it, patenting it is the last thing you want to do. Keep it a trade secret. Why? Because as a legitimate company you can't enforce the patent. If you try, you'll just be counter-sued for infringing someone else's patents.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    PKZip was one that really moved the compression industry forward. JPEG is another. The current H.264 debate is a sound one and the owners of that patent have even publicly stated that it'll be free to use for the next 5 years or so. Imagine how many better methods may be discovered to compress and stream video than H.264 over the next half decade. That's a lot of time in this industry!
  - anamax 17y ago
    > There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. The one that I was thinking of was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkars_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkars_algorithm . > If you invent an algorithm that is genuinely novel and you get a competitive advantage from it, patenting it is the last thing you want to do. Keep it a trade secret. You're assuming that the competitive advantage from using the algorithm exceeds the value that one can get from licensing. That's not necessarily true. > Because as a legitimate company you can't enforce the patent. If you try, you'll just be counter-sued for infringing someone else's patents. That's not necessarily or always true. Take drugs - the majors don't clone one another - they honor each other's patents.
GrandMasterBirt 17y ago
For example: I come up with a system where basically I define 1 xml file which is then read by 3 different mechanisms to generate the m/v/c of a web application. the definition significantly saves times on web development when using the system. Now look the argument is "oh its just a few algorithms used in a certain way, that should not be patented". however how is that any different than creating a ammo holder for .45mm bullets which can be put into any gun that can use .45mm bullets? Its just taking some metal and springs and putting them together in some novel way which has not yet been done before. Remember once you see the invention that is TRULY innovative AND simple but nobody quite thought of using it that way before, it becomes a no-brainer. You start to think "yea given a few hrs I can make one of these myself without any special training or anything, without even looking at schematics, or even taking the one I have apart" but the fact is that nobody thought of it before. The fact is, it was mentioned in a '96 letter, we must decide what part of programming is the "words" and what part is the "innovation" so that people can't do the equivalent of copyrighting words, but they can copyright books (the end product). (yes I am aware that patent != copyright, but try to see the analogy)

fnid2 17y ago

Okay, then the problem is not software patents, or patents in general, but that they unfairly tip the scales in favor of the big corporations. How do we fix that problem? That problem exists outside the world of patents and software. Monsanto patents seeds and those are just strings of DNA which are essentially just four characters repeated in a seemingly random order. And yet farmers lose their farms over those strings of four letters. Not because they were even choosing to use the seeds, corn is just pollinated by the air and some of that code got into their crop as it blew in from the neighbors' field -- a farmer who did use Monsanto's DNA. It's absurd, I know. One case on the not absurd side of the spectrum, is, as it turns out, the original case that ruled software could be patented in the first place. It was by a guy who had to fight, iirc, all the way to the supreme court to protect his right to patent his software invention. I'll try to find a link, but is a true story indeed.

evanrmurphy 17y ago
> Okay, then the problem is not software patents, or patents in general, but that they unfairly tip the scales in favor of the big corporations. Agreed. Legal issues (patents included) tend to favor big corporations because you're more likely to win a case if you spend more money on it. I don't know about all the factors contributing to this, but I think a big one is that law (in the U.S., anyway) is difficult to understand for laypeople, and so you need lawyers to defend you, and the lawyers that cost more have higher success rates.
- ciniglio 17y ago
  More likely, lawyers with higher success rates cost more.
  - evanrmurphy 17y ago
    Sure, but it's beside my point, which is that the small g(uy|al) would be better off if lawyers were either obsoleted by a ``Law 2.0'' or made into a purely public resource.
zackham 17y ago
I don't think it is fair to criticize patents on DNA and defend patents on software with the argument that DNA is just a combination of four characters - you could say the same thing about any piece of encoded information, software most notably in binary.
lutorm 17y ago
Dude, do not argue that software patents are ok because genome is patentable. That's going in the wrong direction.
- fnid2 17y ago
  Well, perhaps to add more content here w.r.t. the Monsanto case, I mean, the court should have been able to determine if the wind just blew the pollen in to pollinate the plants. IANAL, perhaps an IP attorney who is knows what they are talking about can explain why that case worked out the way it does. Anyway, it's pretty unfortunate how that one example worked out, but the point I failed to make, was that the engineers who invented that wonderful corn that is immune to disease and predation and grows happily almost anywhere in the world and brings great value to the future of the world are no more or less clever than someone who assembles for loops, encryption functions, and database calls into something just as valuable to the future of computing. In a way, those are even more letters and numbers and perhaps physical systems too, just represented in code, and therefore should be even more patentable than just 4 letters repeating in a sequence. Perhaps it is another type of discrimination I am addressing. A discrimination against a new kind of intelligence. A discrimination against machine intelligence. The artificial brains and neural nets and perhaps years of training are somehow different than a solar panel that can follow the sun. I don't see a difference and I don't see any reason the law should make such a distinction. That's something that may come up in the future, but it's not really a problem now. Somewhere along the way though, We will probably start talking about giving rights to machines who have claimed their identities. We let corporations have all the rights of humans, why not individual sentient robots? But again I digress. My argument is this: If we are going to do away with software patents, we should do away with patents all together. I don't know what that world will be like and if that is the solution to these kinds of patent problems, not just for computer science, but for all fields, then I say let's do it, but don't single out software patents and axe just those.
  - lutorm 17y ago
    While the outcome of the Monsanto case was beyond absurd, that wasn't what I was referring to wrt genome patents. If you invent a lifeform, then I think it's fine that you patent it. What makes no sense to me is how the genomes of naturally occurring life forms can be patented. By the same rationale, Clyde Tombaugh could have patented Pluto, and Galileo would have patents to Jupiter's moons. It makes no sense whatsover.
mhb 17y ago
How do we fix that problem? Loser pays.
- btilly 17y ago
  With loser pays the big corporation can always generate such legal fees that, even if you have a 70% chance of prevailing, you'd be an idiot to risk bankruptcy.
  - mhb 17y ago
    And why is this worse than the current situation in which the same thing can happen but there is no chance of a recovery by the loser?

kmavm 17y ago

When working correctly, patents allow information that would be a corporate secret to be more openly disclosed. In my career, I've been able to discuss technical details more frankly in blog posts and academic publications because we know that our large, well-funded competitors would not be able to abuse that disclosure to harm our business. The public good here is hard to measure from the other side, as a reader of those blog posts and papers; if it were not for IP protection, I would not willingly endanger my job or business to discuss the technology so openly.

anamax 17y ago

> Perhaps you can provide a counter example that shows the usefulness of software patents. There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. I want all useful algorithms to become publically known. Patents help accomplish that. How do you propose to get people to forego trade secret protection?

ssp 17y ago
There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. Which ones? I want all useful algorithms to become publically known. Patents help accomplish that. I don't think that's true. If you invent an algorithm that is genuinely novel and you get a competitive advantage from it, patenting it is the last thing you want to do. Keep it a trade secret. Why? Because as a legitimate company you can't enforce the patent. If you try, you'll just be counter-sued for infringing someone else's patents.
- fnid2 17y ago
  PKZip was one that really moved the compression industry forward. JPEG is another. The current H.264 debate is a sound one and the owners of that patent have even publicly stated that it'll be free to use for the next 5 years or so. Imagine how many better methods may be discovered to compress and stream video than H.264 over the next half decade. That's a lot of time in this industry!
- anamax 17y ago
  > There are some interesting optimization methods that probably wouldn't have been made public if it weren't for patents. The one that I was thinking of was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkars_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmarkars_algorithm . > If you invent an algorithm that is genuinely novel and you get a competitive advantage from it, patenting it is the last thing you want to do. Keep it a trade secret. You're assuming that the competitive advantage from using the algorithm exceeds the value that one can get from licensing. That's not necessarily true. > Because as a legitimate company you can't enforce the patent. If you try, you'll just be counter-sued for infringing someone else's patents. That's not necessarily or always true. Take drugs - the majors don't clone one another - they honor each other's patents.

GrandMasterBirt 17y ago

For example: I come up with a system where basically I define 1 xml file which is then read by 3 different mechanisms to generate the m/v/c of a web application. the definition significantly saves times on web development when using the system. Now look the argument is "oh its just a few algorithms used in a certain way, that should not be patented". however how is that any different than creating a ammo holder for .45mm bullets which can be put into any gun that can use .45mm bullets? Its just taking some metal and springs and putting them together in some novel way which has not yet been done before. Remember once you see the invention that is TRULY innovative AND simple but nobody quite thought of using it that way before, it becomes a no-brainer. You start to think "yea given a few hrs I can make one of these myself without any special training or anything, without even looking at schematics, or even taking the one I have apart" but the fact is that nobody thought of it before. The fact is, it was mentioned in a '96 letter, we must decide what part of programming is the "words" and what part is the "innovation" so that people can't do the equivalent of copyrighting words, but they can copyright books (the end product). (yes I am aware that patent != copyright, but try to see the analogy)