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Software patents aren't particularly useful for making money with software. Hackers produce code, which is protected by copyright, and that's how the law protec
by chc 10y ago
Software patents aren't particularly useful for making money with software. Hackers produce code, which is protected by copyright, and that's how the law protects them from having their work stolen. Patents are a bad match for software, and are mainly used for two things:
1. Trolls use them to seek rent from independent creations.
2. Companies that are not purely trolls but need a vector to attack another company sometimes use them in the same way trolls do.
3. Entities that actually make software use them as a deterrent against patent claims.
Nobody actually depends on them for the profitability of software they've made, and nobody actually benefits from the disclosures in expired patents. Software patents are purely weapons. The hypothetical genius you're talking about would not be harmed at all if they went away, and would be better off because they'd be spared the vicissitudes of patent trolls' attention.
- wbl 10y agoWhat about 4: research institute that invents an audio compression method? The work that goes into mp3 isn't just coding the method.
- hackinthebochs 10y agoDebating software patents with silicon valley types is a losing battle. They're the types who would stand to profit from someones non-obvious software invention not being patentable, and so most such people are unsurprisingly against software patents. There's little nuance involved beyond that.
- bogositosius 10y agoWhat is a "Silicon Valley type"?
- hackinthebochs 10y agoPeople who see themselves as entrepreneurs/hustlers/hackers, in contrast to scientists/inventors/researchers.
- bogositosius 10y agoCan you name any examples of "non-obvious" software "inventions" that require patent protection?
- hackinthebochs 10y agoRSA is the usual example. Do you disagree with it?
- bogositosius 10y agoYes, I disagree. Why does/did RSA require a patent?
- hackinthebochs 10y agoRequire is the wrong word. The question is were we better off with or without them having a patent. Not keeping RSA a trade secret seems like a win for society.
- bogositosius 10y agoThat presupposes a lot. Who says it would have been kept a "trade secret"? And, supposing it would have been, who's to say someone else wouldn't have come along with an alternative open solution?
- hackinthebochs 10y agoThe difference is that person now has to sell their idea packaged in a finished product to see any return on their idea. If you could patent it and license it, you could make money on the idea while leaving the work of developing a polished product to the experts at delivering products to end users.
- bogositosius 10y agoIdeas in the software world are essentially worthless. Execution (your ability to implement the idea) is what actually matters. So, forgive me if I'm not losing sleep over the person who has to actually do work to see "return on their idea."
- hackinthebochs 10y agoThe same can be said about inventions in any sphere. But that's exactly what patents correct for; to give value to ideas independent of them being productized. And so your point is not at all an argument against software patents.
- chc 10y agoPatents are not meant to be a way to stake a claim on an idea (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-you-patent-an-idea https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-you-patent-an-idea) — they're a system where you get a temporary monopoly in exchange for sharing a novel, non-obvious and non-abstract invention.
- hackinthebochs 10y agoTo be clear, I didn't say that's what patents are for (i.e. their purpose), but what they correct for, i.e. what they do in practice. But I don't see that the two descriptions are different in practice. Patents incentivize publicly releasing an invention instead of keeping it a trade secret (or letting it languish). The problem this is solving is that ideas aren't valued by the market, only products. But society benefits from ideas independent of products. And so the solution is a system to put value on ideas, ergo patents. This meshes with my alternate description.
- shubb 10y agoThere are alternatives to patents - for example hosting research intensive parts of your system in the cloud. This is pretty much what is happening with speech recognition these days among other things. No need to worry about opensource, or the fragility of patents, when you keep your technology a secret. Another approach is to use trade secrets - you encrypt parts of your application - reducing performance - enabling you to sue anyone who decompiles it in order to replicate, or indeed interface with it. Patents would actually seem the least of these evils, if they were only less broken.