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I think the patent system is broken, not software patents. Patent trolling is blatant abuse, and none of these loopholes ever get fixed because patenting is a

I think the patent system is broken, not software patents. Patent trolling is blatant abuse, and none of these loopholes ever get fixed because patenting is a one hundred year old legal concept that hasn't been touched in decades. Why not create a better system? To patent your idea it should have to be non-obvious; therefore pinch-to-zoom wouldn't be patentable. To patent your idea it would have to take a significant amount of work to implement. Maybe certain 'types' of ideas cant be used to litigate for financial compensation. Really theres so many ways the system could be better but i don't see the need to throw it out. People like having their ideas protected and valued. The concept is there, it's just been corrupted by corporate greed.

chrismcb 7y ago
Patents are supposed to be not obvious. Pinch to zoom it's an idea and shouldn't be patentable. The process of how you pinch to zoom is a different story though. The amount of work required shouldn't be an issue.
- zmmmmm 7y ago
  Even then, I think the "process of pinch to zoom" is mostly about emulating nature and should be considered under the same idea as that you should not be able to patent a biological process. And if you say "well how you emulate is patentable" then I will say, there are only 2 choices: - there is only one way to implement it: then it is just an embodiment of the idea and shouldn't be patentable - there are multiple ways to implement it: then there is no point patenting them because somebody will just do it a different way and you have no protection ... except ... copyrights which are already what everyone uses for software.
saberdancer 7y ago
It's important to allow protection for ideas/products/software/drugs that take a large amount of investment to develop. If you spent 10 years and millions developing a better video compression algorithm, why there should not be a way for you to offer it to market, but at the same time have it protected against copying. Similar problem occurs in biotech, if you developed a drug and proved it helps cure a disease, usually it is trivially simple to create the same drug (generics). This means that without a patent, companies would lose part of the incentive to innovate. However, if your patent is simple, it's an idea like pinch to zoom that realistically didn't need millions in research to develop, then that patent should not be granted as the purpose of the patent is not return on investment from research.
- TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
  One of my big problems with file format patents is that historically they've been abused and used to place artificial restrictions on the user. There should be playback and encoding exceptions for personal non-commercial use, or at the give the user an option to export / convert their media into a standard format. Have people forgotten the terrible user experience with media file formats in the 90s and 00s? You had to download a bunch of codecs and fiddle around with different programs in order to watch a video. The details on this point are a bit fuzzy, but I also remember having to needlessly jump through hoops in order to encode some audio files for my MP3 player. Fast-forward to the current year: now I can use ffmpeg for conversions and either mpv or VLC for playback, providing a vastly superior user experience. This is only possible because the developers of these tools have opted to completely disregard software patents.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  Right, except for you software example, which in the case of video compression is purely math (which is discoverable, not patentable). It would be illogical to allow that patent.

chrismcb 7y ago

Patents are supposed to be not obvious. Pinch to zoom it's an idea and shouldn't be patentable. The process of how you pinch to zoom is a different story though. The amount of work required shouldn't be an issue.

zmmmmm 7y ago
Even then, I think the "process of pinch to zoom" is mostly about emulating nature and should be considered under the same idea as that you should not be able to patent a biological process. And if you say "well how you emulate is patentable" then I will say, there are only 2 choices: - there is only one way to implement it: then it is just an embodiment of the idea and shouldn't be patentable - there are multiple ways to implement it: then there is no point patenting them because somebody will just do it a different way and you have no protection ... except ... copyrights which are already what everyone uses for software.

saberdancer 7y ago

It's important to allow protection for ideas/products/software/drugs that take a large amount of investment to develop. If you spent 10 years and millions developing a better video compression algorithm, why there should not be a way for you to offer it to market, but at the same time have it protected against copying. Similar problem occurs in biotech, if you developed a drug and proved it helps cure a disease, usually it is trivially simple to create the same drug (generics). This means that without a patent, companies would lose part of the incentive to innovate. However, if your patent is simple, it's an idea like pinch to zoom that realistically didn't need millions in research to develop, then that patent should not be granted as the purpose of the patent is not return on investment from research.

TheAceOfHearts 7y ago
One of my big problems with file format patents is that historically they've been abused and used to place artificial restrictions on the user. There should be playback and encoding exceptions for personal non-commercial use, or at the give the user an option to export / convert their media into a standard format. Have people forgotten the terrible user experience with media file formats in the 90s and 00s? You had to download a bunch of codecs and fiddle around with different programs in order to watch a video. The details on this point are a bit fuzzy, but I also remember having to needlessly jump through hoops in order to encode some audio files for my MP3 player. Fast-forward to the current year: now I can use ffmpeg for conversions and either mpv or VLC for playback, providing a vastly superior user experience. This is only possible because the developers of these tools have opted to completely disregard software patents.
kstrauser 7y ago
Right, except for you software example, which in the case of video compression is purely math (which is discoverable, not patentable). It would be illogical to allow that patent.