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In what other technology or industry can the practitioners carry everything they need for innovation around in their backpacks. If machine shops were so ubiqui
by brlewis 16y ago
In what other technology or industry can the practitioners carry everything they need for innovation around in their backpacks. If machine shops were so ubiquitous and portable, mechanical engineering patents would be unnecessary too.
Also, software became patentable in 1991 when a lower court overruled US Supreme Court precedent that software for general-purpose computers is not patentable. Some people cite Diamond v. Diehr (1980) as enabling software patents, but that contradicts what the court opinion actually says.
- kenjackson 16y agoI'm not sure what portability has to do with patents? If anything I'd think the opposite to be true. Patents seem more necessary when the barrier to replicate is low. If I have to build a $500M fab that will take 3 years to build, patents seem less necessary, than if I can simply read your code (or disassmble) and copy your logic in a week (or automate the process to copy your code, but do some semantic preserving changes to not violate copyright law).
- notahacker 16y agoIf I have to invest $500M and three years to test my hypothesised process improvement, which my competitors can implement with much lower sunk costs if it works, I'm not going to get the funding to do it. I shouldn't need funding to refactor my code.
- jbri 16y agoYou don't need patents to protect a specific implementation - code is copyrightable, and stealing your particular code (or even creating a derivative work like your "semantic-preserving changes" comment suggests) is illegal even without patents. In order to avoid running afoul of copyright law you'd need to do a vacuum reimplementation based just on the description/specification of the algorithm - all that patents achieve is making such vacuum reimplementation also illegal, and it's up in the air whether that's even a good thing or not.
- kenjackson 16y agoYou don't need patents to protect a specific implementation - code is copyrightable, and stealing your particular code (or even creating a derivative work like your "semantic-preserving changes" comment suggests) is illegal even without patents. I think the case you're interested in is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_International,_Inc._v._Altai,_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internation.... Based on trials that have used the filtration technique, if I know the issue ahead of time, I can workaround it.
- jbri 16y agoReading the actual page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Int._Inc._v._Altai_Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Int._Inc._v...), the "workaround" is a clean-room reimplementation. Unless you were referring to something else?
- kenjackson 16y agoThat's how they did it in this case, but the precedent for determining infringement uses filtration, not the process by which you created the implementation (clean room or otherwise). Of course, if you do walk this close to the line, you probably don't want to leave a paper trail that you're doing so.
- brlewis 16y agoThe purpose of patents is not to prevent copying ideas. It's to promote progress (c.f. US Constitution).