5 ms·

I'm really waiting for the day that software patents are finally struck down and we can stop this farce of pretending software patents are actually useful and v

by rtkwe 7y ago

I'm really waiting for the day that software patents are finally struck down and we can stop this farce of pretending software patents are actually useful and valuable beyond being a cudgel in legal battles.

vikramkr 7y ago
Being a cudgel in legal battles is quite a lot of value though, that's basically the point and is how patents are meant to support and reward innovation.
- ouid 7y ago
  youve gone from point a to point b rather discontinuously with this argument
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    It's not discontinuous - that's just the theory behind patents. Patents give inventors a legal "cudgel" as the commenter before put it, which makes innovation more profitable. Patents are just a legal construct, the idea is that having a patent on an invention gives you access to legal tools to protect a temporary monopoly which makes innovation more profitable, so you don't have to worry about investing money in innovation and then losing all of your profits because of copycats. However well that actually works and whether or not it ends up being a net positive for innovation is a different question, but all a patent is is a legal tool to stop others from using or making money off of your innovation, as enforced through lawsuits in the court system.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  There's a second part to the idea of patents though they protect innovations with the idea that once they expire other people can implement them and software patents fail abjectly at that second. There's no meat the the implementation, all modern software patents seem to boil down to connect a client to a server and display the results on an interface. There were some genuinely useful patents back in the 80s it looks like for stuff like MP3 encoding. Also there should be some additional value to people not just companies for the government to be granting legal monopolies, and it should also be restricted to things that are actually implementable not extremely vague system level diagrams.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    From what I understand, those sorts of vague software patents are far far harder to get today - in theory they never should have been granted. Unfortunately, mistakes were made, but in recent years the legal system is catching up to that, and hopefully as those older patents expire newer patents along those lines won't be granted "On June 19, 2014 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International that 'merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_...
- xkjkls 7y ago
  Software patents end up being so vague that basically every large company is violating some in some way. They don't get in legal battles with eachother often because the resulting legal decision will be somewhat random and risks huge retaliation in counter-suits.
Angostura 7y ago
These aren't only software patents
- rtkwe 7y ago
  I'm not knocking them for their materials or process patents for some of their remaining R&D arms but the majority probably are software patents which I think are 95-99% unusable garbage outside of a legal fight. Generally software patents are too broad and don't contain enough implementation detail to actually use them once they do expire which is one of the important parts of the bargain for patent protection initially.
bluGill 7y ago
I've seen some awful code that I wished was patented just so that nobody would be able to make that mistake...
stuzenz 7y ago
This might be of interest: I just finished (a light) editing of an English (machine translated) version of a book for someone I have a lot of respect for who is a Japan-based mentor of mine - Hiroshi Maruyama had 26 years in IBM research, eventually as the director of IBM Tokyo Research Labs. In one chapter of the book he provides a view across a possible way to fix the patent system which I found interesting. It referenced ideas from the following paper - https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/S376023B46442F89/building_a_new_ip_marketplace-report.pdf https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/S376023B46442F89/building_a_ne... Some of the key points of the IP marketplace were - fees for the licensee fee would be set upfront; - the patentee would pay a % value to the government as a tax; - if the patentee wanted to use the patent exclusively, a high licensing fee could be set, but that would also result in a higher tax being due to be paid. The approach was to dis-incentivize bad actors putting monopolies on products via patents. It would also encourage higher utility value from patents under this system. Another interesting concept Maruyama's book covered was LOT networks used to fight against Trolls. - https://lotnet.com/ https://lotnet.com/ The idea with the Lot network was that if a patent did get rights to a patent from a member of the lot network, If any of the patents from members falls into the hands of a patent troll, all other members are automatically granted a free license of the patent. The book covers themes on how to do research in corporate organizations (the audience focus remains with Japanese researchers/students) and has some interesting discussions. I will provide a link to the book when it is available (if there is interest). The book is an updated version of this Japanese book: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4764903822/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4764903822/ref=dbs_a_def...
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Maybe, it certainly sounds much better at a glance than the current system though there's tough stuff like how to set that value in such a way that independent inventors aren't forced to partner with a large company in order to use the patent system. I think some reforms like that combined with a much stricter definition of "patent-able" for some categories and/or better challenge mechanisms. Getting a bad patent thrown out due to prior art is still quite expensive and trying to evaluate if a patent is non-obvious is quite difficult to litigate.
- 7y ago

by rtkwe 7y ago

vikramkr 7y ago

Being a cudgel in legal battles is quite a lot of value though, that's basically the point and is how patents are meant to support and reward innovation.

ouid 7y ago
youve gone from point a to point b rather discontinuously with this argument
- vikramkr 7y ago
  It's not discontinuous - that's just the theory behind patents. Patents give inventors a legal "cudgel" as the commenter before put it, which makes innovation more profitable. Patents are just a legal construct, the idea is that having a patent on an invention gives you access to legal tools to protect a temporary monopoly which makes innovation more profitable, so you don't have to worry about investing money in innovation and then losing all of your profits because of copycats. However well that actually works and whether or not it ends up being a net positive for innovation is a different question, but all a patent is is a legal tool to stop others from using or making money off of your innovation, as enforced through lawsuits in the court system.
rtkwe 7y ago
There's a second part to the idea of patents though they protect innovations with the idea that once they expire other people can implement them and software patents fail abjectly at that second. There's no meat the the implementation, all modern software patents seem to boil down to connect a client to a server and display the results on an interface. There were some genuinely useful patents back in the 80s it looks like for stuff like MP3 encoding. Also there should be some additional value to people not just companies for the government to be granting legal monopolies, and it should also be restricted to things that are actually implementable not extremely vague system level diagrams.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  From what I understand, those sorts of vague software patents are far far harder to get today - in theory they never should have been granted. Unfortunately, mistakes were made, but in recent years the legal system is catching up to that, and hopefully as those older patents expire newer patents along those lines won't be granted "On June 19, 2014 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International that 'merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_...
xkjkls 7y ago
Software patents end up being so vague that basically every large company is violating some in some way. They don't get in legal battles with eachother often because the resulting legal decision will be somewhat random and risks huge retaliation in counter-suits.

Angostura 7y ago

These aren't only software patents

rtkwe 7y ago
I'm not knocking them for their materials or process patents for some of their remaining R&D arms but the majority probably are software patents which I think are 95-99% unusable garbage outside of a legal fight. Generally software patents are too broad and don't contain enough implementation detail to actually use them once they do expire which is one of the important parts of the bargain for patent protection initially.

bluGill 7y ago

I've seen some awful code that I wished was patented just so that nobody would be able to make that mistake...

stuzenz 7y ago

This might be of interest: I just finished (a light) editing of an English (machine translated) version of a book for someone I have a lot of respect for who is a Japan-based mentor of mine - Hiroshi Maruyama had 26 years in IBM research, eventually as the director of IBM Tokyo Research Labs. In one chapter of the book he provides a view across a possible way to fix the patent system which I found interesting. It referenced ideas from the following paper - https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/S376023B46442F89/building_a_new_ip_marketplace-report.pdf https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/S376023B46442F89/building_a_ne... Some of the key points of the IP marketplace were - fees for the licensee fee would be set upfront; - the patentee would pay a % value to the government as a tax; - if the patentee wanted to use the patent exclusively, a high licensing fee could be set, but that would also result in a higher tax being due to be paid. The approach was to dis-incentivize bad actors putting monopolies on products via patents. It would also encourage higher utility value from patents under this system. Another interesting concept Maruyama's book covered was LOT networks used to fight against Trolls. - https://lotnet.com/ https://lotnet.com/ The idea with the Lot network was that if a patent did get rights to a patent from a member of the lot network, If any of the patents from members falls into the hands of a patent troll, all other members are automatically granted a free license of the patent. The book covers themes on how to do research in corporate organizations (the audience focus remains with Japanese researchers/students) and has some interesting discussions. I will provide a link to the book when it is available (if there is interest). The book is an updated version of this Japanese book: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4764903822/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4764903822/ref=dbs_a_def...

rtkwe 7y ago
Maybe, it certainly sounds much better at a glance than the current system though there's tough stuff like how to set that value in such a way that independent inventors aren't forced to partner with a large company in order to use the patent system. I think some reforms like that combined with a much stricter definition of "patent-able" for some categories and/or better challenge mechanisms. Getting a bad patent thrown out due to prior art is still quite expensive and trying to evaluate if a patent is non-obvious is quite difficult to litigate.
7y ago