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>>No, software patents are a tool for trolls, nothing more. Every invalidated software patent is a victory for mankind. This is much too strong, I think. I'm a

by miked 18y ago

>>No, software patents are a tool for trolls, nothing more. Every invalidated software patent is a victory for mankind. This is much too strong, I think. I'm a co-founder of a small biotech startup with a single patent to its name. We had trouble enough raising money even with the patent. Do you think that I, or anyone else, would have put up with all the pain and the long hours in the lab if we new that Agilent or Biorad could swoop in at any moment and take our markets away from us using their marketing clout? >> If, OTOH, you believe that the intended purpose of software patents was to allow deep-pocketed corporations to patent-troll their smaller competitors to death... the system is working precisely as designed. Sometimes, no doubt. But Borland and that small storage company both cleaned Microsoft out for over $100,000,000 apiece, and MSFT's market cap is a bit larger. A patent is a limited term legal monopoly which effectively creates a legal partnership between a government and, say, a three person startup on the one hand and, oh, Google on the other. Without the patent it's you and your buddies against Larry and Sergey and you're just bringing a knife to a gunfight. Since this site is largely devoted to startups, this would seem to be an important point. I think the real solution is to shorten the terms of software patents to, say, 7 years and tighten up the meaning of "obvious to one schooled in the art". That would immediately reduce the patent infringement search space while still giving a small company time to build a first-mover market advantage.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
I'm no lawyer, nor do I have a dog in this fight at the moment. So I may be overstating my point a bit for theatrical effect. But I'm still not convinced that tinkering with the definition of obvious is going to solve our patent troll problem. So long as it still needs to be litigated, it doesn't matter how obvious a troll's patent is, just as it doesn't matter whether the gun you're being mugged with is loaded or not. Do you think that I, or anyone else, would have put up with all the pain and the long hours in the lab if we new that Agilent or Biorad could swoop in at any moment and take our markets away from us using their marketing clout? I'm sure that folks reading this site -- the ones whose products could be cloned by Google or Yahoo at any moment; the ones whose earlier companies were crushed by Microsoft -- have an entire orchestra of tiny violins to play for you. I used to build multiphoton microscopes for a living. The story of the multiphoton microscope is amusing. Once upon a time, Bio-Rad held the exclusive rights to the original Cornell patent. Their competitor, Zeiss, read the patent and decided to argue that it covered only the use of sub-picosecond laser pulses for microscopy. So Zeiss came out with a competing system intended for use with 1 picosecond pulses. Of course, if you found yourself in the lab late at night and you happened to turn the knob on your laser that shortened the pulses to 80 femtoseconds, your Zeiss microscope presumably continued to work pretty well, but with a big improvement in image brightness and depth. I assume that Zeiss refused to be held responsible for that improvement -- after all, the scope wasn't intentionally designed for short pulses, because that would be Legally Dubious. Naturally, the whole thing went to court for years. The issue was settled when Zeiss bought out Bio-Rad. See here: http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=confocal&D=0&P=99334 http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=conf... I can't tell you who won or who lost, there, but here's my conclusion: If a company the size of Agilent or Zeiss or Biorad wants to violate your patent, they'll just do it. All you were doing, in those nights in the lab, was trying to improve your negotiating position in the resulting court case. (That, BTW, was a traditional hardware patent, not the software kind. If yours is a software-only patent... good luck with that.)

by miked 18y ago

mechanical_fish 18y ago

I'm no lawyer, nor do I have a dog in this fight at the moment. So I may be overstating my point a bit for theatrical effect. But I'm still not convinced that tinkering with the definition of obvious is going to solve our patent troll problem. So long as it still needs to be litigated, it doesn't matter how obvious a troll's patent is, just as it doesn't matter whether the gun you're being mugged with is loaded or not. Do you think that I, or anyone else, would have put up with all the pain and the long hours in the lab if we new that Agilent or Biorad could swoop in at any moment and take our markets away from us using their marketing clout? I'm sure that folks reading this site -- the ones whose products could be cloned by Google or Yahoo at any moment; the ones whose earlier companies were crushed by Microsoft -- have an entire orchestra of tiny violins to play for you. I used to build multiphoton microscopes for a living. The story of the multiphoton microscope is amusing. Once upon a time, Bio-Rad held the exclusive rights to the original Cornell patent. Their competitor, Zeiss, read the patent and decided to argue that it covered only the use of sub-picosecond laser pulses for microscopy. So Zeiss came out with a competing system intended for use with 1 picosecond pulses. Of course, if you found yourself in the lab late at night and you happened to turn the knob on your laser that shortened the pulses to 80 femtoseconds, your Zeiss microscope presumably continued to work pretty well, but with a big improvement in image brightness and depth. I assume that Zeiss refused to be held responsible for that improvement -- after all, the scope wasn't intentionally designed for short pulses, because that would be Legally Dubious. Naturally, the whole thing went to court for years. The issue was settled when Zeiss bought out Bio-Rad. See here: http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=confocal&D=0&P=99334 http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=conf... I can't tell you who won or who lost, there, but here's my conclusion: If a company the size of Agilent or Zeiss or Biorad wants to violate your patent, they'll just do it. All you were doing, in those nights in the lab, was trying to improve your negotiating position in the resulting court case. (That, BTW, was a traditional hardware patent, not the software kind. If yours is a software-only patent... good luck with that.)