15 ms·

Poll: Do you support software patents?

• Symmetry 15y ago
  I said abolish, but really I think we could have a workable solution by either giving the PTO the funding it needs to do a good job, or eliminating the presumption of validity. The big problem we have now is that the law assumes that all patents are properly examined when the PTO doesn't have the resources to do a proper examination.
• Zak 15y ago
  In principle, they could give a lone programmer or small company that invents something awesome the edge needed to break in to a market dominated by large companies. I consider this to be desirable. In practice, they're used by large companies to prevent lone programmers or small companies from breaking in to the markets they dominate. I do not consider this to be desirable. They're more trouble than they're worth.
  • PakG1 15y ago
    The biggest problem here is the transaction costs. If the costs to get and enforce patents were much much lower (time, money, opportunity cost), then patents would be really good. Only the large corporations have enough cash to enforce patents successfully.
    • Zak 15y ago
      I'm not sure that's the case. I think if patents were cheaper to get and enforce, people would patent more trivial things and sue each other far more often. Look at copyright enforcement as practices by the RIAA and Righthaven. What really needs to be cheaper and easier is getting invalid patents overturned.
  • smokeyj 15y ago
    Governments stifle competition and promote monopolies. Don't believe what they tell you.
    • krschultz 15y ago
      Governments aren't conscious. Politicans have been convinced to support policys that help large corporations. Whether the politicans do this knowingly in return for campaign donations, or unknowingly because lobbyists convinced them that the patent system is a good idea, is unclear. The distinction is important, because if it is the latter we just heed to lobby the right people. If it is the former, we just don't have enough money.
  • sunahsuh 15y ago
    While I agree that the second case is often the norm, I do have one counter-example -- I used to work for Riverbed Technology, a 9 year old company which does WAN optimization and competes against Cisco and Bluecoat, among others. Riverbed is (or was?) generally regarded as the tech leader in the market and its head start is based on a patented compression scheme. There's no question that the patent is a big part of what allowed the company to survive the entrance of 800-lb gorillas into the market and I'm fairly certain that if software patents were abolished today, that algorithm would be in Cisco's WAN solution tomorrow. I still think the software patent system as it stands now needs serious reform but you know, that saying about a broken clock and all.
    • seanp2k 15y ago
      ....and I would say that if Riverbed didn't provide the equivalent support (lol) as Cisco or didn't have the complete integration solutions that Cisco offers, then Cisco SHOULD win out. If you innovate and you're actually better, then you should win. If not, you should go out of business. Isn't this what "free market" is all about? You can't have both.
      • netcan 15y ago
        The problem that patents are supposed to be solving is incentivising innovatoion by allowing them to profit from their innovation. The pro-patent argument would be that without patents riverbed would have been less likely to innovate in the first place and the world would have been less well off. I don't think this is a pro/against free market. Free markets rely on some definition of property rights. This is about making those definitions.
      • sunahsuh 15y ago
        ...and that's why I'm a bit of a socialist ;) Textbook free market theories make a lot of idealistic assumptions that just aren't true in the real world. The best product doesn't always win, particularly when your competitor sees easier routes to gaining an advantage than the slow, expensive work of improving its own product via investment in its own R&D.
• EGreg 15y ago
  This latest patent that caused an uproar was filed in 1992, when the idea was definitely innovative. It just further goes to show that the 17 year span, at least, is too long for software.
  • Vivtek 15y ago
    I'm simply not convinced that the concept of an update button acting on the Internet was innovative - not when I could have sat down in high school and worked it out in a day, and when the very concept of an Internet makes it obvious. And yes, I was doing software in 1992 (finished college in '88), so I think I understand pretty damn well what was innovative at the time. [Edit on re-reading: I couldn't have sat down in high school and done this in a day because I had never heard of the Internet in 1980-1984, but I could have made it work against Compuserve.] This, like every other "patent on three hours' work", is nothing more than parasitic rent-seeking behavior, and it is anathema to the vitality of our economy. Lodsys should be deeply ashamed of trying to present this as a "solution" when they clearly simply want to profit from the work of others.
• eof 15y ago
  With this type of support for abolishing software patents from the people who write the software; it seems we must be able to organize some sort of strike to just put an end to it immediately.
  • urbanturbanguy 15y ago
    Let the Programing Proletariat unite :).
  • omouse 15y ago
    You can't because programmers aren't in control of themselves. The ones who have enough cash and power are more than willing to continue with the present system or they cash out and leave someone else to do the work of opposing it.
    • eof 15y ago
      You could make the same argument for any strike though, and many of them have been successful.
• cperciva 15y ago
  I see no reason why an invention should be unpatentable simply because it involves software. That said, it's obvious that the current system is broken; there are many patents which do not seem to do anything new, and simultaneously the cost of applying for patents deters the group for whom they are most important -- small innovators who are unable to commercialize their inventions. The system needs to be fixed, not thrown out.
  • Locke1689 15y ago
    This intrigues me, because fundamentally I see software as a form of mathematics. Given that mathematical equations aren't patentable, I don't believe that software should be either. Moreover, it seems that we already have many things in software preventing people from copying code wholesale (SaaS, the fundamental difficulty in reverse engineering compiled binaries). As a professional cryptographer/mathematician, how do you feel about the relation between mathematics and software?
    • blantonl 15y ago
      Devil's advocate here: business logic is often significantly incorporated into software. Much of this logic could be implemented on other platforms such as manual labor etc. But can't all of it be boiled down in the end as mathematics? Should we extend that assertion that far with regards to this argument?
    • cperciva 15y ago
      I think there's a big difference between a process and the underlying mathematics which explains why the process works. The matrix factorization which underlies the FFT was known long before Cooley and Tukey came along, but they were the first people to say "hey, this allows us to compute the DFT in O(N log N) time". I don't think it should be possible to patent an equation, but I'm perfectly find with people patenting (subject to non-obviousness, lack of prior art, etc.) ways of using an equation to do something useful. If patents had existed when Scipione del Ferro discovered how to solve cubics, I would have no problem with him receiving a patent on his method -- but because patents did not exist, he never published his method (he kept it as a "trade secret") and it wasn't revealed until 19 years after he died.
• ericHosick 15y ago
  I've spent the last few years working on a new approach to developing software. I've spent a lot of my own money (at least $40,000 USD) on research to perfect it. Currently, from the research I've done, I've found no prior art. Should I be able to patent this technology? Should I just release it? If I just release it, wouldn't a large company patent aspects of it and sue me for infringement (it costs $ to prove prior art). At the very least, wouldn't a patent give me the option to open source the technology without the risk of aforementioned large company coming after me? And if said company does come after me, would it not give me a chance to buddy up with another "large" company?
  • Vivtek 15y ago
    If you just release it, it becomes prior art. And if you're not selling licenses, there's nothing to sue you over.
  • cperciva 15y ago
    Should I be able to patent this technology? Should I just release it? If I just release it, wouldn't a large company patent aspects of it and sue me for infringement (it costs $ to prove prior art). If you publish your code, it becomes prior art. It doesn't cost much to stand up in court and say "uh, look guys, this code you're suing me over was published before you applied for your patent", and the case would be thrown out immediately. In practice I doubt it would ever get that far: If there's one thing patent lawyers pay attention to, it's dates, and lawyers hate looking like idiots.
    • Symmetry 15y ago
      Lawyers do sometimes mess up on dates. I hate to trot this story out yet again, but MIT did get sued because of my dorm's laundry webserver. A webserver which had been Slashdoted before the company applied for its patent. Of course, they did back down once the facts were explained to them so you're right at least that far.
    • ericHosick 15y ago
      I would hope it would be easy to show prior art, but stuff like this (http://m.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/21/texas_jury_says_google_infringed_linux_patent/ http://m.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/21/texas_jury_says_google...) is where it becomes "hard" to prove prior art. Because you have to prove it against a jury of, generally, non-technical people. Here is the primary claim: * a linked list to store and provide access to records stored in a memory of the system, at least some of the records automatically expiring a record search means utilizing a search key to access the linked list the record search means including a means for identifying and removing at least some of the expired ones of the records from the linked list when the linked list is accessed * a means – utilizing the record search means – for accessing the linked list and, at the same time, removing at least some of the expired ones of the records in the linked list
• pbiggar 15y ago
  I wrote a article about software patents a few years ago: http://paulbiggar.com/research/article.txt http://paulbiggar.com/research/article.txt. The issue seems to pop up every couple of years. Each time, abolition of software patents seems closer and closer, but never quite gets there.
• GrandMasterBirt 15y ago
  So I want to either abolish them or make software patents legal for only 2 year maximum. My reason for this is because unlike hardware patents, it does not take a factory and malicious intent to get a clone for a software patent. A 2 year lead on the competitor is extreme in the tech world. Look what happened with the iPhone, it dominated the market in 2 years, and then Android same story. The speed of information and technology today we MUST have a shorter timeframe for patents. The problem with software patents is that since they are non-physical, they are really just mathematical solutions. And the problem with those is that 10 programmers will come up with 10 completely ways to solve the same problem, but due to patents the first to paten a solution can use the other 9 (-John Carmack) and this problem is very much true.
• kenjackson 15y ago
  I think the software field is so fast moving that the current time period for a patent is not justifiable. But I do think that someone who invents something should be able to get some advantage out of it, rather than having a Google just waiting to take the invention and make it big. So I say make the patent expiration period 30 months. This gives you substantial lead time, yet prevents issues like people fearing Apple's multitouch patents years after they've gotten the patent. Plus it really takes patent trolls off the table, since these patents will have likely expired before they can get them. And it also takes off the table acquiring companies for IP.
• ry0ohki 15y ago
  My vote would be "Yes, if the Patent office approved only real innovative things". For example if I come up with some revolutionary face recognition technology, that seems novel enough to be patented. But if I just make a form with a submit button (Google's Patented home page), or Amazon's one click purchasing those are just ridiculous as a patents.
  • omellet 15y ago
    Given how poorly the USPTO has performed thus far, it seems impossible that this could be correctly implemented. Better to err on the side of openness, and abolish them altogether.
    • mseebach 15y ago
      It's obvious that there are enormous swathes of innovation in the IT world that either happened or would have happened without patents. Amazon would probably not have thought twice about developing one-click checkout if it hadn't been patentable and it seems perfectly plausible that RIM got the idea for the BlackBerry independently of that troll that sued them. But there are also some pretty deep stuff that seems less obvious, my favourite example is MP3. I'm no expert in the field, but it does not seem at all obvious to me to compress music like that, and it seems to be the result of a real invention process. It's clearly in everybody's interest that they publish their codec as widely as possible, rather than make a broke-by-design binary-only distribution. Why should they not be allowed the same protection as, say, Volkswagen inventing a new fuel pump?
      • gridspy 15y ago
        Yes, the "invent a cool codec / protocol, live on the royalties" business model would be difficult without patents. However, there are a lot of very smart people who invent formats and don't patent them. For instance the JPEG format is clever in a very similar way to the MP3 format. In this instance the format was created by companies with an interest in a great format for their devices - cameras for example. MP3 (well, a lossy music codec of some kind) could have been created by a similar group trying to make music players interoperable. It might have even been created by open-source advocates. Think Ogg-Vorbis, for instance. I don't think that we'd live in a world with less cool formats if patents were abolished (yay!). If a format is required to solve a problem, it will be created. Open protocols without patents should be encouraged.
• Silhouette 15y ago
  I think the worst practical thing about software patents is that they create uncertainty. If there is one thing that is universally abhorred in the business world, it is uncertainty. There needs to be a fast, cheap, reliable method by which small businesses can determine whether they are affected by anyone else's patent rights, and if so, by whose and to what extent. This way they can enter useful negotiations and adjust or abandon their plans as appropriate if patents are involved, or they can build their business free of unknown liability otherwise. Given that I can see no viable means of ever constructing such a system, I don't see how patents or any similar legal tools will ever be anything but a tool for those with vast resources to crush competitors with few resources through means other than fair competition in the market.
  • thwarted 15y ago
    That wouldn't stop someone from patenting something that someone else determined was unpatented and then went after them for infringement.
    • Silhouette 15y ago
      Unless that constitutes a clear-cut case of prior art in whatever system you have, I don't think the system qualifies as "fast, cheap, reliable".
• mrcharles 15y ago
  I can't stand the idea that I might be at my computer, working with code, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all software patents. edited to add "software".
  • nimrody 15y ago
    If you abolish all patents you leave two options for inventors [some patents truly are ingenious]: - Keep it as a trade secret. You get one source for a product, and less innovation. - Publish it and suffer the consequences of the big companies copying it and making profit on your work.
    • robryan 15y ago
      Trade secret actually isn't a bad option, if you patent truly had legs then your secret is probably going to be safe for a fair amount of time. If your patent is getting people on a technicality and really isn't very innovative then your secret won't be much of a secret.
      • notJim 15y ago
        The argument against trade secrets is that they hurt innovation by impeding the flow of information. Patents allow a company to publish their innovations without fear of someone coming along and simply stealing it. By allowing inventors to publish their information with little competitive disadvantage, we enable other inventors to build on their predecessors efforts.
        • bediger 15y ago
          The current state of patent disclosure is such that your arguement makes little sense. Virtually nothing in software patent disclosures informs people about "how to do it". Almost all of the disclosures are vague and unspecific. If you, as a programmer, hear the title of a patent, you basically know how to do it.
• nimrody 15y ago
  Where do you draw the line between a "software patent" and a hardware one? Doesn't make sense to make a distinction based on the method of implementation (especially given that lots of HW is micro-programmable). Yes - many silly patents are being filed for unreasonable reasons (fight patent wars, get a bonus, etc.) But making a distinction based on only on way of implementation is just as silly.
• linuxhansl 15y ago
  Since this is specific to software patents, my vote was to abolish them all. Patents on Software make not sense (other protections like Copyright, are essential, though). I have yet to see one "invention" that would not have seen the light of day without software patents. Patents are a method to protect significant costs cost of an invention (to incentivize research). Having an idea for an algorithm is does not represent a great cost and it is not in the interest of society to grant a monopoly).
  • nsantos 15y ago
    One of the founders interviewed in Founders at Work mentioned something about this... I believe it was Woz. I'm working at the moment, so can't refer to the book; if anyone else has it handy, please supply said quote. :D
• kapauldo 15y ago
  The software patent dispute always falls into the broad brush trap. Obvious patents like Facebook's news feed and Amazon's 1-click shopping are arguably obvious and a drain on resources. Complicated software, like gene sequencing, chemical simulations, etc., are perfectly reasonable, genuinely non-obvious, and deserving of monopoly status. All software patents are not equal, all are not abusive, all are not obvious.
• rkalla 15y ago
  I have a hard time with this topic. Of course the only thing that ever gets covered in main-stream tech media is the abuse by patent trolls suing Company X because they are using their "electronic key-input device" patent to type on their computers. We all roll our eyes and go "Damn these patents! DAMN THEM!" But then I think of the purpose of the patent system in general: to protect and encourage innovation. I think of the research scientists coming up with approaches to genuinely unique and interesting problems and yes, I want them protected from getting rail-roaded by larger software firms. I've discussed this with a patent attorney before and his feeling is that software patents are generally a good thing, but there has to be ONE change that would do away with most of the bullshit patents: proof of implementation. Right now, apparently, I can patent the 40-click checkout process and sue Amazon when they implement it... but I never need to implement it, release it or use it in production. I just need to think of the idea and I can patent it. I imagine a lot of these IP-only firms wouldn't have such a strong grip on stupid garbage patents if it required them to show working implementations. I believe this is the same way with patents in manufacturing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you need to produce the mechanical process you are patenting and at least show it is viable before patenting it? Whether that is true or not, requiring that of patenters would go a long way of making the work more worthwhile and not just a bunch of lawyers sitting in a room with a few engineers, waving their hands around all day until they invent and patent the use of desk chairs.
  • anamax 15y ago
    > I believe this is the same way with patents in manufacturing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you need to produce the mechanical process you are patenting and at least show it is viable before patenting it? Not really. Oh, you can't patent a perpetual motion machine, but you can patent an improvement to a process without showing that you can implement the whole process. Suppose that I come up with an improvement in making steel in massive amounts. Do you really think that I shouldn't be allowed to patent it without building a large steel mill? (Two interesting cases are the lone "nut" and a university researcher.)
  • Zaak 15y ago
    The problem with this approach is that the most offensive and problematic software patents are those which are trivial to implement.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• ajju 15y ago
  I would love to see all software patents abolished. I feel conflicted about having my name on several software patents - on account of working for (or co-founding) companies that needed defensive IP. Had I not been on the receiving end of a ridiculous software patent lawsuit while I was working at a startup, I would never have filed any patents when I started my own company. If the startup I worked for had not been acquired before they lost said lawsuit, it would have killed the company, destroying some amazing innovation and killing a couple of hundred jobs. As things stand, even folks who oppose software patents don't really have an option but to file patents of their own unless they want to risk being sued into oblivion with no bargaining chips of their own.
• ndefinite 15y ago
  Stephan Kinsella makes a pretty compelling argument that's hard to refute: http://blog.mises.org/11717/against-intellectual-property-audiobook-version/ http://blog.mises.org/11717/against-intellectual-property-au... Just because someone beat me to the patent office legally means I'm not permitted think up the same idea and use my computer to do the same. It's not even about copying, I'm legally limited in what I'm permitted to think up and do.
• jtregunna 15y ago
  I like the Canadian system of software patents. CIPO requires that software may only be patented in so far as the hardware it runs on is unique and patentable. I'm ok with those under the condition that the entities who hold the patent actually do something with it. Explicit timeframes should be in place to prevent these types of "business models" over long periods.
• danssig 15y ago
  I see huge problems with the current system but in the current capitalistic world we live in there has to be a way to protect money/time spent on researching things. If the results of 10 years of research can be stolen as soon as they're announced no one is going to pay for research anymore.
  • coffeeaddicted 15y ago
    You can still be the first to bring a product to market and you have the people who will have the best knowledge because they developed it. Also don't underestimate the willingness of people to _want_ to research. And lets not forget that companies in Europe do not have software patents (yeah, some gray area still exists...) and still do research, so we already know the software world won't break down without software patents. And while your arguments are still valid to a certain extend - it has to be evaluated against the costs of the patent system and the benefits you'll get from erasing the patent system. For example right now every startup-up is in danger of running into patent troubles unless they start pair-coding with a lawyer. People avoid looking at patents because they are scared of treble damages and people avoid coding optimal solutions trying to work around patents. Companies can block each other and managers and investors are in a constant state of risk that their coders will violate patents (mostly without even knowing it). Patents are no longer used to boost innovation, but they are used primarly as a weapon.
    • danssig 15y ago
      I completely agree that the current system is broken. I just disagree that we should abolish the system entirely. Some very smart people saw this need and I don't think they were wholly wrong. Personally, I think the problem with patents is the are of the "who did it first" variety when they should only be of the "no one would have come up with this without me" kind. That is, if your "idea" involves scribbling something obvious down and sending off for a patent as soon as possible (e.g. this new in-App purchase patent is a good example) then it shouldn't be patentable. For me, I would see something patentable in how Apple did the iPad. Everyone was trying things in the tablet space for years but it wasn't until the iPad that we all finally got it. I would also make patents shorter and non-renewable. Renewable patents are just a monopoly on ideas.
• kevinpet 15y ago
  The problem isn't whether the patent is in software, it's that that patent office grants patents on trivial things. Should be patentable: RSA Should not be patentable: One click The patent office needs to say "what problem does this claim to solve?" and then "if someone skilled in the art were faced with that problem, would the claimed invention really be novel and non-obvious". RSA passes this test. Problem: secure encryption without prior secure key exchange. Solution: innovative math that makes that possible. One click does not. Problem: if customers could avoid logging in multiple times, they'd buy more. Solution: set a cookie, using totally existing technology. Some are still going to be borderline. Any useful rule is going to have questionable cases.
• aneth 15y ago
  I think it's highly unlikely the patent office would ever have the sophistication necessary to distinguish a truly new approach to an algorithm or architecture from a derivative one. Additionally, there is so much depth and breadth in CS that innovation happens everywhere and is often hidden in the bowels of universities, garages, and offices. Even an apparently novel invention is unlikely to be invented only in one place, or to be invented first by the entity that files for a patent.
• UserError 15y ago
  Copyright and trademark law are sufficient to protect coders. Software patents are absurd. It's analogous in my mind to allowing Stephen King to patent a certain kind of plot twist.
• mtantawy 15y ago
  Software should be free, as in FREEDOM of speech!!
• digiru 15y ago
  I support patents, but think that for software the current system is seriously broken. Being able to patent things like in store app purchase, etc. IMHO is crazy.
• notJim 15y ago
  I'm somewhat surprised that the vast majority of people here are against all software patents. I agree that many software patents are absurd, but I think of things like H.264 and MPEG where true innovation was required on the part of the people who developed it, and it seems clear to me that those people have a right to patent that work. I'm curious though: what do people see as being the alternative?
  • GregBuchholz 15y ago
    Since no one seems to have mentioned it yet: Against Intellectual Monopoly (http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf)
    • petegrif 15y ago
      I have read the piece in question. I don't understand how it answers Notjim's question. What is the alternative?
• bane 15y ago
  At risk of taking an unpopular devils-advocate position: I think that the principle of patents is okay. Invest time and money developing an idea, with a guarantee of exclusivity on executing on that idea in the marketplace for a period of time. It encourages a level of risk taking for "getting there first". Software patents aren't any different in many respects because somebody has to go through the time and effort to actually come up with the idea. The problem that software patents face is that, while many of the ideas are new and innovative to non-software people, software people tend to groan about seemingly obvious amalgamation of common software techniques into another idea. But really, most patents (non-software) are the same: Cooking an egg with an electric heater http://www.google.com/patents?id=RgcEAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=RgcEAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Glasses for a chicken http://www.google.com/patents?id=M5BGAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=M5BGAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Making water hot with the sun http://www.google.com/patents?id=YBwrAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=YBwrAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Resoling a shoe http://www.google.com/patents?id=895CAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=895CAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Keeping paper dry http://www.google.com/patents?id=7IBqAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=7IBqAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... That was 60 seconds of searching the patent database of common sense ideas. Clearly obviousness is not much of a threshold in patents, software or otherwise. Perhaps a better way to think of software patents is not "obvious ideas" but "soon to be obvious ideas". In my experience, most software patents become blindingly obvious after the fact, but if they were so obvious beforehand, somebody would have: a) implemented it into a working system (prior art) b) patented it themselves first Our principle problem is that the world of software moves breathtakingly fast, and keeping soon-to-be-obvious ideas locked away for a long time can seem ridiculous. But make no mistake, even implementing some obvious ideas can be the investment of millions of dollars in R&D. For example, a system integrator I know of had an IR&D program that spent $130 million dollars just in the R&D phase for what amounts to off-the-shelf software, installed on a few VMs, on rackmounted servers, in a large plastic shippable box with a few perl scripts and cron jobs hacked together to shuttle data between the COTS software and an Oracle database running in one of the VMs. Obvious? Perhaps. But nobody had gone through the trouble to actually do it, and spending that kind of overhead was a significant risk. Should they own this idea for the next decade or so? Probably not, but how about the next 12-24 months? At least long enough so that they get a head start against competitors who didn't get there first. I do think the patent system is need of serious reform w/r to getting rid of patents with prior art. Fighting a bad patent can be more expensive than getting one in the first place. And software patents are too frequently granted in cases where there is obvious prior art, common algorithms for example. If we really want to fight software patents of obvious ideas, or permutations of obvious ideas, perhaps somebody should write a tool that simply combine every obvious idea in software into some greater system, then documents it all thus creating prior art that stops all of these so called bad patents...and then patent the "prior art permuter". In other words, if the ideas are obvious, a piece of software that does this should be buildable. I call this the "obviousness of software patents theorem".
• wildmXranat 15y ago
  My suggestion is to cut the period to 12 months and invalidate patents that have been issued so far. I have absolutely no hope there will be a cleanup of the patent house. There are many reasons why regulators fail to match the industry they are regulating in spend and effort. Same goes for finance, medical, software ...
• mikerhoads 15y ago
  I support abolishing all patents, not just software.
• patio11 15y ago
  This is one of those issues that I feel is more a member of tribal affiliation than anything substantive. It's like flag burning for us Republicans: if I were to rank order my political objectives, "prevent flag burning" would be somewhere in the x0,000s, but the tribe cares about this a lot for philosophical reasons (which I'm broadly speaking on board with) and as a result uses it as a signaling mechanism. Software patents strikes me as signaling for geeks, or the techno-libertarian-esque streak that is pretty common in the community at any rate. Is it an important issue? Well, yeah, I'd love to see it addressed. Someday. Maybe after flag burning. There are many, many issues used for signaling that I feel about similarly.
  • AlexC04 15y ago
    Your discussion of "Tribe Signalling" is interesting. It reminds me of all the stuff that Desmond Morris was talking about in "the Human Animal" (and more recently http://www.exactitudes.com/ http://www.exactitudes.com/). By wearing certain clothes you're sending a signal to others about political POV, likes dislikes, interests etc... It helps you find other like minded individuals. Maybe you're right that being against software patents is generally a tribal signal that says "I'm a hacker" or "computer-type". When I logged into the comment thread, I was thinking the exact same sort of thing. "Well Duh" The Hacker News audience is somewhere near 100% the exact demographic that you'd expect to be generally against software patents. It's like logging on to a Twilight fan-board and asking "Are vampires Awesome?"
    • nitrogen 15y ago
      Predictability of hackers' opposition to software patents doesn't render that opposition inconsequential or irrelevant (unlike a vampire fan's opinion of vampires).
      • AlexC04 15y ago
        Yes, but a poll on the question has the same validity and effectiveness of those polls on FoxNews that force the answer to fit a political viewpoint. "Which democrat do you trust least?", "which of President Obama's broken promises disappoints you the most?" The poll isn't opposition it's masturbation. Objectively, there's clearly some value in it as a spawn to discussion, but (IMO) the results are completely disposable. Not only were they a foregone conclusion, the self selecting sample is completely skewed towards the "overhaul software patents" demographic. 99% of Dairy farmers think you should eat more cheese.
• rednum 15y ago
  I don't think that software patents are 'controversial' among HN community - I remember reading comments to some threads about patents and they were pretty much like the results of this poll - ie. the vast majority of people expressed opinion that software patents should be abolished and virtually noone supported current system. (Also this was before post karma was hidden, which made attitudes even clearer.) Edit: my point is that I am a bit surprised by a relatively long time HN member asking question about issue that seems pretty much to be settled down in this community.
• dgallagher 15y ago
  I think, if continued to be allowed, software patents should expire 2-3 years after being issued. We no longer live in a time where it takes decades to invent new software technologies, requiring a patent to protect the inventor for years/decades to recover their investment costs. Software and technology moves so quickly that long-term patents stifle innovation and creativity.
• aantthony 15y ago
  All patents abolished. Ideas are worthless once executed and it's ludicrous to own even someone else's idea even before it exists, if it so happens to be covered by your patent. EDIT: IMHO I think patents can be good, but in some cases (especially software) it is too hard to draw a line between what's patentable and what's not. It is also highly subjective, market dependent, and far reaching in it's implications on preventing innovation if not done right.
• efnx 15y ago
  Why aren't more software patterns patented? For example, the Observer pattern, Model View Controller, Active Record, etc.? These are patterns that pop up naturally while coding that seem on par with the 'in app purchase' pattern (if I can call it that). Why haven't the trolls patented more of our building blocks?
  • uriel 15y ago
    They are all patented, you just have not seen the relevant patents (or if you had seen them you would not be able to understand them). There was a story not long ago about how somebody had patented doubly linked lists (or maybe how to traverse a double linked list, I can't remember the details, but it was just as obvious).
• jeffool 15y ago
  Traditional patents are like creating new tools for a carpenter to use. Software patents are when someone picks up a screwdriver and says "I'm going to use this to pry the lid off the paint can. No one else can do that now, ever again."
• bediger 15y ago
  The current system, and all of the rather draconian suggestions for change, ignore the issue of independent invention. The only study done on this so far (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1270160 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1270160) suggests that almost all infringement is due to independent invention. Independent invention should negate infringement issues. In fact, in some cases (invention from an even less extensive background) should cause patent re-assignment. The current system (and all changes proposed so far) also fail to address the US constitutional mandate of causing progress. The current system doesn't.
• haberman 15y ago
  I hate software patents, and would personally love to see them abolished. I have a question though: how important are patents to startups? Aren't software patents one of the tangible assets they point to to justify their valuation?
• generators 15y ago
  (1) Patents should be analyzed for level of difficulty in coming up with solution. If I had a website like amazon, more than 50% chances that I would have come up with single click idea. But since I didn't had problem, I could not have solution. so such patent should be allow only "acknowledge" status <- that means, a software that is using such patent must "acknowledge" the original creator somewhere , but it can use the patent freely. (2) if patent is used, it is liable for max 5000$ ( for e.g. ) charge. or (3) 500 Million $ charge. It all depend and subjective. current system is go and no go. patents should analyze for level of ingenuity too.
• mxvanzant 15y ago
  Patents are not needed to promote innovation -- their intended benefit for the greater good. Innovation will happen anyway. Instead, they are a drag on innovation and also a tool for those with larger pockets to extort from those who cannot afford to fight back. Get rid of them. We will all be better off!
• mindcrime 15y ago
  I support complete abolishment of the entire patent system, not just software patents. I believe that - in practice - patents do more to inhibit innovation than to encourage it, and I also find the idea that the government will use force to prevent you from using an idea - that you may have developed independently - to be immoral.
• jeffg1 15y ago
  No. Abolish all software patents, limit all other forms and liberate knowledge towards the evolution of humanity.
• mooneater 15y ago
  Preaching to the choir.
• amikula 15y ago
  There's one simple phrase I like to keep in mind when thinking about software patents. Its mere existence demonstrates that patents are not serving their intended purpose: "accidental patent infringement"
• dustbyrn 15y ago
  We who invent things, we who solve problems in new ways, don't do so because we can get a patent. We solve the problem because when you put a problem in front of us, we can't stop ourselves from solving it. It haunts us. We dream about it. And the only way to make it go away is to solve it. That's the nature of Engineers, the nature of Inventors. Engineers don't think about patents when presented with a problem, they think about solutions. Lawyers think about patents and they don't invent anything. You might have a better idea than the last guy, but chances are your idea overlaps with his a little. If your new idea has some similarities with an exiting patented idea, implementing it could be risky. If engineers did a patent search for every idea they had, they would find some overlap with existing patents every single time. Nothing would ever get created. The true evil of patents is that they actually stifle, rather than promote, innovation. The effect of patents is opposite their intent.
• rglover 15y ago
  I'm surprised things like business process patents aren't more widely supported. Especially in the software industry, it's pretty obvious that most applications are the result of somebody developing (or at least, think their developing) a better method for accomplishing an existing task. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't business process patents enable similar ideas organized differently to equally receive patents? It's truly difficult to lean either way (however, I did vote for the abolishment of all patents). If you're a successful business who is challenged for your innovation, the only protection you really have is a patent. If anything, I feel like those in the software industry should form some sort of agreement and petition the government to enact new rules specifically for this industry. As technology evolves, I shudder at the thought of how the archaic system we have now will all but crumble. There should be a lot more future-proofing taking place.
• dfox 15y ago
  My take on this is: Abolish all patents (not only software). Patent system simply does not serve it's purpose (which ws to motivate inventors to publish they ideas, so they could be later reused) as patents are intentionally written as to be unreadable and uninformative. And this happens not only in "software" or "business method" ones.
• 6ren 15y ago
  Imagine a Book of Code, like Knuth's Art of Programming, but easier to search and understand. If you come up with something new, and write it up clearly enough, it can go into The Book. You get royalties for X number of years (maybe 5? idk). Everyone uses this as a resource. Perhaps there's ARIA-like licensing (where a cafe pays a standard rate to play any music they like), for usages based on how many people use it (so a small software shop pays a small annual fee, and google pays huge fees) - or more likely the owner sets the price. Like an app-store for algorithms. After X years, it becomes free. The patent system is nothing like this. I'm not sure it's even technically possible, though certainly textbooks get written and some of them are excellent (perhaps with financial motivation, you could employ people like David Flanagan writing up algorithms). Having such a Book would being programming much closer to an engineering discipline. It would also make contributing to the Book a badge of professional honour, and not disparaged as patents are today. Really, anyone who invents a new and useful approach should be lauded - but the patent system has strayed far from this.
• plexav 15y ago
  How many of the respondents have a deep understanding of patent law, and it's application to algorithms and more specifically computer software? Rather than provide substantive input, most of the responses to this query illustrate 1) the shallow nature of most people's understanding of the issues, and 2) a corresponding willingness to highlight such a lack of understanding. Taken from the perspective of a process, one can almost always describe software as a process that effects some change on a physical object, or objects. For example, exposure to novel features (the one's you might think to patent) change the neural functioning of a user which takes it out of the realm of "software" and into that of a physical process. You're feeling sleepy....very sleepy...
  • chrisbennet 15y ago
    I suspect most of us are software developers and we are well aware that the patent process does nothing for us but punish us for innovating. Those who profit from the current system will try to justify it by saying that it protects us (the developers). Poll 100 developers and I bet you won't find a single one that has benefitted from patent protection, at least not directly.
• abrahamsen 15y ago
  Please everybody, don't go reddit with the comment voting. It is clear what the majority opinion here is, but I see well formulated comments supporting the minority opinion being voted down. If you think their arguments are wrong, don't vote them down. Instead, vote up the comments that explains why they are wrong.
• viggity 15y ago
  I support software patents, but the USPTO needs to make some drastic changes in what is considered "novel". Way, way, way too much of what is patented is, pardon the pun, patently obvious.
• fedxc 15y ago
  No new software patents
• MetaMan 15y ago
  My understanding is that, at least in the UK, patents are a contract between the inventor and the state. The state grants you a monopoly and in exchange you tell the state how it works. The state has the right to seize your invention (after offering you some compensation). My first patent was held up by the UK government for nearly 2 years whilst they worked out if they wanted it ! IMO the fundamental problem with software patents is that the bar for a "patentable invention" is far too low. Abolishing software patents isn't feasible for me. What about the firmware embedded in many current hardware devices. Where would you draw the line ? If you abolish patents this really would disadvantage start-ups as large corporations could easily copy any good invention before the start-up has reached critical mass.
• Writersglen 15y ago
  I owned and managed a small software development company for nearly 25 years. We produced many creative educational and consumer products for large publishers. We had neither time nor money to research every innovative routine we developed for possible infringement. Nor did we have money to apply for patents or defend them if they were granted. As we've seen, software patents stifle creativity and innovation; reward those with money rather than creative energy and ideas.
• wh-uws 15y ago
  Yes but I think they should have an active use clause. If you are not actively using what is patented the patent should expire much faster. On the order of months. This would discourage people from patenting things they only wish to use to sue others with or purchasing such. Also if you just wanted to attack trolls directly the active use clause would only kick in after purchase.
• JesseAldridge 15y ago
  I would vote for: "Don't understand the issue well enough to judge."
• dsl 15y ago
  Missing option: I keep MY software patents, abolish the rest. Every time I've argued this with software engineers it turns out this is really what they think.
• chrisbennet 15y ago
  (I'm for abolishing all software patents.) The justification for patent protection is that is required to encourage innovation in the arts or some such. In reality, innovation in software is happening in spite of patents. Consequently, there is no justification for for granting this harmful monopoly.
• Trey-Jackson 15y ago
  While I have a strong opinion on the topic, what do these polls accomplish? It just seems like navel-gazing at best.
• ericn 15y ago
  I believe that we should issue something much simpler than patents: file a very brief description of your invention which is stamped by a trusted agency. It is only evaluated in the case of conflict. That is, if you think I am infringing, you bring it to court, present your originality paper (which dates your idea) and then you have to prove that it is not obvious and that it is useful. This procedure puts the burden on the claimant, not on some random guy who happens to figure out an idea. It also does not require much work until there is an actual conflict.
• pradocchia 15y ago
  Germany had a flourishing chemical industry in the 19th century. You couldn't patent chemical compounds, being things of god and nature, but you could patent the process. This created the perfect environment for competition and innovation. England, by contrast, did allow patents on chemical compounds, and by contrast their chemical industry was weak. Switzerland continued in the German tradition until recent years, and had a flourishing pharmaceutical industry, despite the lack of patents. More: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.htm...
• ericn 15y ago
  There is another problem with software patents that is usually not talked about: they don't present how to build it. Most patents (outside of software patents) present enough information for a competent person to build the device (or whatever) themselves. The idea is that your idea is protected for the duration of the patent, then when it's over everyone else gets it for free. Software patents usually don't do this. I cannot implement, for example, Amazon's "Tabbed browsing" from the description in the patent. I still have to do the hard work myself.
• algoshift 15y ago
  The patent office should charge some amount with every software patent application to be used for the determination of obviousness or prior art. Then it should post the problems on sites such as this one or StackOverflow as a request for comments. In addition to that, it should post the problem on a rent-a-coder type site. If any of these produced a result reasonably close to what is being claimed the application is rejected. Simple and cost-effective. This would be far more efficient than having the uninformed at the patent office make decision from position of ignorance.
• Sudarshan 15y ago
  I would prefer a world without software patents. If that is not possible, * At least the courts should charge exponentially high prices for each extra claim you want to make beyond a limit. * All publicly listed companies will have a cap on total number of patents they can apply for (probably proportional to R&D spending) after which the price increases exponentially. * Any person or institution found patent trolling should find further litigation exponentially expensive. All these and more measures won't solve the problem... but at least increases the threshold for trolling behaviour...
• Sakes 15y ago
  Maybe we just need to change the patent system itself. I believe people game the patent system by trying to be as general as possible when creating patents. I believe this stifles progress, I believe stifling progress is wrong, I believe stifling progress hurts us as a country in a time when we can not afford it. What if a patent's definition changed over it's life time based upon what the company is actually using it for? I think this would solve a couple problems. 1) It would force the company to actively invest in "idea's" that they own if they are actually makers and not scammers. (Yeah!!, progress continues) 2) It would open up the patent system to redefining the shelf life of patents. We could call this new system "Shit or get off the pot!" patents.
• veyron 15y ago
  Is there any info regarding the age of most of these patents? Take for example the Lodsys patent on in-app purchases. I remember reading that the patent in question was filed in 2003, as part of a chain of patents starting in the early 1990s. I ask because I suspect most of these patents were approved long before these ideas were obvious. Note: I dont necessarily support software patents.
• camiller 15y ago
  Abolish all, software should be covered under copyright rather than patent as the expression of an idea.
• daimyoyo 15y ago
  It clear that the overwhelming majority of people here think software shouldn't be patentable. The next question is what to do about it? How can we get software patents out of patent law?
• petegrif 15y ago
  I think the problem here stems from the fact that people talk as if "software" were one homogenous entity. But as we all know - it isn't. Some software is trivial and some isn't. Some represents a trifling investment and some a huge investment of time and dollars. Some is very easy to copy and some much harder. It is only when we start thinking about such categories that we can make real progress thinking about where and when patents may be appropriate when they are not. Let's stipulate that the USPTO is not perfect. They do make mistakes. Patents are issued that should not be. But the existence of such patents should not be taken to be an inditement of the entire system. Few systems are perfect, but recognizing this let's further stipulate that advocating tossing the baby out with the bath water on this basis alone is impulsive. The difficulty is in drawing a line - defining innovations which deserve protection and those which don't. Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you have an idea which you believe to be novel. You research the field and it does indeed look novel. You look into the problem. It's non-trivial. It is going to take man-years of work to put together an implementation. But there's a problem. The technology you have to use to implement it is such that it is extremely easy to copy your work. You don't want to have to patent your work. You don't want the time and expense. Perhaps you have principled reasons why you don't want to patent it? But let's consider your options. If you don't get patent protection you are left with (a) trade secret (b) copyright. We already know that a trade secret won't work because your work will be in a form that is easily copied. Does copyright protect you? No. Why not? Because copyright only protects the expression of the work, not the underlying ideas, no matter how novel and valuable they may be. It is easy for a determined competitor to take your work and re-engineer it such that copyright is worthless. So what are you going to do? That depends on who you are. If you are a huge company and you still don't want to patent it you can go ahead and develop and publish your progress so that it is in the public domain and a competitor can't patent in the area. You are relying on your market strength to carry the day. But what if you are a small company? Are you prepared to risk everything with no protection? It is risky enough anyway starting a company, as we are constantly reminded, but if you can so easily be ripped off, isn't it wise to think twice? It's your decision. You may have philosophical objections to patents so strong that you just don't proceed. That is your right. But if someone else decides to proceed it seems to me that it is perfectly rational for him/her to seek patent protection. It would be crazy not to. There is plenty of recent precedent of large companies ripping off small innovators even when they have patent protection! IMHO to evaluate 'software patents' as a class is dangerous. Our industry is too big and the use cases are too various for such generalizations to be helpful. It is only by considering categories of innovation that we can hope to make progress on patent reform is such reform is needed. A knee jerk 'all software patents are the work of satan and should be trashed' doesn't help any more than a strident declaration of IP rights by well financed patent trolls.
• msg 15y ago
  I buy the argument that software is math and thus unpatentable. My experience has also been that most software patents (and especially always the most notorious) are trivial applications of an algorithm to some subject area. But here's a more pragmatic argument. The current patent system exists to provide financial incentive to bring the number of inventors in an untouched area from 0 to 1. It is completely broken wherever it brings the number of innovators in an emerging area from 50 to 1. The first case is probably true in any industry with high startup costs and unproven technology. The second case is true of software and services on the still young, still evolving internet, with low technological barriers to entry and fertile soil as far as the eyes can see. If we want to see what innovators are really capable of, we'll get rid of software patents and watch them duke it out in the market.
• lhnz 15y ago
  If somebody literally copy-pasted my code and released it as their own, then I'd be annoyed. But I take no issue with somebody reimplementing ideas. That's progress.
• lukifer 15y ago
  Intellectual property is a curious intersection of capitalism and socialism: a free market which would barely exist without the creation of artificial legal constructs. Bottom line: patents exist to foster innovation both for creators and users of ideas. Software patents do not accomplish this goal, and they are beyond redemption.
• chmike 15y ago
  What is ment by software pattent ? Patenting a method used in software ? People hear about patent trials but not when startups get their business model copied or stolen by bigger companies. They don't make any noise when they are smashed like moskitos. In one story I've hear of first hand witness from the bad guy side was that they didn't simply trick them into explaining their secret sauce recepie, they also phone the bank and their investors to stop fnancing them. They where big enough to do that. If they had pattented their method for mobile phone geolocalsation in 1999 in absence of gps at the time, things would have probbly run differently. Patent troll is bad, but when it is for the initial idea of it, that is protecting its inventor during the process of creating the business around it, then I think it's fair. Maybe 20 yeas is s bit long consdeing computing technology evolution.
• clord 15y ago
  My position on the matter is that patenting software or other mathematics should require full disclosure of the source for the system. If not expressible in a full-blown language, it's not patentable (e.g., one click). Let's shorten the length for software patents. For the duration that it is valid, the patent office simply acts as a custodian of the code, ensuring that it works and certifying that it is novel. The patent office should maintain (or contract a company like GitHub to maintain) the repository of pending public domain source. And once the patent expires, the source is released into the public domain, still under source control. We can also strengthen prior art rejection of bad patents. Finally, give enforcement more teeth, but narrow the scope to match more closely what is checked into the repository. A system like this is more in the spirit of what a patent is: a temporary monopoly with a public-domain disclosure of the idea at the end of term.
• seanp2k 15y ago
  http://www.google.com/patents?q=online+payment&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=online+payment&btnG=Sear... Pretty much all of these are idiotic. See also: http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-5893120-reduced-to-mathematical.html http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931... Software patents are stupid because you're trying to patent A WAY OF DOING SOMETHING and not A PRODUCT, even if said product is built from ways of doing something. Example: I patent "A method for storing data on physical storage using blocks" and sue everyone. There are people who try to patent RAM and storage: http://www.google.com/patents?q=a+method+for+storing+data&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=a+method+for+storing+data&#3... I'd wager that most of those are invalid patents / should be abolished.
• waqf 15y ago
  I think it's just a question of the bar being too low (though being so much so as to make patents that are found acceptable qualitatively unlike patents that I consider acceptable). For example, I think the LZW patent was deservedly admissible (though it rightfully did not prevent equally-good and patent-unencumbered algorithms from being developed).
• marquis 15y ago
  New Zealand banned software patents a couple of years ago I believe, and from what I see from friends there they have have a thriving software industry.
• sunahsuh 15y ago
  Just wanted to plug the FSF's documentary "Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system" -- actually watched it this past Friday. It's only half an hour long: http://patentabsurdity.com/ http://patentabsurdity.com/
• petegrif 15y ago
  http://www.betanews.com/joewilco.. http://www.betanews.com/joewilco... I would recommend this piece for those who wish to see the problems that a small innovative company can have even with patent protection. Without such protection they would have been left with nothing - copied wilfully by Microsoft and competitively dominated, all their investments down the rain. At least this way they prevailed in the courts and will have some recompense for the damage done to their innovative business.
• JulianMorrison 15y ago
  No patents would suck a few ways - new ideas might well end up being locked in obfuscated machine code or sealed in ROM until someone puts in the effort of disassembling them and teasing out the algorithm. But, they still suck less than the alternative, a world in which programmers are prevented from doing the right thing, innovation and start-ups require a willingness to dare a legal minefield blindfolded, big companies have unanswerable bludgeons against little companies, and unproductive trolls get to charge productive people for using ideas they couldn't comprehend, let alone create or use. Tear it down. Replace it with nothing.
• RexRollman 15y ago
  I feel that software patents should be abolished, but barring that, extremely shortened. I would say three to five years; a lifetime in the world of software.
• ohyes 15y ago
  Only when I own the patents!
• FrojoS 15y ago
  I find the results surprising. More than 500 points for software patents in some form? On HN? I'm not saying, that arguments for software patents are all wrong. And I'm excited about the discussion. But again, I'm surprised...
  • nwmt 15y ago
    It's worth noting that at the moment nearly 2400 people flat out want all software patents abolished. Plus, lumping the other options in together isn't necessarily fair. Revoking existing software patents would have some pretty severe effects on legitimate companies and their shareholders. And the "other changes" is extremely vague - one could assume that other changes includes placing the onus on the company applying for the patent to prove its uniqueness, which would increase the cost to receive a patent and decrease the likelihood of abuse. All in all, 19 votes at the moment support the current system. Less than 1%. And to be fair, roughly 15% believe better software patents would be OK.
    • FrojoS 15y ago
      True. But I still can't help being surprised about the results. Maybe, thats because here in Germany, suggesting software patents has almost become non political correct. At least, thats my perception.
• blackhole 15y ago
  An effective business model does not require patents, because by the time someone copies your idea well enough to be a threat, you've already come up with a better way to do it. Trying to make a business out of inventing one thing has never worked - you stay in business by inventing things faster than your competitors.
• FrojoS 15y ago
  I find the results surprising. More than 500 points for software patents in some form? On HN? I'm not saying, that arguments for software patents are all wrong. And I'm excited about the discussion. But again, I'm surprised...
• johngalt 15y ago
  The closer you get to the ideal situation with software IP law the closer you get to copyright style and the further away you get from patents. Software patents could work. It would just mean applying them more sparingly. You can patent the specific crank you've created, but not the whole idea of rotation.
• rdl 15y ago
  I am against patents in general, and especially against software patents. I wasted a lot of time from ~1990 to ~2000 with RSA alternatives, and then there was the whole Chaum and Brands patent mess which was another bottleneck for anonymous cryptographic token electronic cash (think bitcoin but anonymous, and even better). I am really kind of sad that I'll be getting some for my new company; it's a waste of $100k, time, etc., but it is the prudent thing to do.
• zmmmmm 15y ago
  It is interesting that this poll does not mention the problem that I most care about: that the bar for "obviousness" seems to be way too low for software patents. It is so low that I actually worry in my every day work that I will accidentally violate patents simply by solving simple every day problems in obvious ways. I would support some kind of software patents for truly novel inventions. However so many software patents that I see are almost insultingly obvious, even when you place them in context of their time. So, yes to software patents if: 1. Shorter time period - 20 years was based on an industrial era time frame for physical manufacture and distribution 2. Much higher threshold for obviousness. Companies should have to declare problems they are applying for patents for publicly and fund a bounty for members of the public or any challenging organization to win by submitting solutions. Only when third parties fail to suggest the methods in the claims should something become patentable.
• blantonl 15y ago
  Shouldn't someone ask, "what defines a software patent?" The author of this post should really clarify this since the term "software patent" could be easily be extrapolated by any polster here, thus polluting the end result.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• markchristian 15y ago
  I support it given the following sniff test: if a skilled software engineer could use an implementation of the idea the same way an ordinary would and then immediately walk back to his/her computer and implement it, it is not worthy of a patent.
• otaviogood 15y ago
  I got a patent for some of the stuff that went into Word Lens (augmented reality translator). I think software patents are awful, but I feel like I need to play the game that's currently in place. A significant part of our company's startup costs and time went into getting that patent. If I could, I'd pay all that and more to eliminate software patents completely - including my own. Software patents kill innovation.
• domador 15y ago
  I utterly detest software patents and the inaccurate view of innovation they embody. In theory, software patents should encourage innovation. In practice, it looks like they hinder it, and instead enable a legalized form of extortion and parasitism. I'm glad that software is unpatentable here in Costa Rica (as far as I know). I hope we never get infected by this detestable legal concept. As someone who develops software for international markets, though, I'm afraid I'm not immune to this issue, even if software patents are locally unenforceable in my case. I hope developers in other countries (the U.S. in particular) will care enough about this issue to organize and seek reform. Please, do what it takes to convince or hire legislators to remove or drastically reform this misguided legal concept!
• nickpinkston 15y ago
  Why is there no: "No software, or other patents, point" button - I'd click that for sure. With thousands of votes - I'd love to see the make-up of the vast majority of this question.
• mike_esspe 15y ago
  I wonder, if results with copyright poll will be completely different? The poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555088 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555088
• dillon 15y ago
  I believe that we could easily be years ahead of where we are now if everything was open source, or maybe not. I think it's dumb how we have to reinvent the wheel for something that currently exists, or maybe it's a good thing.
• _mrc 15y ago
  If you're thinking of patenting your software, think about how useful it would be if you had to license absolutely everything you take for granted - algorithms, data structures, compiler optimisations, I/O mechanisms. Patents were intended to encourage and reward creativity. When they're being used to stifle it, it's time to abolish them.
• andrewpi 15y ago
  Abolish them or at least make the period much shorter.
• monochromatic 15y ago
  I don't really mean to complain about this poll, because it's a legitimate question and it's sparked some good discussion. But having a poll about software patents on HN feels a little like having a poll about the ATF over on Glocktalk (or some other suitable analogy). Of course everyone (to within experimental error) is against.
• SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  I voted for a much shorter period, but I want to include a much more rigorous definition of non-obviousness in there. Perhaps my idea can't be reasonable implemented, but the current system is obvious broken.
• billmcneale 15y ago
  The US - has very strong support for software patents - is one of the most innovative countries in the world in the software area China - has no support for software patents whatsoever - has close to zero innovation in software Can someone explain this paradox?
  • Locke1689 15y ago
    I think you're reducing a hugely multivariate system to a univariate one.
    • joeburke 15y ago
      As do people who want to "abolish patents". While the system might need some revisions, it's certainly not as broken as a lot of abolitionists are depicting. Some things are working fine, and innovation is happening at a very fast pace in the US. Software patents can be abused but they can also be a force that encourages people to actually innovate instead of just copying what's already out there (which is pretty much all we are seeing from countries that don't have software patent laws).
• woodpanel 15y ago
  I can't get rid of the feeling that (software) patents are just a means of driving out competition. For a competitor, it adds layers of unproductive expenditures (legal work), pressures competitors into piling up their own stock of patents as leverage, thus creating patents whose creative accomplishment is the application for an patent. It creates a legal mine-field of patents, more legal insecurities, making an industry unattractive to enter. (software) patents mean more waste of money, less competition, less innovation and are turning a free-market into a oligarchy-game, where participation is impossible without being part of the big players.
• tlocke 15y ago
  Of course, we don't have software patents in Europe, but I want to keep it that way.
• InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Bluntly, it's this: Patents are designed to encourage and accelerate creativity and innovation, today they do exactly the opposite. They should go away.
• ra 15y ago
  Meta: The number of votes cast in this pole illustrates how big HN has become.
• omouse 15y ago
  All software patents abolished. Stop stifling people's creative urges damnit.
• drallison 15y ago
  Of course, exactly what constitutes a software patent is not defined here so the results are likely to be specious.