7 ms·

This John Carmack quote is relevant and shares your sentiments: "The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools

by albedoa 15y ago

This John Carmack quote is relevant and shares your sentiments: "The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

jcromartie 15y ago
Except it's even worse than that: usually patent trolls haven't even written the code to solve the problem. Working code is not required to be granted a patent.
- dspillett 15y ago
  And they could file for the patent after you have done the work. You then have the hassle and expense of proving that your work came first and even then such cases often don't go the way they should.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    I great example of the trouble someone had to go to prove they were first is the ABC computer. It's an important case if you consider that without John Atanasoff the personal computer would never have existed. At the time IBM and some other corp I can't remember the name held some important patent on memory and other things that would prevent anyone from creating a personal computer without paying IBM. Those patents which had come from the creators of ENIAC were later found to have been heavely (well in reality stolen) from the ABC computer. After years of battles, IBM lost the patents and right after that the PC came to be. For a worse horror story, just take a look at Farnsworth trouble with RCA about the TV patents.
  - ahlatimer 15y ago
    You could still lose that fight, even if your work came first, if you never published it or filed a patent for it. First to invent only holds if you reduced it to practice (either by actually inventing the thing, or boiling it down so someone reasonably skilled in the art could then invent it) within that year. You lose rights to it after that if someone else wants to patent it. There's also first to conceive stipulations. The intellectual property class I took last semester would have been a lot easier if the U.S. just went first to file (like basically everywhere else).
    - briggsbio 15y ago
      The US is trying to make that transition. The bill passed the Senate, and Committee in the House, and goes to a full House vote in June 2011. But it will likely be difficult for the two bills to match and be agreed upon because of all the other crap in the bill which has good stuff and bad (much like the overwrought SBIR reauthorization bill that can never seem to pass and it just extended ad infinitum). I like the "first to file" idea, but it puts the small inventor at a disadvantage. The main benefit is that it will hopefully lubricate university tech transfer offices. No more "oh I'll put in a disclosure and wait and see, I'm safe." it'll incentivize the inventors to file a provisional as soon as possible. But of you're building (or hacking) something in your garage you'd better get a patent attorney quick. And be patient, because response times on a first-to-file system will be horribly slow even compared to today's glacial system.
- coffeeaddicted 15y ago
  And not only you might accidentally break patents - you might not even be able to figure out if you break patents at all without paying a lawyer to translate the patent specifications. Maybe it's just because I'm no native english speaker, but I often don't get patent texts. Coding around patents is like walking blindfolded through a minefield.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    One could argue that you shouldn't code around patents in the first go round. Because if you demonstrate that you knew about the patent and then proceeded to infringe on it, you could be liable for 3X the amount. If you don't know about the patent, then you're only liable for 1X the amount. Moral of the story: don't read patents, you can only get into trouble. If you get sued after the fact, then you can change your code to work around it.
    - Sindisil 15y ago
      Yup. The quasi-official policy at some places I've worked is that engineers are not to browse the patent database, for exactly that reason. Ironic, given one of the original primary reasons for the patent system.
      - coffeeaddicted 15y ago
        I'm not sure if that really lowers your overall risk. Finding out afterward that you accidentally broke some patent which you could have avoided easily isn't necessarily better even if you don't have to pay treble damages.
  - chris_j 15y ago
    I'm a native English speaker and I don't generally understand patent texts. In fact, I've filed quite a few patents and have always been amazed that I give something readable to a lawyer to write up and they turn it into something that I can't understand any more. The idea that a patent is the medium through which an author shares their invention with the world is rather perverse. So I agree; coding around patents is difficult given that they tend to be so hard to read and understand.
kenjackson 15y ago
In theory that shouldn't be patentable. What John Carmack is describing is something that is obvious to a craftsperson in the field. OTOH it does still preclude John from being presented with a problem and then doing someone quite ingenious to do a great solution that seems actually quite "novel", to learn that someone else did it years before. But for patents, if you follow logical steps from a given problem then you shouldn't be granted a patent. In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. And only after that attempt, read the actual patent. If they're struck with, "Ahh... yes, good idea, wouldn't have thought of it mysefl" then its potentially patentable. But if the patent officer says, "Yeah, that was my second attempt." or "that's largely derivative of my general line of logic in my other attempts" then it shoudln't be patentable.
- jobeirne 15y ago
  > In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? I imagine that many of the proposals that move through the patent office are highly contextual and may be simple ideas wrapped up in daunting language. It seems reasonable that it would take far more than a week to even get your arms around some of the problems themselves, let alone the solutions. Besides, if patent officers were such able critics, wouldn't they be more useful as engineers?
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    > In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? I imagine that many of the proposals that move through the patent office are highly contextual and may be simple ideas wrapped up in daunting language. It seems reasonable that it would take far more than a week to even get your arms around some of the problems themselves, let alone the solutions. Then spend more than a week on it. I didn't use a week as "cap", but rather a starting point. If it takes a month, sure then spend a month. You'll get no arguments from me. Especially since patents regularly take 5+ years to get approved.

by albedoa 15y ago

jcromartie 15y ago

Except it's even worse than that: usually patent trolls haven't even written the code to solve the problem. Working code is not required to be granted a patent.

dspillett 15y ago
And they could file for the patent after you have done the work. You then have the hassle and expense of proving that your work came first and even then such cases often don't go the way they should.
- nkassis 15y ago
  I great example of the trouble someone had to go to prove they were first is the ABC computer. It's an important case if you consider that without John Atanasoff the personal computer would never have existed. At the time IBM and some other corp I can't remember the name held some important patent on memory and other things that would prevent anyone from creating a personal computer without paying IBM. Those patents which had come from the creators of ENIAC were later found to have been heavely (well in reality stolen) from the ABC computer. After years of battles, IBM lost the patents and right after that the PC came to be. For a worse horror story, just take a look at Farnsworth trouble with RCA about the TV patents.
- ahlatimer 15y ago
  You could still lose that fight, even if your work came first, if you never published it or filed a patent for it. First to invent only holds if you reduced it to practice (either by actually inventing the thing, or boiling it down so someone reasonably skilled in the art could then invent it) within that year. You lose rights to it after that if someone else wants to patent it. There's also first to conceive stipulations. The intellectual property class I took last semester would have been a lot easier if the U.S. just went first to file (like basically everywhere else).
  - briggsbio 15y ago
    The US is trying to make that transition. The bill passed the Senate, and Committee in the House, and goes to a full House vote in June 2011. But it will likely be difficult for the two bills to match and be agreed upon because of all the other crap in the bill which has good stuff and bad (much like the overwrought SBIR reauthorization bill that can never seem to pass and it just extended ad infinitum). I like the "first to file" idea, but it puts the small inventor at a disadvantage. The main benefit is that it will hopefully lubricate university tech transfer offices. No more "oh I'll put in a disclosure and wait and see, I'm safe." it'll incentivize the inventors to file a provisional as soon as possible. But of you're building (or hacking) something in your garage you'd better get a patent attorney quick. And be patient, because response times on a first-to-file system will be horribly slow even compared to today's glacial system.
coffeeaddicted 15y ago
And not only you might accidentally break patents - you might not even be able to figure out if you break patents at all without paying a lawyer to translate the patent specifications. Maybe it's just because I'm no native english speaker, but I often don't get patent texts. Coding around patents is like walking blindfolded through a minefield.
- mbreese 15y ago
  One could argue that you shouldn't code around patents in the first go round. Because if you demonstrate that you knew about the patent and then proceeded to infringe on it, you could be liable for 3X the amount. If you don't know about the patent, then you're only liable for 1X the amount. Moral of the story: don't read patents, you can only get into trouble. If you get sued after the fact, then you can change your code to work around it.
  - Sindisil 15y ago
    Yup. The quasi-official policy at some places I've worked is that engineers are not to browse the patent database, for exactly that reason. Ironic, given one of the original primary reasons for the patent system.
    - coffeeaddicted 15y ago
      I'm not sure if that really lowers your overall risk. Finding out afterward that you accidentally broke some patent which you could have avoided easily isn't necessarily better even if you don't have to pay treble damages.
- chris_j 15y ago
  I'm a native English speaker and I don't generally understand patent texts. In fact, I've filed quite a few patents and have always been amazed that I give something readable to a lawyer to write up and they turn it into something that I can't understand any more. The idea that a patent is the medium through which an author shares their invention with the world is rather perverse. So I agree; coding around patents is difficult given that they tend to be so hard to read and understand.

kenjackson 15y ago

In theory that shouldn't be patentable. What John Carmack is describing is something that is obvious to a craftsperson in the field. OTOH it does still preclude John from being presented with a problem and then doing someone quite ingenious to do a great solution that seems actually quite "novel", to learn that someone else did it years before. But for patents, if you follow logical steps from a given problem then you shouldn't be granted a patent. In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. And only after that attempt, read the actual patent. If they're struck with, "Ahh... yes, good idea, wouldn't have thought of it mysefl" then its potentially patentable. But if the patent officer says, "Yeah, that was my second attempt." or "that's largely derivative of my general line of logic in my other attempts" then it shoudln't be patentable.

jobeirne 15y ago
> In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? I imagine that many of the proposals that move through the patent office are highly contextual and may be simple ideas wrapped up in daunting language. It seems reasonable that it would take far more than a week to even get your arms around some of the problems themselves, let alone the solutions. Besides, if patent officers were such able critics, wouldn't they be more useful as engineers?
- kenjackson 15y ago
  > In fact the way patents should work is that the patent officer spends a week trying to solve said problem themselves. Does that really sound at all scalable (or even reasonable) to you? I imagine that many of the proposals that move through the patent office are highly contextual and may be simple ideas wrapped up in daunting language. It seems reasonable that it would take far more than a week to even get your arms around some of the problems themselves, let alone the solutions. Then spend more than a week on it. I didn't use a week as "cap", but rather a starting point. If it takes a month, sure then spend a month. You'll get no arguments from me. Especially since patents regularly take 5+ years to get approved.