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> If give someone enough constraints almost any patent will seem obvious. That seems like a strawperson. The parent said that just given the very rough idea or

by jkrems 6y ago

> If give someone enough constraints almost any patent will seem obvious. That seems like a strawperson. The parent said that just given the very rough idea or (I would add) even just the term "1 click buy", somebody could have created a comparable experience without any reference to the patent. That's not "give someone enough constraints". That's "let somebody overhear a customer mention the feature in passing". Suggesting that Amazon wouldn't have invented 1-click buy without patents seems incompatible with good business practices. All my conversations with other developers mentioned a single reason for patenting "random" features at this point: As a way to defend against other people's patents. The only reason _not_ to create a novel feature was that it may be too close to something patented and a lucky lawyer may have argued that it was too close. If anything, software patents actively discourage innovation. I've never heard of anybody implementing a feature by using a patent. I've never heard of somebody developing a novel feature to get a patent. Which means as "patents", they are useless.

Retric 6y ago
The actual patent isn’t the same as disclosure. Take RSA encryption for example. People don’t implement it from the patent, but independent invention was extremely rare. People’s implementations generally trace the idea back to Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. Yet, overhear the idea in passing and it’s implementation is obvious. Actual secure crypto is much harder than a simple implementation though. RSA is interesting because an equivalent algorithm was independently discovered in 1973 at GCHQ the British signals intelligence agency, and only declassified in 1997. So in effect it’s disclosure not invention that shaped public crypto. I am not saying patents are a great fit for software, but I am saying disclosure in one form or another is.

by jkrems 6y ago

Retric 6y ago

The actual patent isn’t the same as disclosure. Take RSA encryption for example. People don’t implement it from the patent, but independent invention was extremely rare. People’s implementations generally trace the idea back to Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. Yet, overhear the idea in passing and it’s implementation is obvious. Actual secure crypto is much harder than a simple implementation though. RSA is interesting because an equivalent algorithm was independently discovered in 1973 at GCHQ the British signals intelligence agency, and only declassified in 1997. So in effect it’s disclosure not invention that shaped public crypto. I am not saying patents are a great fit for software, but I am saying disclosure in one form or another is.