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If one accepts the premise of the patent system (and I don't necessarily), i.e. that it somehow is a way to reward innovation, then I find this discussion about

If one accepts the premise of the patent system (and I don't necessarily), i.e. that it somehow is a way to reward innovation, then I find this discussion about patent trolls contradictory. Why should only companies who make something benefit from the patent system? Somehow it's expected that the universities (and small innovators who can't afford lawyers to fight big guys violating a patent) generate free knowledge for companies. It's quite disappointing that the eff is propagating this view. It reminds me a lot to what is happening in OSS, where big corporations and startups are making billions of software build by volunteers that burn out maintaining said software while working another day job. The same companies then pad themselves on the back if they sponsor some project with a couple of thousand dollars a year for supporting open source.

akomtu 5y ago
One shouldn't accept this premise in a country that runs on pure refined greed. From that greedy cynical perspective, I'd think about patents this way. Say you have a voice you use to say things. I'm, a rich greedy racoon, thinking "hm.. how can I own his voice so anything he says would pay me a royalty?" And I come up with a clever plan: make a law that allows anyone to wrap their voice into a "patent" that can be sold or rented like a property. The law is sold as a way to empower good voices and reduce inequality. Then, I manufacture a situation where people in need have to sell their voices to buy food. Now I'm a landlord, I mean voicelord, who "owns" voices. Very legal and very cool. Iirc, this is how Edison got to "own" Tesla's inventions.
swiley 5y ago
The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. Setting everything else aside, academia is the one place where patent issuance is matched with a non-legalese description of the invention. Nearly all software patents in academic CS are matched by a series of academic articles, which aren't always super well-written, but are almost always infinitely better than the inscrutable JD-drafted legalese found in patent applications. It's not perfect, but academia (and industrial labs that function similarly to academia) get much closer to the spirit of "sharing how your invention works" than patents that are issued to basically any other type of institution. > I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing. I think this view comes from a pretty common misunderstanding of patent law. You don't need to actually build a thing to get a patent. There are tons of patents for e.g. power-plant components that AFAIK have never actually been built. You don't need to write a single line of code to get a software patent.
c1ccccc1 5y ago
A hypothetical company that didn't make anything, but generated high quality patents and licensed them out to other companies would be one thing. I don't know of many companies with that business model, probably because it's hard to generate useful inventions without actually building things / writing code and seeing what happens, but there might be a few out there. A patent troll is a company that generates low quality patents. These are designed to be as broad a possible, so that said company can sue as many people as possible for infringement. Broad patents tend to contain very little information that could be useful in actually building working technology. It's like Leonardo daVinci takes out a patent on flying machines on the basis of his impractical drawings, and then sues the Wright brothers, who did all the hard work of actually designing a functional airplane. The patent troll doesn't even have to have a legally winnable case in order to make money, the point is just to create enough doubt that the target company decides it's easier to settle out of court, rather than waste a bunch of money in a lawsuit. In my opinion, such behaviour is pure rent-seeking. Additional footnote: As a taxpayer in a country where the government gives significant funding to universities and university research, I absolutely do expect the universities to generate free knowledge for everyone (including companies).

akomtu 5y ago

One shouldn't accept this premise in a country that runs on pure refined greed. From that greedy cynical perspective, I'd think about patents this way. Say you have a voice you use to say things. I'm, a rich greedy racoon, thinking "hm.. how can I own his voice so anything he says would pay me a royalty?" And I come up with a clever plan: make a law that allows anyone to wrap their voice into a "patent" that can be sold or rented like a property. The law is sold as a way to empower good voices and reduce inequality. Then, I manufacture a situation where people in need have to sell their voices to buy food. Now I'm a landlord, I mean voicelord, who "owns" voices. Very legal and very cool. Iirc, this is how Edison got to "own" Tesla's inventions.

swiley 5y ago

The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> The original idea was that it rewards sharing innovation. You're supposed to publish in detail the way your invention works and in return get legally protected exclusive rights to it for a decade or so. Setting everything else aside, academia is the one place where patent issuance is matched with a non-legalese description of the invention. Nearly all software patents in academic CS are matched by a series of academic articles, which aren't always super well-written, but are almost always infinitely better than the inscrutable JD-drafted legalese found in patent applications. It's not perfect, but academia (and industrial labs that function similarly to academia) get much closer to the spirit of "sharing how your invention works" than patents that are issued to basically any other type of institution. > I'm surprised software patents don't require source code to be published, that would fit with the spirit of the thing. I think this view comes from a pretty common misunderstanding of patent law. You don't need to actually build a thing to get a patent. There are tons of patents for e.g. power-plant components that AFAIK have never actually been built. You don't need to write a single line of code to get a software patent.

c1ccccc1 5y ago

A hypothetical company that didn't make anything, but generated high quality patents and licensed them out to other companies would be one thing. I don't know of many companies with that business model, probably because it's hard to generate useful inventions without actually building things / writing code and seeing what happens, but there might be a few out there. A patent troll is a company that generates low quality patents. These are designed to be as broad a possible, so that said company can sue as many people as possible for infringement. Broad patents tend to contain very little information that could be useful in actually building working technology. It's like Leonardo daVinci takes out a patent on flying machines on the basis of his impractical drawings, and then sues the Wright brothers, who did all the hard work of actually designing a functional airplane. The patent troll doesn't even have to have a legally winnable case in order to make money, the point is just to create enough doubt that the target company decides it's easier to settle out of court, rather than waste a bunch of money in a lawsuit. In my opinion, such behaviour is pure rent-seeking. Additional footnote: As a taxpayer in a country where the government gives significant funding to universities and university research, I absolutely do expect the universities to generate free knowledge for everyone (including companies).