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I've lived through a few instances where software patents fostered innovation. We had implemented a certain GUI without realizing that we had copied an existin

I've lived through a few instances where software patents fostered innovation. We had implemented a certain GUI without realizing that we had copied an existing one. It was completely accidental, the kind of thing that happens without really thinking about it. We received notification from our competitors that we had to change our approach because they had a patent for it. We did. It set us back a whole month but at the end of the day, we ended up coming up with a solution which I think we superior in all the ways. So the software patent worked here: it forced us to not be lazy and come up with an innovative approach instead of copying an existing one.

Buttons840 5y ago
Your being sarcastic, right? A system like patents needs to demonstrate a clear and very large benefit to offset the fact that it removes people's freedom to implement ideas of their own inventions, to implement their own thoughts. That should be a hard thing to take away. I don't think patents demonstrate a large enough benefit to justify that.
- hota_mazi 5y ago
  My story is an exact contradiction to your last point. By the way, you're*.
  - dangus 5y ago
    Your story absolutely isn’t a counterexample. It’s blind luck that the situation you described led to innovation. Even if it did lead to innovation, it still wasted a month of time that could have been invested in more impactful innovations. You were still forced to hold out on shipping for a month entirely due to the patent system. The alternate ending to that story could have very easily (and more likely) been “we had to scrap the feature because there was no way to do it without violating the patent.” Or the result could have been that they only alternative you came up with was worse. Or the result could have been that you needed to pay the other company a licensing fee. Essentially you just got lucky that the competitor didn’t think of the best idea first, because if they had you’d be forced to ship something inferior. For example, Amazon patented buying something with one click. How do you propose innovating around that? You can’t, you have to license the patent from Amazon or add another step to your checkout process. There’s only one way for one click to buy something.
oehpr 5y ago
It really does come down to the particulars here, but there is serious value in making UI consistent between applications. Every time a user comes to an application they have to figure out the primitives from the ground up. Where things go and why, in what order, what it does, and what the names for everything is. You copied a competitor (unintentionally), and now when someone comes to your application from the other side, they have to work out how to work things. Your UI has to not just be better, but better while accounting for the relearning users must do. Imagine if there were patents on the File menu, for example (knowing US patents, I'll bet there's a menagerie of them, mostly owned by FAANG in their MAD warchests). I'd prefer devs not get creative here, unless the gains are substantial.
HPsquared 5y ago
When you say copy, do you mean someone saw the other one and copied it, or did they independently come up with it?

Buttons840 5y ago

Your being sarcastic, right? A system like patents needs to demonstrate a clear and very large benefit to offset the fact that it removes people's freedom to implement ideas of their own inventions, to implement their own thoughts. That should be a hard thing to take away. I don't think patents demonstrate a large enough benefit to justify that.

hota_mazi 5y ago
My story is an exact contradiction to your last point. By the way, you're*.
- dangus 5y ago
  Your story absolutely isn’t a counterexample. It’s blind luck that the situation you described led to innovation. Even if it did lead to innovation, it still wasted a month of time that could have been invested in more impactful innovations. You were still forced to hold out on shipping for a month entirely due to the patent system. The alternate ending to that story could have very easily (and more likely) been “we had to scrap the feature because there was no way to do it without violating the patent.” Or the result could have been that they only alternative you came up with was worse. Or the result could have been that you needed to pay the other company a licensing fee. Essentially you just got lucky that the competitor didn’t think of the best idea first, because if they had you’d be forced to ship something inferior. For example, Amazon patented buying something with one click. How do you propose innovating around that? You can’t, you have to license the patent from Amazon or add another step to your checkout process. There’s only one way for one click to buy something.

oehpr 5y ago

It really does come down to the particulars here, but there is serious value in making UI consistent between applications. Every time a user comes to an application they have to figure out the primitives from the ground up. Where things go and why, in what order, what it does, and what the names for everything is. You copied a competitor (unintentionally), and now when someone comes to your application from the other side, they have to work out how to work things. Your UI has to not just be better, but better while accounting for the relearning users must do. Imagine if there were patents on the File menu, for example (knowing US patents, I'll bet there's a menagerie of them, mostly owned by FAANG in their MAD warchests). I'd prefer devs not get creative here, unless the gains are substantial.

HPsquared 5y ago

When you say copy, do you mean someone saw the other one and copied it, or did they independently come up with it?