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What do you do as a developer in a large corporation where you have zero control over how the patent with your name attached to it gets used? The higher-ups wil

by sofal 15y ago

What do you do as a developer in a large corporation where you have zero control over how the patent with your name attached to it gets used? The higher-ups will give you the MAD defense argument, which is fine, except that they're not restricted to that use case. They can do whatever they want, and you can't be sure that they aren't going to bulldoze over some smaller company with it later on.

jerf 15y ago
File anyway, for the second reason I gave. Your name on a patent makes your argument against the patent you have that much more effective. I'm basing this on the assumption that you're not willing to quit over this issue, which I'm not advocating for. Protesting is good, but I prefer effective protesting to protests that make you feel good, and right now sitting on your hands does nothing. If you don't patent it, somebody else will, and you won't have any more control over that patent, either.
- psykotic 15y ago
  > Your name on a patent makes your argument against the patent you have that much more effective. That is crazy talk. Here's an analogy. We're in the 19th century. Someone with analogous views to yours says an abolitionist should become a slaveholder to be a more effective advocate for abolition. An abolitionist who through an accident of birth inherits an estate with a holding of slaves might indeed make a more effective advocate against slavery because he stands to suffer immediate financial loss were slavery abolished. That is all true. But it's a completely different thing to say that a would-be abolitionist should actively try to become complicit in the very system he is trying to abolish. Or that the man who is a slaveholder by birth should expand his slave holdings in order to make his potential losses from abolition all the more staggering. I'm not trying to say that the system of patents is analogous to the system of human slavery on a moral scale. I'm just addressing the tactical issues and whether someone who opposes a system for moral reasons should become complicit in it. There are probably many other examples I could have used, but this is the one that came to mind.
  - monochromatic 15y ago
    The complicity isn't very analogous. There's nothing objectionable about obtaining a patent--it's all about how you use it.
    - psykotic 15y ago
      > There's nothing objectionable about obtaining a patent--it's all about how you use it. I disagree violently. You have to consider the enormous total mass of patents in effect. The fear, uncertainty and doubt resulting from a patent being on the books is the primary drag on entrepreneurship and individual programmer freedom. Even if the current patent holder has a history of non-enforcement, I cannot assume that policy will continue in the future, or that its patents won't be bought up by the Nathan Myhrvolds of the world when the company defaults. Now, if the patent was held by a non-profit organization with an ironclad charter that grants free and unrestricted licenses to all comers, that's much better than the alternative. But it's still far from ideal. Assuming such a trojan horse strategy actually worked on a large scale, it could deter real patent reform. Stopgap measures have a way of doing that. That's what happened with the patent cross-licensing between large companies; they're only starting to complain because cross-licensing is useless with patent trolls.
      - dpark 15y ago
        It's not immoral to obtain a patent. Sure, your company's patent portfolio might end up in the hands of a patent troll. On the other hand, your company might be sued into oblivion in a year because you didn't obtain your patent. In that tradeoff, I'd file the patent. The fact that something can be used for immoral purposes does not make that thing immoral. Your slavery comparison is also ridiculous. It is only valid to someone who already believes patents are terribly immoral. To anyone else, it comes off as Godwin-lite. I think a more apt analogy would be if you know that a university was a paper mill, but the accreditation board refused to revoke its accreditation. What would you do in that situation? You might obtain your own degree from the institution so that you can say with certainty and with credibility that the university is a sham. It would indeed be immoral to obtain a fake degree for the purpose of defrauding an employer. It would not be immoral to obtain a fake degree to strengthen your argument.

by sofal 15y ago

jerf 15y ago

File anyway, for the second reason I gave. Your name on a patent makes your argument against the patent you have that much more effective. I'm basing this on the assumption that you're not willing to quit over this issue, which I'm not advocating for. Protesting is good, but I prefer effective protesting to protests that make you feel good, and right now sitting on your hands does nothing. If you don't patent it, somebody else will, and you won't have any more control over that patent, either.

psykotic 15y ago
> Your name on a patent makes your argument against the patent you have that much more effective. That is crazy talk. Here's an analogy. We're in the 19th century. Someone with analogous views to yours says an abolitionist should become a slaveholder to be a more effective advocate for abolition. An abolitionist who through an accident of birth inherits an estate with a holding of slaves might indeed make a more effective advocate against slavery because he stands to suffer immediate financial loss were slavery abolished. That is all true. But it's a completely different thing to say that a would-be abolitionist should actively try to become complicit in the very system he is trying to abolish. Or that the man who is a slaveholder by birth should expand his slave holdings in order to make his potential losses from abolition all the more staggering. I'm not trying to say that the system of patents is analogous to the system of human slavery on a moral scale. I'm just addressing the tactical issues and whether someone who opposes a system for moral reasons should become complicit in it. There are probably many other examples I could have used, but this is the one that came to mind.
- monochromatic 15y ago
  The complicity isn't very analogous. There's nothing objectionable about obtaining a patent--it's all about how you use it.
  - psykotic 15y ago
    > There's nothing objectionable about obtaining a patent--it's all about how you use it. I disagree violently. You have to consider the enormous total mass of patents in effect. The fear, uncertainty and doubt resulting from a patent being on the books is the primary drag on entrepreneurship and individual programmer freedom. Even if the current patent holder has a history of non-enforcement, I cannot assume that policy will continue in the future, or that its patents won't be bought up by the Nathan Myhrvolds of the world when the company defaults. Now, if the patent was held by a non-profit organization with an ironclad charter that grants free and unrestricted licenses to all comers, that's much better than the alternative. But it's still far from ideal. Assuming such a trojan horse strategy actually worked on a large scale, it could deter real patent reform. Stopgap measures have a way of doing that. That's what happened with the patent cross-licensing between large companies; they're only starting to complain because cross-licensing is useless with patent trolls.
    - dpark 15y ago
      It's not immoral to obtain a patent. Sure, your company's patent portfolio might end up in the hands of a patent troll. On the other hand, your company might be sued into oblivion in a year because you didn't obtain your patent. In that tradeoff, I'd file the patent. The fact that something can be used for immoral purposes does not make that thing immoral. Your slavery comparison is also ridiculous. It is only valid to someone who already believes patents are terribly immoral. To anyone else, it comes off as Godwin-lite. I think a more apt analogy would be if you know that a university was a paper mill, but the accreditation board refused to revoke its accreditation. What would you do in that situation? You might obtain your own degree from the institution so that you can say with certainty and with credibility that the university is a sham. It would indeed be immoral to obtain a fake degree for the purpose of defrauding an employer. It would not be immoral to obtain a fake degree to strengthen your argument.