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> 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 cen

> 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.
    - psykotic 15y ago
      > It is only valid to someone who already believes patents are terribly immoral. It doesn't assume you believe patents are as immoral as slavery; I already made that specific disclaimer. It assumes that, yes, you do take strong moral exception to software patents. I work for a small company that is vehemently anti-patent even though we do enough novel work that we could file hundreds of patents each year that would fall in the top percentile of innovation among patents. The company has been around for a long time and some of our products are in very patent-encumbered areas like video and audio codecs. We do license patents from others where necessary; for example, every Miles license we sell includes licenses for Thompson's MP3-related patents.
      - monochromatic 15y ago
        > We do license patents from others where necessary Why is this level of complicity ok with you, but obtaining a patent for defensive purposes is not?
        psykotic 15y ago
jerf 15y ago
Comparing having a name on a patent to being a slave owner is crazy talk, as long as slinging around accusations of crazy talk is considered acceptable discourse. I reject analogies in general, they rarely advance the discourse. Having a patent is having a patent. When it comes time to argue against them, being a stakeholder instead of being someone trying to tear down what society perceives as other stakeholders is going to matter to the society making the decision. As I said before, I prefer effective protests to feel-good protests. Just bugging out of the system entirely is a feel-good approach, not an effective one. All the same patents exist, except now you're entirely powerless.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  The idea of "defensive patenting" is completely wrecked by the presence of non-practicing entities. You can't bargain with patent trolls because they have no need for your IP. All you can do is pay them to go away, either before or after a jury of hayseeds in East Texas forces you to. And there is absolutely no guarantee that the patents you file while working for XYZ MegaCorp will not end up in the hands of a non-practicing entity before they expire. Even the largest companies may be sold, merged, spun off, or liquidated multiple times over twenty years. All software patents are bad, just as all slavery is bad. And the only way to keep bad patents from being granted is to document and publish your work as widely as you can... which, of course, leaves you even more vulnerable to attack by both trolls and practicing entities. In summary, the only way to win is not to play.

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.
  - psykotic 15y ago
    > It is only valid to someone who already believes patents are terribly immoral. It doesn't assume you believe patents are as immoral as slavery; I already made that specific disclaimer. It assumes that, yes, you do take strong moral exception to software patents. I work for a small company that is vehemently anti-patent even though we do enough novel work that we could file hundreds of patents each year that would fall in the top percentile of innovation among patents. The company has been around for a long time and some of our products are in very patent-encumbered areas like video and audio codecs. We do license patents from others where necessary; for example, every Miles license we sell includes licenses for Thompson's MP3-related patents.
    - monochromatic 15y ago
      > We do license patents from others where necessary Why is this level of complicity ok with you, but obtaining a patent for defensive purposes is not?
      - psykotic 15y ago

jerf 15y ago

Comparing having a name on a patent to being a slave owner is crazy talk, as long as slinging around accusations of crazy talk is considered acceptable discourse. I reject analogies in general, they rarely advance the discourse. Having a patent is having a patent. When it comes time to argue against them, being a stakeholder instead of being someone trying to tear down what society perceives as other stakeholders is going to matter to the society making the decision. As I said before, I prefer effective protests to feel-good protests. Just bugging out of the system entirely is a feel-good approach, not an effective one. All the same patents exist, except now you're entirely powerless.

CamperBob 15y ago
The idea of "defensive patenting" is completely wrecked by the presence of non-practicing entities. You can't bargain with patent trolls because they have no need for your IP. All you can do is pay them to go away, either before or after a jury of hayseeds in East Texas forces you to. And there is absolutely no guarantee that the patents you file while working for XYZ MegaCorp will not end up in the hands of a non-practicing entity before they expire. Even the largest companies may be sold, merged, spun off, or liquidated multiple times over twenty years. All software patents are bad, just as all slavery is bad. And the only way to keep bad patents from being granted is to document and publish your work as widely as you can... which, of course, leaves you even more vulnerable to attack by both trolls and practicing entities. In summary, the only way to win is not to play.