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Petition: Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents

194 points by dbingham 15y ago

SwellJoe 15y ago
Two typos in the first sentence: interpretation of software as language and therefor patentable Should be "therefore" and "not patentable" or "unpatentable" or "not subject to patents".
- fjarlq 15y ago
  Yuck, embarrassing.
- tankenmate 15y ago
  There are many typos and grammar errors in this petition, hence it will turn people off. Quite a pity.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- dbingham 15y ago
  Yeah, I know, sorry about that. I was really just playing with the system to see it could do in a late at night "trying to fall back to sleep" period. I didn't know at what point I'd lose editing ability, or that I wouldn't be able to delete it once created. So I just ran with it instead.
mmaunder 15y ago
Basically every US citizen on HN needs to sign this right now - unless you have a vested interest in more patents being issued like patent number 6080436 issued in 2000, "Bread Refreshing Method." which is basically a patent for making toast. More on this and patent trolls: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-pat...
- justinsb 15y ago
  The petition is only for software patents, so would not affect this patent.
tomelders 15y ago
the typos are embarrassing. For such an important issue, it makes me angry that no one took the time to proof read it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dralison 15y ago
It would be a pity if this particular idea died out because the author couldn't create a proper paragraph. It won't gain attention from a single petition anyway - there will need to be many of them. That said, this one is worth signing, as will the ones that follow in order to make this happen.
- alttag 15y ago
  So, write a proper one, and submit it to HN.
- dbingham 15y ago
  Please write a proper one and submit it. I'll sign it and delete the links to mine. Mine was never really meant to "the" petition for this. It was me fooling with the system and when I realized I'd clicked one page too far, I ran with it.
jonstewart 15y ago
"its", not "it's" It would seem unlawful for the USPTO to cease granting software patents. On any random issue, most folks are better off lobbying their local member of Congress than the President.
brown9-2 15y ago
Isn't it up to Congress to direct the Patent office?
- brlewis 15y ago
  It's up to Congress to write the original laws. They already did. It's up to the judicial branch to decide whether those laws preclude software patents. They already did: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 Caveat: They did opine that Congress should clarify this particular question. However, decades of inaction by Congress must be interpreted as their acceptance of the Supreme Court opinions as good law, not in need of legislative clarification. Now it's up to the executive branch to direct the patent office to obey the law.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Sorry about not replying to you on the other thread a few days ago. I haven't been keeping up with HN regularly and forgot to check whether you had replied to my comment. I think you are badly misinterpreting how the courts work. The Federal Circuit did not overrule Benson or Flook, even if Justice Stevens disliked their interpretation thereof in Diehr. Nor did the Supreme Court write off State Street or Appalat as bad precedent in the Bilski decision. When Bilski was before the Federal circuit, it rejected his claim and also narrowed its earlier criteria for patentability substantially. The Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit's judgment that Bilski's business method was not patentable, but said that the extremely narrow 'machine or transformation' test identified by the Federal Circuit was too narrow, and would exclude many patentable inventions while seeking to exclude unpatentable ones. Now, you're talking about this bit, I think: And nothing in today's opinion should be read as endorsing interpretations of § 101 that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used in the past. See, e.g., State Street, 149 F.3d, at 1373; AT & T Corp., 172 F.3d, at 1357. (Bilski v. Kappos at 3231) Is this right? If not, ignore the following. They're not saying those earlier decisions are bad precedent. They're warning people against interpretations of the form 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' You're reading it as a binary: they're not endorsing something, therefore they must be against it. but non-endorsement does not equate to condemnation. Their point is that they are not passing judgment on those earlier decisions at all, and it would be a mistake to look for an implicit endorsement of those decisions in the case they were judging at the time. It's important to understand that courts don't like to settle open legal questions if they don't need to, and they definitely don't want to do it by expanding the scope on their inquiry. Why? Because that would put them on a collision course with Congress, and the judiciary is less powerful than Congress. The Courts could lose some of their existing powers if they exercised them too freely. So what a court much prefers to do when presented with a knotty problem (like the state of patent law) is to either throw the ball back into Congress's court, or to wait until a case comes to them where the issues are clear and well-defined. In the latter situation, the Court can make a straightforward argument that it is exercising its legitimate function of deciding the answer to a question that has been brought before it. The court does not want to look like it's asking questions of its own. So another way to read the non-endorsement statement above is 'don't anyone get the idea that we are trying to usurp Congress and articulate a new law here, because we're not.'
klklklk 15y ago
Ok.. first of all if you are going to be taken seriously you should really spell everything correctly in your petition, or you sound like an ass. How can i take a point away from this story hacker news? Is this by the same guy that wants VT to secede and become part of Canada? http://vermontrepublic.org/ http://vermontrepublic.org/
javanix 15y ago
The issue with this sort of thing is Joe Public is never going to understand the underlying issue with software patents. Without some politician complaining loudly and simply about the wrongness of an issue, nothing is going to change. Unfortunately the major technical issues of our time (this and net neutrality, for instance) do not have loud, simple explanations.
- javanix 15y ago
  Better to spend your time petitioning for campaign finance and term limits - our only hope is getting enough people in office who are smart enough to do the right technical thing and who aren't reliant on the industries they are responsible for regulating.
jbrowning 15y ago
If somebody else is creating a petition that is coherent and gramatically correct and I will sign it immediately. A petition like this will never be taken seriously and this one actually makes the arument that software is patentable in the first sentence. I would do it but this site states that creating a similar petition will lessen the possiblity of receiving an official response so I don't want to duplicate work somebody else is already doing.
- dbingham 15y ago
  I agree. What was I drunk? If someone can create a petition with coherent grammar, I fully support moving to that one. And I'll send feedback asking them to remove mine. I've already begged them for editing ability, but I doubt we'll see that any time soon.
  - pdx 15y ago
    You can't edit something that people have already signed, for obvious reasons. The best you could do is to delete it and start again. 2nd best, and probably the only option available to you, is to ignore this petition, stop promoting it, and start a new one.
    - dbingham 15y ago
      Yeah, I'm begging them to take it down at this point. I do think wiki editing with notifications would be one way to do edits of something people signed. But yeah, still not practical. They did have a "review before publish" page that I accidentally clicked right through (the "Oh crap" moment). I wonder if you can share it in a limited fashion to get feedback on the language from that page?
dbingham 15y ago
Why don't we work together to come up with language for a new one? Then once we've settled on good language someone can enter it into the system and we can all go sign it.
dbingham 15y ago
If I had been actually writing with the intention of publishing, it might have looked something more like this. So here's my suggestion for new language, rip it apart! "Direct the US Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents The US Patent system is badly broken with respect to software patents. Patents are being issued to companies for “inventions” that are, in fact, common knowledge included in any introductory software textbook. The result is that the large software corporations are buying up reams of patents and using them to bully small, innovative companies out of business or into paying ridiculous licensing fees. Quite apart from encouraging innovation, patents are now stifling it. The software industry is one of the few industries still strong in America. Even in a time of recession, there are not enough computer programmers to fill all the available positions. Startup companies are forming and growing readily. But if every line of code written brings with it a potential violation of someone else's intellectual property, this will cease to be the case. To solve this problem, we petition the Obama Administration to direct the Patent office to cease issuing software patents and to void all existing software patents. With these two steps, those of us in the software industry can stop worrying about mutually assured patent destruction and get back to doing what we do best." Revision 2
- marshray 15y ago
  every line of code written brings with it a ~potential~ violation of someone else's intellectual property It's astonishingly bad, but not quite that bad yet. direct the Patent office to cease issuing ~software~ patents. I'd prefer they eliminate all patents, but let's stick to one goal here. We, also, ask the Are those commas necessary? request that Congress pursue legislation to void all previously issued software patents Congress, at best, is only going to let lobbyists tweak the rules some more to favor the big guys. Do you really want that? How about asking USPTO to apply this standard when reviewing previously issued patents as well? We these two steps, typo? those of us in the software industry can stop worrying about mutually assured patent destruction and get back to doing what we do best. what we do best.: creating and keeping high-tech jobs! Hmm, too panderous perhaps?
  - dbingham 15y ago
jasonwatkinspdx 15y ago
Looks like there's a bug with registration, I'm sure I'm not the only one unable to sign because they're unable to register.
- dbingham 15y ago
  Yeah, I can't log back in right now. It looks like they had a failed update to the system. It might also just be overloaded.
ryanklee 15y ago
If you are serious about this, I suggest handing this off to someone with some at least semi-serious writing experience. It reads horribly as is. The errors are such that the original author probably isn't capable of making the necessary corrections without total direction. The spirit is laudable; the execution is very lacking.
- dbingham 15y ago
  By all means, jump in and post a better execution. Or if you know someone with semi-serious writing experience, bring them in!

194 points by dbingham 15y ago

Two typos in the first sentence: interpretation of software as language and therefor patentable Should be "therefore" and "not patentable" or "unpatentable" or "not subject to patents".

fjarlq 15y ago
Yuck, embarrassing.
tankenmate 15y ago
There are many typos and grammar errors in this petition, hence it will turn people off. Quite a pity.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
dbingham 15y ago
Yeah, I know, sorry about that. I was really just playing with the system to see it could do in a late at night "trying to fall back to sleep" period. I didn't know at what point I'd lose editing ability, or that I wouldn't be able to delete it once created. So I just ran with it instead.

mmaunder 15y ago

Basically every US citizen on HN needs to sign this right now - unless you have a vested interest in more patents being issued like patent number 6080436 issued in 2000, "Bread Refreshing Method." which is basically a patent for making toast. More on this and patent trolls: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-pat...

justinsb 15y ago
The petition is only for software patents, so would not affect this patent.

tomelders 15y ago

the typos are embarrassing. For such an important issue, it makes me angry that no one took the time to proof read it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dralison 15y ago

It would be a pity if this particular idea died out because the author couldn't create a proper paragraph. It won't gain attention from a single petition anyway - there will need to be many of them. That said, this one is worth signing, as will the ones that follow in order to make this happen.

alttag 15y ago
So, write a proper one, and submit it to HN.
dbingham 15y ago
Please write a proper one and submit it. I'll sign it and delete the links to mine. Mine was never really meant to "the" petition for this. It was me fooling with the system and when I realized I'd clicked one page too far, I ran with it.

jonstewart 15y ago

"its", not "it's" It would seem unlawful for the USPTO to cease granting software patents. On any random issue, most folks are better off lobbying their local member of Congress than the President.

brown9-2 15y ago

Isn't it up to Congress to direct the Patent office?

brlewis 15y ago
It's up to Congress to write the original laws. They already did. It's up to the judicial branch to decide whether those laws preclude software patents. They already did: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 Caveat: They did opine that Congress should clarify this particular question. However, decades of inaction by Congress must be interpreted as their acceptance of the Supreme Court opinions as good law, not in need of legislative clarification. Now it's up to the executive branch to direct the patent office to obey the law.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Sorry about not replying to you on the other thread a few days ago. I haven't been keeping up with HN regularly and forgot to check whether you had replied to my comment. I think you are badly misinterpreting how the courts work. The Federal Circuit did not overrule Benson or Flook, even if Justice Stevens disliked their interpretation thereof in Diehr. Nor did the Supreme Court write off State Street or Appalat as bad precedent in the Bilski decision. When Bilski was before the Federal circuit, it rejected his claim and also narrowed its earlier criteria for patentability substantially. The Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit's judgment that Bilski's business method was not patentable, but said that the extremely narrow 'machine or transformation' test identified by the Federal Circuit was too narrow, and would exclude many patentable inventions while seeking to exclude unpatentable ones. Now, you're talking about this bit, I think: And nothing in today's opinion should be read as endorsing interpretations of § 101 that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used in the past. See, e.g., State Street, 149 F.3d, at 1373; AT & T Corp., 172 F.3d, at 1357. (Bilski v. Kappos at 3231) Is this right? If not, ignore the following. They're not saying those earlier decisions are bad precedent. They're warning people against interpretations of the form 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' You're reading it as a binary: they're not endorsing something, therefore they must be against it. but non-endorsement does not equate to condemnation. Their point is that they are not passing judgment on those earlier decisions at all, and it would be a mistake to look for an implicit endorsement of those decisions in the case they were judging at the time. It's important to understand that courts don't like to settle open legal questions if they don't need to, and they definitely don't want to do it by expanding the scope on their inquiry. Why? Because that would put them on a collision course with Congress, and the judiciary is less powerful than Congress. The Courts could lose some of their existing powers if they exercised them too freely. So what a court much prefers to do when presented with a knotty problem (like the state of patent law) is to either throw the ball back into Congress's court, or to wait until a case comes to them where the issues are clear and well-defined. In the latter situation, the Court can make a straightforward argument that it is exercising its legitimate function of deciding the answer to a question that has been brought before it. The court does not want to look like it's asking questions of its own. So another way to read the non-endorsement statement above is 'don't anyone get the idea that we are trying to usurp Congress and articulate a new law here, because we're not.'

klklklk 15y ago

Ok.. first of all if you are going to be taken seriously you should really spell everything correctly in your petition, or you sound like an ass. How can i take a point away from this story hacker news? Is this by the same guy that wants VT to secede and become part of Canada? http://vermontrepublic.org/ http://vermontrepublic.org/

javanix 15y ago

The issue with this sort of thing is Joe Public is never going to understand the underlying issue with software patents. Without some politician complaining loudly and simply about the wrongness of an issue, nothing is going to change. Unfortunately the major technical issues of our time (this and net neutrality, for instance) do not have loud, simple explanations.

javanix 15y ago
Better to spend your time petitioning for campaign finance and term limits - our only hope is getting enough people in office who are smart enough to do the right technical thing and who aren't reliant on the industries they are responsible for regulating.

jbrowning 15y ago

If somebody else is creating a petition that is coherent and gramatically correct and I will sign it immediately. A petition like this will never be taken seriously and this one actually makes the arument that software is patentable in the first sentence. I would do it but this site states that creating a similar petition will lessen the possiblity of receiving an official response so I don't want to duplicate work somebody else is already doing.

dbingham 15y ago
I agree. What was I drunk? If someone can create a petition with coherent grammar, I fully support moving to that one. And I'll send feedback asking them to remove mine. I've already begged them for editing ability, but I doubt we'll see that any time soon.
- pdx 15y ago
  You can't edit something that people have already signed, for obvious reasons. The best you could do is to delete it and start again. 2nd best, and probably the only option available to you, is to ignore this petition, stop promoting it, and start a new one.
  - dbingham 15y ago
    Yeah, I'm begging them to take it down at this point. I do think wiki editing with notifications would be one way to do edits of something people signed. But yeah, still not practical. They did have a "review before publish" page that I accidentally clicked right through (the "Oh crap" moment). I wonder if you can share it in a limited fashion to get feedback on the language from that page?

dbingham 15y ago

Why don't we work together to come up with language for a new one? Then once we've settled on good language someone can enter it into the system and we can all go sign it.

dbingham 15y ago

If I had been actually writing with the intention of publishing, it might have looked something more like this. So here's my suggestion for new language, rip it apart! "Direct the US Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents The US Patent system is badly broken with respect to software patents. Patents are being issued to companies for “inventions” that are, in fact, common knowledge included in any introductory software textbook. The result is that the large software corporations are buying up reams of patents and using them to bully small, innovative companies out of business or into paying ridiculous licensing fees. Quite apart from encouraging innovation, patents are now stifling it. The software industry is one of the few industries still strong in America. Even in a time of recession, there are not enough computer programmers to fill all the available positions. Startup companies are forming and growing readily. But if every line of code written brings with it a potential violation of someone else's intellectual property, this will cease to be the case. To solve this problem, we petition the Obama Administration to direct the Patent office to cease issuing software patents and to void all existing software patents. With these two steps, those of us in the software industry can stop worrying about mutually assured patent destruction and get back to doing what we do best." Revision 2

marshray 15y ago
every line of code written brings with it a ~potential~ violation of someone else's intellectual property It's astonishingly bad, but not quite that bad yet. direct the Patent office to cease issuing ~software~ patents. I'd prefer they eliminate all patents, but let's stick to one goal here. We, also, ask the Are those commas necessary? request that Congress pursue legislation to void all previously issued software patents Congress, at best, is only going to let lobbyists tweak the rules some more to favor the big guys. Do you really want that? How about asking USPTO to apply this standard when reviewing previously issued patents as well? We these two steps, typo? those of us in the software industry can stop worrying about mutually assured patent destruction and get back to doing what we do best. what we do best.: creating and keeping high-tech jobs! Hmm, too panderous perhaps?
- dbingham 15y ago

jasonwatkinspdx 15y ago

Looks like there's a bug with registration, I'm sure I'm not the only one unable to sign because they're unable to register.

dbingham 15y ago
Yeah, I can't log back in right now. It looks like they had a failed update to the system. It might also just be overloaded.

ryanklee 15y ago

If you are serious about this, I suggest handing this off to someone with some at least semi-serious writing experience. It reads horribly as is. The errors are such that the original author probably isn't capable of making the necessary corrections without total direction. The spirit is laudable; the execution is very lacking.

dbingham 15y ago
By all means, jump in and post a better execution. Or if you know someone with semi-serious writing experience, bring them in!