4 ms·

It's 'first to file' since 2013.

ratsmack 5y ago
The US is hobbling itself with software patents. China pretty much ignores all patents and will win in the global market because of this. US companies need to quit the stupid patent wars, lest the become irrelevant on the world markets.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I agree that patents are unrealistic in the modern world. Frankly, it seems that most (nearly all) patents have only a trivial amount of money invested to create the idea, other than what the patent lawyer costs. For example, "playing checkers --- with a computer" patents. Ending all patents would not slow down innovation at all. There is one exception, drug patenting, where billions are spent developing a drug and getting it approved.
  - pxeger1 5y ago
    Did I read this wrong, or do you think drug patenting is a good thing? Why?
    - CheezeIt 5y ago
      Do you understand why we have a patent system?
    - jeremyjh 5y ago
      > Why? Did you read this ? > where billions are spent developing a drug and getting it approved
    - gknoy 5y ago
      I'm not the parent, but I think patents for drugs are a good thing. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but the ease of copying them (once a chemical is known) combined with the cost of finding the drugs seem to fit very well with the spirit of patents, where new knowledge development is rewarded with a temporary monopoly. I do grant that the practice of patenting small incremental changes to existing patented things ("this drug, with slower release!") does seem a bit questionable, but overall it still seems like a good thing. I'd be interested in hearing your argument for why it's not a good fit.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Maybe a reasonable solution would be a patent filer would have to pay a registration fee of $1 million if the patent is approved. So, you might say, only big business could afford to file patents. Not exactly, $1m is well within the reach of a startup. But even for big business, they're not going to file 1000 patents at a cost of a billion dollars. Patent trolling would become an untenable business plan. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/microsoft-still-no-4-on-list-of-top-u-s-patent-recipients-amazon-bumped-to-no-11/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/microsoft-still...
- dylan604 5y ago
  How many things have you developed after spending unkown amount of time? You don't feel you're entitled to ensure you are credited with that work and allowed to earn from that work? As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, you don't have to be a dick about owning the patent. It's your patent, and you can do with it what you want. There are patent pools that are managed to ensure they can't be used for evil that you can donate your patent to if you can't afford the time to manage it.
  - TrueDuality 5y ago
    There is an inherent disconnect in your argument. Concrete implementations of software deserve protection sure, and do under copyright law. Software patents are attempting to reserve concepts and generally only hurt innovation by restricting other unrelated ideas from using a technique even if they came up with the algorithm entirely in a white box. History has shown time after time of simultaneous development of ideas once all the pieces are available (just look at Calculus). This algorithm is a great example as its a general use encoding mechanism. If I develop software to encode and decode radio transmissions to a satellite using it, patenting it will prevent it from being using for say image encoding and decoding across the web. That use has zero impact on my concrete implementation or my commercial sector. Even for overlapping industries, if there are zero patents, and two competing companies independently come to the same technological solution what is the justification for being able to patent that? If they didn't come to it independently because its available publicly on the web, then its prior art and shouldn't be patent-able anyway. If one reversed engineered the other solution and reproduced it, that's perfectly legal for other industries under certain circumstances and is explicitly allowed under the DMCA. I'm not arguing its right, but if that is supposed to be illegal patents as designed are the wrong tool for enforcement. This isn't a patent covering a specific use of a specific algorithm for a specific industry (which even then I don't think should be patent-able) but the general algorithm itself restricting ALL uses of it. This is an existing concept that was intended to be open, already exists in the real world, and is on route to becoming part of international standards being gobbled up by Microsoft. There does not appear to be a significant or meaningful contribution to the work in this patent and should really have been rejected due to prior art. Saying the original author should have patented this is also facile as that takes an enormous amount of resources that isn't available to most lone developers, or researchers, especially when the intent is to give it away freely to world.
btrettel 5y ago
If you're implying that only filed patent applications are available as prior art, that's not right. Anything available to the public can be prior art in the US. (Even some private things can be prior art in the US, for example, an offer to sell the invention creates prior art even if completely confidential.) If MS filed a patent application before anyone else, they could still receive a prior art rejection for anything available to the public like code available online, academic papers, etc. (Source: I'm a former patent examiner.)
- depereo 5y ago
  Appreciate the clarification.

The US is hobbling itself with software patents. China pretty much ignores all patents and will win in the global market because of this. US companies need to quit the stupid patent wars, lest the become irrelevant on the world markets.

WalterBright 5y ago
I agree that patents are unrealistic in the modern world. Frankly, it seems that most (nearly all) patents have only a trivial amount of money invested to create the idea, other than what the patent lawyer costs. For example, "playing checkers --- with a computer" patents. Ending all patents would not slow down innovation at all. There is one exception, drug patenting, where billions are spent developing a drug and getting it approved.
- pxeger1 5y ago
  Did I read this wrong, or do you think drug patenting is a good thing? Why?
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    Do you understand why we have a patent system?
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    > Why? Did you read this ? > where billions are spent developing a drug and getting it approved
  - gknoy 5y ago
    I'm not the parent, but I think patents for drugs are a good thing. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but the ease of copying them (once a chemical is known) combined with the cost of finding the drugs seem to fit very well with the spirit of patents, where new knowledge development is rewarded with a temporary monopoly. I do grant that the practice of patenting small incremental changes to existing patented things ("this drug, with slower release!") does seem a bit questionable, but overall it still seems like a good thing. I'd be interested in hearing your argument for why it's not a good fit.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Maybe a reasonable solution would be a patent filer would have to pay a registration fee of $1 million if the patent is approved. So, you might say, only big business could afford to file patents. Not exactly, $1m is well within the reach of a startup. But even for big business, they're not going to file 1000 patents at a cost of a billion dollars. Patent trolling would become an untenable business plan. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/microsoft-still-no-4-on-list-of-top-u-s-patent-recipients-amazon-bumped-to-no-11/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/microsoft-still...
dylan604 5y ago
How many things have you developed after spending unkown amount of time? You don't feel you're entitled to ensure you are credited with that work and allowed to earn from that work? As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, you don't have to be a dick about owning the patent. It's your patent, and you can do with it what you want. There are patent pools that are managed to ensure they can't be used for evil that you can donate your patent to if you can't afford the time to manage it.
- TrueDuality 5y ago
  There is an inherent disconnect in your argument. Concrete implementations of software deserve protection sure, and do under copyright law. Software patents are attempting to reserve concepts and generally only hurt innovation by restricting other unrelated ideas from using a technique even if they came up with the algorithm entirely in a white box. History has shown time after time of simultaneous development of ideas once all the pieces are available (just look at Calculus). This algorithm is a great example as its a general use encoding mechanism. If I develop software to encode and decode radio transmissions to a satellite using it, patenting it will prevent it from being using for say image encoding and decoding across the web. That use has zero impact on my concrete implementation or my commercial sector. Even for overlapping industries, if there are zero patents, and two competing companies independently come to the same technological solution what is the justification for being able to patent that? If they didn't come to it independently because its available publicly on the web, then its prior art and shouldn't be patent-able anyway. If one reversed engineered the other solution and reproduced it, that's perfectly legal for other industries under certain circumstances and is explicitly allowed under the DMCA. I'm not arguing its right, but if that is supposed to be illegal patents as designed are the wrong tool for enforcement. This isn't a patent covering a specific use of a specific algorithm for a specific industry (which even then I don't think should be patent-able) but the general algorithm itself restricting ALL uses of it. This is an existing concept that was intended to be open, already exists in the real world, and is on route to becoming part of international standards being gobbled up by Microsoft. There does not appear to be a significant or meaningful contribution to the work in this patent and should really have been rejected due to prior art. Saying the original author should have patented this is also facile as that takes an enormous amount of resources that isn't available to most lone developers, or researchers, especially when the intent is to give it away freely to world.

btrettel 5y ago

If you're implying that only filed patent applications are available as prior art, that's not right. Anything available to the public can be prior art in the US. (Even some private things can be prior art in the US, for example, an offer to sell the invention creates prior art even if completely confidential.) If MS filed a patent application before anyone else, they could still receive a prior art rejection for anything available to the public like code available online, academic papers, etc. (Source: I'm a former patent examiner.)

depereo 5y ago
Appreciate the clarification.