10 ms·

All patents are theft

70 points by darkduck 15y ago

0x12 15y ago
"Rather more revealingly, Gates concluded that the “solution” to the problem of patents was “patenting as much as we can… A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.”" Interesting! It looks as though at least Paul Allen received the message loud and clear. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20059560-71.html#ixzz1LMVQ3ZxQ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20059560-71.html#ixzz1LMVQ...
- dantheman 15y ago
  I think the full quote is more revealing: And Microsoft knows the problems which might be caused by software patents very well. Here is a quote from Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Most interesting is Mr. Gates conclusion: "The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." http://fsfe.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html http://fsfe.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html So he acknowledges that patents are harmful, but given that they exist the correct strategy is to patent as much as you can.
  - rickmode 15y ago
    Hate the game, not the players. And Google has adopted the same strategy. Corporations do not have any human sense of morals, fairness, or ethics much as mobs will commit crimes any individual in the mob would never consider. Groups do not think and function like individuals. And we can't expect these for-profit groups to spend energy fixing the system. Any single company would be penalized compared to its peers if it spent time, people, and money lobbying governments for change. The solution must be individuals and/or a consortium of some sort.
Angostura 15y ago
The headline is "all patents are theft" but the atricle only appears to address software patents.
- bartl 15y ago
  I think it's an allusion to the quote at the start of the article: "All art is theft". Maybe it would have been more correct as "all inventions are theft".
  - Angostura 15y ago
    Indeed, I supopse that wouldn't have made nearly such a compelling headline.
    - xiaoma 15y ago
      How so? To me, All invention is theft would have been a very compelling headline. Rather than conjure up images of a politically-minded linux geek, it makes me wonder what kind of article is behind such an apparently indefensible headline.
duairc 15y ago
All property is theft! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!
- dodedo 15y ago
  As Marx wrote, from your link, " 'theft' as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property." And this is true for tangible property, though importantly not true for intangible, intellectual constructs. The term "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. It would be better named "Intellectual Control" as it does not in any way protect the inventor's natural right to use the fruits of their invention. Rather, it exists only to deprive others of a similar ability. Patents derive their value not from the nature and value of invention, but from the controls and limits placed on the intellectual freedoms of others. We do not know how to share physical objects, so assignment of use is natural and necessary. This is not true of intellectual constructs.
  - duairc 15y ago
    > The term "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. No, I get that. Even if you're a capitalist, the concept of intellectual property doesn't make sense. > As Marx wrote, from your link, " 'theft' as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property." Obviously the phrase "property is theft" is circular, but in the context it was originally said it makes a bit more sense. > We do not know how to share physical objects, so assignment of use is natural and necessary. This is not true of intellectual constructs. "Property" isn't just assigning the use of a particular object to a particular entity, it's also giving to that entity the right to prevent others from using that object (by violence, ultimately). This is arguably okay for "personal property", but what that quote is really referring to is "private property": land, factories, "the means of production". What characterises "private property" is that the entity which has the right to prevent others from using the "property" (the owner of the land or boss of the factory) is not the entity which actually uses the "property" (the workers in the factory or the people who actually work on the farms, or mine the mines, or whatever). This is the sense in which property is theft. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_vers...
tmh88j 15y ago
Gates said it perfectly about the barriers to entry of most startups being directly related to "over-patenting." I have experienced this a couple of times personally, but I keep on hearing it over and over again from friends who are also trying to execute their thoughts. Outsmarting a big bully can be tricky. "A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
amuhtar 15y ago
I agree with the writer of the article in that we are always building on the ideas of others, but I also see the side of the holder of the patent. When so much is invested (time, money, resources) into R&D, the first mover tends lose in the end. All a competitor needs to know is that it is possible. As Seth Godin has said several times, once something can be put on paper, it can be produced cheaper by someone else. So, if we are to get rid of patents, then startups and other inventors will need to find creative ways to capitalize/profit on the ideas benefit from being first mover.
ajkessler 15y ago
While patents may provide a "stumbling block to innovation and progress", it's wrong to say they inhibit "the free exchange of ideas, and restrict[] our knowledge of how things work." Patents do just the opposite: to obtain one, you must describe in detail how a process works. This means that when you're granted a patent, you disclose to the whole world how your novel invention or process works. (The argument that the USPTO is granting frivolous patents on non-novel things is a separate argument.) The alternative (though not really applicable to software or mechanical processes that get shipped in a product) is to keep everything secret. Had Coca Cola patented their formula, everyone would have known how to make the drink 20 years later.
- blacksmythe 15y ago
  >> everyone would have known how to make the drink 20 years later. Everyone would have know how to make the drink when the patent was published, and could have used the formula without royalty payments in 20 years.
  - ajkessler 15y ago
    Exactly, which means if Coke had patented the formula, society would be better off.
- nene 15y ago
  Do you know anybody who acquires new knowledge by reading patents? 1. Because of the legalese language in which patents are written it's pretty damn hard to even understand what is patented. 2. Even if you understand what the patent is about, it's probably of little help in implementing the thing by yourself, as the patent just describes the general idea. 3. If you indeed understand the idea, you might then come up with an improvement, but there's no benefit for you in publishing it, as the underlying idea is patented, the only one to gain from it is the patent holder. 4. You are encouraged by the system to not read patents, because if you happen to infringe one, your knowledge of the existence of patent can be used against you.
  - ajkessler 15y ago
dminor 15y ago
When I expressed the opinion the other day that patents were stupid, my boss said my position was "radical". I just laughed and said it wasn't in the software industry. "Oh, well, software patents are bad, but...". He's a mechanical engineer by education. I didn't bother bringing up the threatening letter we got from a patent troll a couple months ago :)
Tloewald 15y ago
Before patents we had the guild system, essentially secret societies that wouldn't share their skills, designs, or processes, and intentionally obfuscated their work. Patents were part of a program of reform that in part led to the industrial revolution. If instead of patenting the early steam engine designs each inventor had formed a secretive guild, worked in isolation, and produced intentionally convoluted designs, where would we be now? Patents are a lottery system that rewards some inventors for publishing their designs, but has the effect of encouraging everyone to publish their designs in the hope of winning the lottery. The problem with our IP law is that it is maladapted for the information age. Copyright, in particular, is the wrong kind of protection for software (which is machinery) especially since it is used to protect binaries and not source code (which is instead kept secret, meaning that copyright has the negative impact of creating monopolies without the offsetting positive impact of creating public goods). Patents would be almost perfect for software if the patent required provision of working source code -- the ridiculous language of patent law exists because expressing the precise workings of machinery in words is difficult -- not so with software. If software patents included source code, it would accomplish the goal of patents (making public goods) and make identifying infringement less arbitrary (and probably even establish stronger arguments for obviousness and prior art). "oh this algorithm is provably isomorphic to this trivial lisp expression, so yeah it's obvious."
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  Having software patents include source code is not a bad idea, but I don't think it would address the most serious problem. The big problem, in my view, is that the obviousness bar is just way too low. The reality we have today is, the first practitioner to think of a given problem can straightforwardly produce, using standard techniques, a solution to that problem, and patent it. It's considered an invention because the solution, let's suppose, didn't previously exist, but that's only because no one had attempted to solve that particular problem before. The patent teaches nothing new; another practitioner, unaware of the patent, coming upon the same problem, is likely to solve it in a similar way and with no great difficulty. I'm not saying all software patents are in this category, but I think the great majority of them are. And the reasons are not hard to find. First, software is, by its nature, a fantastically generative medium. All that is required to build a machine of any degree of complexity is to write down, in the mathematical formalism called "code", a sufficiently precise specification of how that machine should work. And secondly, as has been lamented many times, when the PTO first started to grant patents on software under orders from the U.S. Supreme Court (in Diamond v. Diehr), they had no software experts. Even now, as I understand, they tend to hire new graduates who have little industry experience. What's more, patent examiners have no incentive to reject patents on the basis of obviousness; that's not how their performance is measured. These two factors together are a recipe for disaster.
icebraining 15y ago
This has been posted here before, but some people might not have seen it yet: Parasites. I'm proud that there is "a relative dearth of patent applications for the video game industry, especially considering how technology-dependent the video game industry is, and given its size in terms of annual sales." Before issuing a condemnation, I try hard to think about it from their point of view -- the laws of the land set the rules of the game, and lawyers are deeply confused at why some of us aren't using all the tools that the game gives us. Patents are usually discussed in the context of someone "stealing" an idea from the long suffering lone inventor that devoted his life to creating this one brilliant idea, blah blah blah. But in the majority of cases in software, patents effect independent invention. Get a dozen sharp programmers together, give them all a hard problem to work on, and a bunch of them will come up with solutions that would probably be patentable, and be similar enough that the first programmer to file the patent could sue the others for patent infringement. Why should society reward that? What benefit does it bring? It doesn't help bring more, better, or cheaper products to market. Those all come from competition, not arbitrary monopolies. The programmer that filed the patent didn't work any harder because a patent might be available, solving the problem was his job and he had to do it anyway. Getting a patent is uncorrelated to any positive attributes, and just serves to allow either money or wasted effort to be extorted from generally unsuspecting and innocent people or companies. Yes, it is a legal tool that may help you against your competitors, but I'll have no part of it. Its basically mugging someone. I could waste hours going on about this. I really need to just write a position paper some day that I can cut and paste when this topic comes up. John Carmack http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745
- nobody3141 15y ago
  That software patents don't work can be shown from the simple fact that no software "inventor" tries to sell his patented idea to a big company. If I invent intermittent windscreen wipers for cars then it's worthless to me unless I also intend to make cars and without a patent I can't try and sell my invention to a car company because they can simply copy it. When have you heard of an inventor with a software patent selling that idea to a large software company?

70 points by darkduck 15y ago

0x12 15y ago

"Rather more revealingly, Gates concluded that the “solution” to the problem of patents was “patenting as much as we can… A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.”" Interesting! It looks as though at least Paul Allen received the message loud and clear. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20059560-71.html#ixzz1LMVQ3ZxQ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20059560-71.html#ixzz1LMVQ...

dantheman 15y ago
I think the full quote is more revealing: And Microsoft knows the problems which might be caused by software patents very well. Here is a quote from Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Most interesting is Mr. Gates conclusion: "The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." http://fsfe.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html http://fsfe.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html So he acknowledges that patents are harmful, but given that they exist the correct strategy is to patent as much as you can.
- rickmode 15y ago
  Hate the game, not the players. And Google has adopted the same strategy. Corporations do not have any human sense of morals, fairness, or ethics much as mobs will commit crimes any individual in the mob would never consider. Groups do not think and function like individuals. And we can't expect these for-profit groups to spend energy fixing the system. Any single company would be penalized compared to its peers if it spent time, people, and money lobbying governments for change. The solution must be individuals and/or a consortium of some sort.

Angostura 15y ago

The headline is "all patents are theft" but the atricle only appears to address software patents.

bartl 15y ago
I think it's an allusion to the quote at the start of the article: "All art is theft". Maybe it would have been more correct as "all inventions are theft".
- Angostura 15y ago
  Indeed, I supopse that wouldn't have made nearly such a compelling headline.
  - xiaoma 15y ago
    How so? To me, All invention is theft would have been a very compelling headline. Rather than conjure up images of a politically-minded linux geek, it makes me wonder what kind of article is behind such an apparently indefensible headline.

duairc 15y ago

All property is theft! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!

dodedo 15y ago
As Marx wrote, from your link, " 'theft' as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property." And this is true for tangible property, though importantly not true for intangible, intellectual constructs. The term "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. It would be better named "Intellectual Control" as it does not in any way protect the inventor's natural right to use the fruits of their invention. Rather, it exists only to deprive others of a similar ability. Patents derive their value not from the nature and value of invention, but from the controls and limits placed on the intellectual freedoms of others. We do not know how to share physical objects, so assignment of use is natural and necessary. This is not true of intellectual constructs.
- duairc 15y ago
  > The term "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. No, I get that. Even if you're a capitalist, the concept of intellectual property doesn't make sense. > As Marx wrote, from your link, " 'theft' as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property." Obviously the phrase "property is theft" is circular, but in the context it was originally said it makes a bit more sense. > We do not know how to share physical objects, so assignment of use is natural and necessary. This is not true of intellectual constructs. "Property" isn't just assigning the use of a particular object to a particular entity, it's also giving to that entity the right to prevent others from using that object (by violence, ultimately). This is arguably okay for "personal property", but what that quote is really referring to is "private property": land, factories, "the means of production". What characterises "private property" is that the entity which has the right to prevent others from using the "property" (the owner of the land or boss of the factory) is not the entity which actually uses the "property" (the workers in the factory or the people who actually work on the farms, or mine the mines, or whatever). This is the sense in which property is theft. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_vers...

tmh88j 15y ago

Gates said it perfectly about the barriers to entry of most startups being directly related to "over-patenting." I have experienced this a couple of times personally, but I keep on hearing it over and over again from friends who are also trying to execute their thoughts. Outsmarting a big bully can be tricky. "A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."

amuhtar 15y ago

I agree with the writer of the article in that we are always building on the ideas of others, but I also see the side of the holder of the patent. When so much is invested (time, money, resources) into R&D, the first mover tends lose in the end. All a competitor needs to know is that it is possible. As Seth Godin has said several times, once something can be put on paper, it can be produced cheaper by someone else. So, if we are to get rid of patents, then startups and other inventors will need to find creative ways to capitalize/profit on the ideas benefit from being first mover.

ajkessler 15y ago

While patents may provide a "stumbling block to innovation and progress", it's wrong to say they inhibit "the free exchange of ideas, and restrict[] our knowledge of how things work." Patents do just the opposite: to obtain one, you must describe in detail how a process works. This means that when you're granted a patent, you disclose to the whole world how your novel invention or process works. (The argument that the USPTO is granting frivolous patents on non-novel things is a separate argument.) The alternative (though not really applicable to software or mechanical processes that get shipped in a product) is to keep everything secret. Had Coca Cola patented their formula, everyone would have known how to make the drink 20 years later.

blacksmythe 15y ago
>> everyone would have known how to make the drink 20 years later. Everyone would have know how to make the drink when the patent was published, and could have used the formula without royalty payments in 20 years.
- ajkessler 15y ago
  Exactly, which means if Coke had patented the formula, society would be better off.
nene 15y ago
Do you know anybody who acquires new knowledge by reading patents? 1. Because of the legalese language in which patents are written it's pretty damn hard to even understand what is patented. 2. Even if you understand what the patent is about, it's probably of little help in implementing the thing by yourself, as the patent just describes the general idea. 3. If you indeed understand the idea, you might then come up with an improvement, but there's no benefit for you in publishing it, as the underlying idea is patented, the only one to gain from it is the patent holder. 4. You are encouraged by the system to not read patents, because if you happen to infringe one, your knowledge of the existence of patent can be used against you.
- ajkessler 15y ago

dminor 15y ago

When I expressed the opinion the other day that patents were stupid, my boss said my position was "radical". I just laughed and said it wasn't in the software industry. "Oh, well, software patents are bad, but...". He's a mechanical engineer by education. I didn't bother bringing up the threatening letter we got from a patent troll a couple months ago :)

Tloewald 15y ago

Before patents we had the guild system, essentially secret societies that wouldn't share their skills, designs, or processes, and intentionally obfuscated their work. Patents were part of a program of reform that in part led to the industrial revolution. If instead of patenting the early steam engine designs each inventor had formed a secretive guild, worked in isolation, and produced intentionally convoluted designs, where would we be now? Patents are a lottery system that rewards some inventors for publishing their designs, but has the effect of encouraging everyone to publish their designs in the hope of winning the lottery. The problem with our IP law is that it is maladapted for the information age. Copyright, in particular, is the wrong kind of protection for software (which is machinery) especially since it is used to protect binaries and not source code (which is instead kept secret, meaning that copyright has the negative impact of creating monopolies without the offsetting positive impact of creating public goods). Patents would be almost perfect for software if the patent required provision of working source code -- the ridiculous language of patent law exists because expressing the precise workings of machinery in words is difficult -- not so with software. If software patents included source code, it would accomplish the goal of patents (making public goods) and make identifying infringement less arbitrary (and probably even establish stronger arguments for obviousness and prior art). "oh this algorithm is provably isomorphic to this trivial lisp expression, so yeah it's obvious."

ScottBurson 15y ago
Having software patents include source code is not a bad idea, but I don't think it would address the most serious problem. The big problem, in my view, is that the obviousness bar is just way too low. The reality we have today is, the first practitioner to think of a given problem can straightforwardly produce, using standard techniques, a solution to that problem, and patent it. It's considered an invention because the solution, let's suppose, didn't previously exist, but that's only because no one had attempted to solve that particular problem before. The patent teaches nothing new; another practitioner, unaware of the patent, coming upon the same problem, is likely to solve it in a similar way and with no great difficulty. I'm not saying all software patents are in this category, but I think the great majority of them are. And the reasons are not hard to find. First, software is, by its nature, a fantastically generative medium. All that is required to build a machine of any degree of complexity is to write down, in the mathematical formalism called "code", a sufficiently precise specification of how that machine should work. And secondly, as has been lamented many times, when the PTO first started to grant patents on software under orders from the U.S. Supreme Court (in Diamond v. Diehr), they had no software experts. Even now, as I understand, they tend to hire new graduates who have little industry experience. What's more, patent examiners have no incentive to reject patents on the basis of obviousness; that's not how their performance is measured. These two factors together are a recipe for disaster.

icebraining 15y ago

This has been posted here before, but some people might not have seen it yet: Parasites. I'm proud that there is "a relative dearth of patent applications for the video game industry, especially considering how technology-dependent the video game industry is, and given its size in terms of annual sales." Before issuing a condemnation, I try hard to think about it from their point of view -- the laws of the land set the rules of the game, and lawyers are deeply confused at why some of us aren't using all the tools that the game gives us. Patents are usually discussed in the context of someone "stealing" an idea from the long suffering lone inventor that devoted his life to creating this one brilliant idea, blah blah blah. But in the majority of cases in software, patents effect independent invention. Get a dozen sharp programmers together, give them all a hard problem to work on, and a bunch of them will come up with solutions that would probably be patentable, and be similar enough that the first programmer to file the patent could sue the others for patent infringement. Why should society reward that? What benefit does it bring? It doesn't help bring more, better, or cheaper products to market. Those all come from competition, not arbitrary monopolies. The programmer that filed the patent didn't work any harder because a patent might be available, solving the problem was his job and he had to do it anyway. Getting a patent is uncorrelated to any positive attributes, and just serves to allow either money or wasted effort to be extorted from generally unsuspecting and innocent people or companies. Yes, it is a legal tool that may help you against your competitors, but I'll have no part of it. Its basically mugging someone. I could waste hours going on about this. I really need to just write a position paper some day that I can cut and paste when this topic comes up. John Carmack http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745

nobody3141 15y ago
That software patents don't work can be shown from the simple fact that no software "inventor" tries to sell his patented idea to a big company. If I invent intermittent windscreen wipers for cars then it's worthless to me unless I also intend to make cars and without a patent I can't try and sell my invention to a car company because they can simply copy it. When have you heard of an inventor with a software patent selling that idea to a large software company?