11 ms·

White House responds to Patent Petition

206 points by tyw 15y ago

elehack 15y ago
Reasonable response, especially given the current legislative and judicial situation. USPTO doesn't have the authority to unilaterally cease issuing entire classes of patents when Congress and the courts have, so far, directed otherwise; what they can do, however, is seek to improve patent quality & decrease vague patents. I'm not sure how successful they will be, especially given funding issues, but this stance seems to be about as far as they can go at present. We need change to come from elsewhere, including the law schools (so lawyers get disabused of this notion that software + computer results in a new machine).
- sologoub 15y ago
  The response is entirely focused on self-promotion. If the administration was serious about fixing the current problem, they could do a number of things, from taking on a more serious legislative stance (as opposed to touting how great the current law is), to focusing on getting additional judiciary review and funneling support for getting rid of ridiculous patents.
- brlewis 15y ago
  When you say "Congress and the courts" the truth is "only the Federal Circuit Court". The Supreme Court of the United States' best interpretation of patent statute is that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. See http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 And now that the Fed Circuit in the Bilski case has backed off a bit from their flagrantly wrong In re. Alappat decision and its affirmation in State Street, one could argue that there isn't any court left claiming that software for general-purpose digital computers is patentable.
  - elehack 15y ago
    Until the SCOTUS decisively overturns Federal Circuit precedent, it counts as "the courts". Yes, it seems that the SCOTUS isn't pleased, and things are looking up, but current national precedent is that software is patentable. I believe this is based on some interpretation of congressional intent, and Congress has not stated that it does not consider software to be patentable but, rather, that in some cases at least it should be. I have seen this line of reasoning used in court decisions I have looked over.
    - brlewis 15y ago
      I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share. I'm also interested in arguments for or against the notion that the Federal Circuit overturned themselves in the Bilski case, affirmed by SCOTUS.
      - elehack 15y ago
        > I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share. If memory serves, Kennedy's arguments in the SCOTUS decision in the Bilski case are based in part on apparent congressional intent. I don't have concrete citations to actual congressional activity; this impression is seeing it alluded to or asserted in decisions such as In re. Bilski. I'm making the assumption that the justices are not totally fabricating, although they may be misinterpreting.
        brlewis 15y ago
        I looked through http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf and couldn't find what you're referring to. If you find a more specific citation, please let me know.
damiongrimfield 15y ago
am i the only one that thinks its funny the white house office of science & technology doesn't have html entities under control yet? Quentin Palfrey is Senior Advisor to CTO for Jobs and Competitiveness at the White House Office of Science amp; Technology Policy
- sologoub 15y ago
  That's sad... also, when I was signing a petition this morning for something else, logging in would not work in Chrome.
  - Zephyr314 15y ago
    Nor Firefox... (at least on Ubuntu)
    - dbingham 15y ago
      Clearing your cookies will fix this. But you'll need to do it every time. Can you say "Broken site" ?
noodle 15y ago
so, this is basically a "no" that funnels into talking points without actually saying "no". just like every other response to every other petition on that site that i've participated in.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  No, it takes about changes that have already been made, solicits further comments on both procedural and substantive issues, and shows an organizational commitment to FOSS. What were you expecting? This is way more outreach (and feedback) than has been available previously, and you're unhappy because the administration isn't falling at your feet, it seems like.
jwingy 15y ago
lobbyists win again... If only a group of wealthy individuals who were interested in improving our political process and decision making could form their own lobbying group...against lobbying!
mrj 15y ago
Start another one.
jxcole 15y ago
What an incredible cop out. Basically this is an entire page of saying nothing. Nothing at all. He's not saying they are going to do something about the patent problem. He's not saying they aren't. He is just trying to inspire you without committing to anything...at all.
- brlewis 15y ago
  Saying nothing would be slightly better than the false promise that's actually there: We've also issued new guidance to examiners to help ensure that patents cover only "new" and "non-obvious" inventions. That's impossible in the field of software. There is simply too much activity and too many specialties for the patent office to have any hope of being able to reasonably evaluate whether a claimed invention is novel, or whether it's obvious to a skilled programmer in the relevant specialty. This is one big reason (though not the only reason) why software is incompatible with the patent system. Patent law has a presumption of validity for issued patents, and that presumption is laughable if it's a software patent. If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering would be incompatible with the patent system too.
  - JVerstry 15y ago
    Have you actually read this document (http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/pdf/2011-2841.pdf http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/pdf/2011-2841.pdf)? Because it gives clear guidelines applicable to new and existing patents. It DOES cover most issues raised against software patents. It CLEARLY provides means to defend against crap and broad patents. Meaning: unscrupulous lawyers and trolls WON'T be able to play on ambiguities anymore. Presumption of validity is worth zero against most cases covered by this document. Just read it, because it could put a smile of your face !!!
    - brlewis 15y ago
      I had not read that. Thank you. Those guidelines, if followed, will address some issues with software patents, but not the problems I mentioned. This is understandable, because the problems I mentioned are intractable.
noonespecial 15y ago
My first thought was "well Asia and India will certainly be pleased". But that's not true. They don't care about our "intellectual property" at all. They'll just make. We just won't.
fourspace 15y ago
TL;DR - We heard you, we just didn't listen. We aren't changing anything. In case you didn't know, though, President Obama is awesome.
- jkeel 15y ago
  Yep. It makes me wonder if they would pay more attention if maybe a patent troll came after them (I know, I know... it won't happen). They are using Drupal for whitehouse.gov and I'm sure other open source tech as well. There's got to be something in there a patent troll could claim. Maybe the petition software itself. Someone's got to have a patent on allowing people to submit a post and allowing people to vote on it. Hmm...
  - jasongullickson 15y ago
    Maybe the petition software itself. Someone's got to have a patent on allowing people to submit a post and allowing people to vote on it. Prior art? http://edison.rutgers.edu/vote.htm http://edison.rutgers.edu/vote.htm
  - onwardly 15y ago
    I absolutely love this idea. Its easy to shrug something off when it doesn't affect you. Eating your own dogfood is an entirely different matter.
  - gcb 15y ago
    1. patent troll sues them because drupal inflicts on the awesome-html© patent. 2. white house pays 3. white house sues we-use-open-source-corp for selling them a website project with patent problems
ceejayoz 15y ago
This is the third or fourth petition with a massive, lengthy non-answer I've seen pop up on the site. I'm generally an Obama fan, but this is just unacceptable. Looks like it's time for a "Answer petitions with something meaningful" petition.
- tyw 15y ago
  Indeed there is: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...
  - dlsspy 15y ago
    Is there a petition for "make login work so I can sign petitions?"
    - djcapelis 15y ago
      Maybe you should make one! Oh...
    - nitfol 15y ago
      I spent 10 minutes trying to log in using Chromium. It half-way showed that I was logged in, but I couldn't actually sign a petition. Logging in with Iceweasel (Firefox), it worked immediately.
      - sixtofour 15y ago
        I couldn't sign the petition (two petitions actually) with Firefox. The maddening thing is that I was already logged in (the telltale at the bottom said so), but the Sign button was disabled. Sent a complaint.
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    And they'll answer that petition by pointing out that they've made petitions available.
harryh 15y ago
Check out the twitter account of the guy that wrote the statement: http://twitter.com/qpalfrey http://twitter.com/qpalfrey You can tell it's really his by who he's following (The US Gov CTO, The Massachusetts AGO). Incredible. EDIT: Well, he appears to have woken up and deleted them, but his tweet stream was filled with weight loss and "make money from home" spam.
yellowbkpk 15y ago
These "petitions" are only there to find out what a small portion of the electorate want to hear during the election season. As mentioned elsewhere in these White House petition threads, clicking a button on a web form does not (yet) do anything to the political process.
- hugh3 15y ago
  It's more cynical than that. Like the vast majority of online petitions, they exist primarily to harvest email addresses.
wavephorm 15y ago
This sounds like a wordy way of saying "Piss Off".
michaelcampbell 15y ago
"Fuck you, pay me." -- Henry Hill, or... the US Senate
eschulte 15y ago
I know it is easier to click a button on a web page than to make a phone call, but perhaps you should call your representative if this issue matters to you.
- sp332 15y ago
  Representatives are in the legislative branch. These petitions are to the executive branch.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    And it's the Legislative branch that can change things here, not the Executive!
  - Klondike 15y ago
    The legislative branch is who needs to act here, they decide what is patentable.
sp332 15y ago
I don't think it's a cop-out. It just explains (probably correctly) that a petition is not a good medium for expressing the problem and talking about possible solutions. There is a link http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation to the place where this conversation is already underway, and which you are welcome to join in.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  That's most definitely a cop-out, or more accurately "the run-around". It tells a pile of people who have already expressed their views to wander elsewhere and express them again, deflecting the original effort. That blunts the force of the original response. Oh, and the linked site wants public comments within the next week or two.
  - sp332 15y ago
    The site's been up for months. It seems like anyone who actually cares about the issue would have been able to find it by now, since it's on the USPTO home page, first link under the IP Law & Policy section. http://www.uspto.gov/ http://www.uspto.gov/ Not exactly on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
faichai 15y ago
To summarise: fuck you very much
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
civilian 15y ago
There was a HNer who was looking into translating code into formulas. It's theoretically possible, and has a great outcome: Because mathematical formula aren't patentable. Does anyone know where that guy went?
- trobertson 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure there's another argument going around, that looks something like this: All software can be ported to Haskell. Haskell is isomorphic to a subset of math. Therefore, software is math, and is unpatentable. Whether that argument holds, I don't really know. It's just something I've seen floating around out there.
  - raphman 15y ago
    'Patent 5,893,120 reduced to mathematical formulae': http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-5893120-reduced-to-mathematical.html http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...
    - trobertson 15y ago
      Yep. That is exactly where I remember this from. Thanks for pointing it out.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    Someone else has already given you the argument you wanted, I see, but here's more in the same vein. Further explanation of the Haskell isomorphism you were talking about: * http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Curry-Howard-Lambek_correspondence People who have written the axioms for math (technically, ZFC, if you know what that is) as a computer program, allowing automatic verification and the like. * http://us.metamath.org/ Finally, here two slightly more accessible explanations which do not employ the same isomorphism, but which try to explain the same idea. Take special note of the second one, because it has a good explanation of what math is and many people seem to have math confused with whatever they happened to learn in math class. * http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091111151305785 * http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110908075658894
AndrewHampton 15y ago
From what I've read in the petition responses, it seems to me the whole system is designed to spread information about what Obama has already done or positions he's already taken to a targeted group of people.
icebraining 15y ago
Can anyone copy-paste it here? It doesn't load for some reason. EDIT: It seems there's a non-JS version which works: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting-innovation-and-competitive-markets-through-quality-patents https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting...
- ars 15y ago
  It won't load for me till I turn off noscript completely. There isn't even a site I can give temporary permissions to, I have to turn it completely off.
  - brador 15y ago
    How did they do this?
    - ars 15y ago
      Wish I knew. Maybe a hidden flash object? I should contact the noscript author and ask him to check.
gattis 15y ago
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
sshconnection 15y ago
Is there anything in We the People or Data.gov that could be infringing? Maybe they'd take it more seriously if they had first hand experience with a patent suit...
gridspy 15y ago
As an entrepreneur, I'd like to see patents abolished. Totally. The cost of the patent system is obvious. The benefits are not.
Aloisius 15y ago
If we required patents to be commercially exploited for a period of at least 5 years and required people/companies to renew them every year for a fee with an included statement that they were or were not using them commercially, I think it would go a long way towards eliminating a lot of ridiculous patents. Plus it would give the USPTO plenty of money to actually approve patents in a timely manner.
daimyoyo 15y ago
These petitions are nothing more than a distraction to keep people busy. The president will not do anything about them regardless of how many signatures it gets. This is just the latest one to have shown the white house an issue Americans clearly care about, only to receive a big fat meh in response.
mateo42 15y ago
These petitions are like filing bugs against a software team that just doesn't have any interest in fixing the system.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
alok-g 15y ago
By the way, they didn't technically had to even respond to the petition since the threshold needed of 25,000 signatures within one month was not crossed [1]. [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
- hrabago 15y ago
  At the time the petition was submitted, the threshold was only 5,000.
padobson 15y ago
I knew what the first two paragraphs of this response before I even clicked on the link. Whoever wrote it is an uncreative shill, at best. The institution of governing is old, crusty, and broken - and in serious need of disruption. As we see around here, the best way to change the world is to build something that changes the world, not use government to use its citizens to change society at the point of a gun. If you want to fix the patent system, build something that fixes the patent system.

206 points by tyw 15y ago

Reasonable response, especially given the current legislative and judicial situation. USPTO doesn't have the authority to unilaterally cease issuing entire classes of patents when Congress and the courts have, so far, directed otherwise; what they can do, however, is seek to improve patent quality & decrease vague patents. I'm not sure how successful they will be, especially given funding issues, but this stance seems to be about as far as they can go at present. We need change to come from elsewhere, including the law schools (so lawyers get disabused of this notion that software + computer results in a new machine).

sologoub 15y ago
The response is entirely focused on self-promotion. If the administration was serious about fixing the current problem, they could do a number of things, from taking on a more serious legislative stance (as opposed to touting how great the current law is), to focusing on getting additional judiciary review and funneling support for getting rid of ridiculous patents.
brlewis 15y ago
When you say "Congress and the courts" the truth is "only the Federal Circuit Court". The Supreme Court of the United States' best interpretation of patent statute is that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. See http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2011-07-28 And now that the Fed Circuit in the Bilski case has backed off a bit from their flagrantly wrong In re. Alappat decision and its affirmation in State Street, one could argue that there isn't any court left claiming that software for general-purpose digital computers is patentable.
- elehack 15y ago
  Until the SCOTUS decisively overturns Federal Circuit precedent, it counts as "the courts". Yes, it seems that the SCOTUS isn't pleased, and things are looking up, but current national precedent is that software is patentable. I believe this is based on some interpretation of congressional intent, and Congress has not stated that it does not consider software to be patentable but, rather, that in some cases at least it should be. I have seen this line of reasoning used in court decisions I have looked over.
  - brlewis 15y ago
    I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share. I'm also interested in arguments for or against the notion that the Federal Circuit overturned themselves in the Bilski case, affirmed by SCOTUS.
    - elehack 15y ago
      > I'm very interested in any citation related to apparent congressional intent that in some cases software should be patentable. Please share. If memory serves, Kennedy's arguments in the SCOTUS decision in the Bilski case are based in part on apparent congressional intent. I don't have concrete citations to actual congressional activity; this impression is seeing it alluded to or asserted in decisions such as In re. Bilski. I'm making the assumption that the justices are not totally fabricating, although they may be misinterpreting.
      - brlewis 15y ago
        I looked through http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-964.pdf and couldn't find what you're referring to. If you find a more specific citation, please let me know.

damiongrimfield 15y ago

am i the only one that thinks its funny the white house office of science & technology doesn't have html entities under control yet? Quentin Palfrey is Senior Advisor to CTO for Jobs and Competitiveness at the White House Office of Science amp; Technology Policy

sologoub 15y ago
That's sad... also, when I was signing a petition this morning for something else, logging in would not work in Chrome.
- Zephyr314 15y ago
  Nor Firefox... (at least on Ubuntu)
  - dbingham 15y ago
    Clearing your cookies will fix this. But you'll need to do it every time. Can you say "Broken site" ?

noodle 15y ago

so, this is basically a "no" that funnels into talking points without actually saying "no". just like every other response to every other petition on that site that i've participated in.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 15y ago
No, it takes about changes that have already been made, solicits further comments on both procedural and substantive issues, and shows an organizational commitment to FOSS. What were you expecting? This is way more outreach (and feedback) than has been available previously, and you're unhappy because the administration isn't falling at your feet, it seems like.

jwingy 15y ago

lobbyists win again... If only a group of wealthy individuals who were interested in improving our political process and decision making could form their own lobbying group...against lobbying!

mrj 15y ago

Start another one.

jxcole 15y ago

What an incredible cop out. Basically this is an entire page of saying nothing. Nothing at all. He's not saying they are going to do something about the patent problem. He's not saying they aren't. He is just trying to inspire you without committing to anything...at all.

brlewis 15y ago
Saying nothing would be slightly better than the false promise that's actually there: We've also issued new guidance to examiners to help ensure that patents cover only "new" and "non-obvious" inventions. That's impossible in the field of software. There is simply too much activity and too many specialties for the patent office to have any hope of being able to reasonably evaluate whether a claimed invention is novel, or whether it's obvious to a skilled programmer in the relevant specialty. This is one big reason (though not the only reason) why software is incompatible with the patent system. Patent law has a presumption of validity for issued patents, and that presumption is laughable if it's a software patent. If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering would be incompatible with the patent system too.
- JVerstry 15y ago
  Have you actually read this document (http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/pdf/2011-2841.pdf http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/pdf/2011-2841.pdf)? Because it gives clear guidelines applicable to new and existing patents. It DOES cover most issues raised against software patents. It CLEARLY provides means to defend against crap and broad patents. Meaning: unscrupulous lawyers and trolls WON'T be able to play on ambiguities anymore. Presumption of validity is worth zero against most cases covered by this document. Just read it, because it could put a smile of your face !!!
  - brlewis 15y ago
    I had not read that. Thank you. Those guidelines, if followed, will address some issues with software patents, but not the problems I mentioned. This is understandable, because the problems I mentioned are intractable.

noonespecial 15y ago

My first thought was "well Asia and India will certainly be pleased". But that's not true. They don't care about our "intellectual property" at all. They'll just make. We just won't.

fourspace 15y ago

TL;DR - We heard you, we just didn't listen. We aren't changing anything. In case you didn't know, though, President Obama is awesome.

jkeel 15y ago
Yep. It makes me wonder if they would pay more attention if maybe a patent troll came after them (I know, I know... it won't happen). They are using Drupal for whitehouse.gov and I'm sure other open source tech as well. There's got to be something in there a patent troll could claim. Maybe the petition software itself. Someone's got to have a patent on allowing people to submit a post and allowing people to vote on it. Hmm...
- jasongullickson 15y ago
  Maybe the petition software itself. Someone's got to have a patent on allowing people to submit a post and allowing people to vote on it. Prior art? http://edison.rutgers.edu/vote.htm http://edison.rutgers.edu/vote.htm
- onwardly 15y ago
  I absolutely love this idea. Its easy to shrug something off when it doesn't affect you. Eating your own dogfood is an entirely different matter.
- gcb 15y ago
  1. patent troll sues them because drupal inflicts on the awesome-html© patent. 2. white house pays 3. white house sues we-use-open-source-corp for selling them a website project with patent problems

ceejayoz 15y ago

This is the third or fourth petition with a massive, lengthy non-answer I've seen pop up on the site. I'm generally an Obama fan, but this is just unacceptable. Looks like it's time for a "Answer petitions with something meaningful" petition.

tyw 15y ago
Indeed there is: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...
- dlsspy 15y ago
  Is there a petition for "make login work so I can sign petitions?"
  - djcapelis 15y ago
    Maybe you should make one! Oh...
  - nitfol 15y ago
    I spent 10 minutes trying to log in using Chromium. It half-way showed that I was logged in, but I couldn't actually sign a petition. Logging in with Iceweasel (Firefox), it worked immediately.
    - sixtofour 15y ago
      I couldn't sign the petition (two petitions actually) with Firefox. The maddening thing is that I was already logged in (the telltale at the bottom said so), but the Sign button was disabled. Sent a complaint.
- sixtofour 15y ago
  And they'll answer that petition by pointing out that they've made petitions available.

harryh 15y ago

Check out the twitter account of the guy that wrote the statement: http://twitter.com/qpalfrey http://twitter.com/qpalfrey You can tell it's really his by who he's following (The US Gov CTO, The Massachusetts AGO). Incredible. EDIT: Well, he appears to have woken up and deleted them, but his tweet stream was filled with weight loss and "make money from home" spam.

yellowbkpk 15y ago

These "petitions" are only there to find out what a small portion of the electorate want to hear during the election season. As mentioned elsewhere in these White House petition threads, clicking a button on a web form does not (yet) do anything to the political process.

hugh3 15y ago
It's more cynical than that. Like the vast majority of online petitions, they exist primarily to harvest email addresses.

wavephorm 15y ago

This sounds like a wordy way of saying "Piss Off".

michaelcampbell 15y ago

"Fuck you, pay me." -- Henry Hill, or... the US Senate

eschulte 15y ago

I know it is easier to click a button on a web page than to make a phone call, but perhaps you should call your representative if this issue matters to you.

sp332 15y ago
Representatives are in the legislative branch. These petitions are to the executive branch.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  And it's the Legislative branch that can change things here, not the Executive!
- Klondike 15y ago
  The legislative branch is who needs to act here, they decide what is patentable.

sp332 15y ago

I don't think it's a cop-out. It just explains (probably correctly) that a petition is not a good medium for expressing the problem and talking about possible solutions. There is a link http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation to the place where this conversation is already underway, and which you are welcome to join in.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
That's most definitely a cop-out, or more accurately "the run-around". It tells a pile of people who have already expressed their views to wander elsewhere and express them again, deflecting the original effort. That blunts the force of the original response. Oh, and the linked site wants public comments within the next week or two.
- sp332 15y ago
  The site's been up for months. It seems like anyone who actually cares about the issue would have been able to find it by now, since it's on the USPTO home page, first link under the IP Law & Policy section. http://www.uspto.gov/ http://www.uspto.gov/ Not exactly on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

faichai 15y ago

To summarise: fuck you very much

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

civilian 15y ago

There was a HNer who was looking into translating code into formulas. It's theoretically possible, and has a great outcome: Because mathematical formula aren't patentable. Does anyone know where that guy went?

trobertson 15y ago
I'm pretty sure there's another argument going around, that looks something like this: All software can be ported to Haskell. Haskell is isomorphic to a subset of math. Therefore, software is math, and is unpatentable. Whether that argument holds, I don't really know. It's just something I've seen floating around out there.
- raphman 15y ago
  'Patent 5,893,120 reduced to mathematical formulae': http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-5893120-reduced-to-mathematical.html http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...
  - trobertson 15y ago
    Yep. That is exactly where I remember this from. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Natsu 15y ago
  Someone else has already given you the argument you wanted, I see, but here's more in the same vein. Further explanation of the Haskell isomorphism you were talking about: * http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Curry-Howard-Lambek_correspondence People who have written the axioms for math (technically, ZFC, if you know what that is) as a computer program, allowing automatic verification and the like. * http://us.metamath.org/ Finally, here two slightly more accessible explanations which do not employ the same isomorphism, but which try to explain the same idea. Take special note of the second one, because it has a good explanation of what math is and many people seem to have math confused with whatever they happened to learn in math class. * http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091111151305785 * http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110908075658894

AndrewHampton 15y ago

From what I've read in the petition responses, it seems to me the whole system is designed to spread information about what Obama has already done or positions he's already taken to a targeted group of people.

icebraining 15y ago

Can anyone copy-paste it here? It doesn't load for some reason. EDIT: It seems there's a non-JS version which works: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting-innovation-and-competitive-markets-through-quality-patents https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition-tool/response/promoting...

ars 15y ago
It won't load for me till I turn off noscript completely. There isn't even a site I can give temporary permissions to, I have to turn it completely off.
- brador 15y ago
  How did they do this?
  - ars 15y ago
    Wish I knew. Maybe a hidden flash object? I should contact the noscript author and ask him to check.

gattis 15y ago

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...

deleted 15y ago

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sshconnection 15y ago

Is there anything in We the People or Data.gov that could be infringing? Maybe they'd take it more seriously if they had first hand experience with a patent suit...

gridspy 15y ago

As an entrepreneur, I'd like to see patents abolished. Totally. The cost of the patent system is obvious. The benefits are not.

Aloisius 15y ago

If we required patents to be commercially exploited for a period of at least 5 years and required people/companies to renew them every year for a fee with an included statement that they were or were not using them commercially, I think it would go a long way towards eliminating a lot of ridiculous patents. Plus it would give the USPTO plenty of money to actually approve patents in a timely manner.

daimyoyo 15y ago

These petitions are nothing more than a distraction to keep people busy. The president will not do anything about them regardless of how many signatures it gets. This is just the latest one to have shown the white house an issue Americans clearly care about, only to receive a big fat meh in response.

mateo42 15y ago

These petitions are like filing bugs against a software team that just doesn't have any interest in fixing the system.

deleted 15y ago

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alok-g 15y ago

By the way, they didn't technically had to even respond to the petition since the threshold needed of 25,000 signatures within one month was not crossed [1]. [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions

hrabago 15y ago
At the time the petition was submitted, the threshold was only 5,000.

padobson 15y ago

I knew what the first two paragraphs of this response before I even clicked on the link. Whoever wrote it is an uncreative shill, at best. The institution of governing is old, crusty, and broken - and in serious need of disruption. As we see around here, the best way to change the world is to build something that changes the world, not use government to use its citizens to change society at the point of a gun. If you want to fix the patent system, build something that fixes the patent system.