3 ms·

Then they could also have used that technique without the patent system. What is the value in holding an idea hostage for 20 years?

dragonwriter 3y ago
Answered upthread: “So, a thing about patents: they are a way to reward disclosure of useful techniques with short-term exclusivity. As bad as even that type of exclusivity might be, its an improvement on keeping knowledge secret like the inner mysteries of a religious cult.” (emphasis added) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37987214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37987214 You can't use information that ia kept secret from you.
- coldpie 3y ago
  I'm sorry, I'm really not following the chain of events you're proposing. You're saying companies would choose not to release profitable software, if it weren't also covered by software patents? I'm skeptical.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > You're saying companies would choose not to release profitable software, if it weren't also covered by software patents? Yes, keeping software in house and selling services around itbinstead of releasing software has been a popular option as long as software has existed, and changing the IP landscape (or any other part of the legal and business context) in a way which changes the relative incentives between those options changes the frequency at which one option is chosen over the other. And that's even before considering the way that changing the IP landscape impacts the decision of whether it is worthwhile to develop software for a given market at all.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  You can't keep the functionality of your software a secret and still distribute it. What goes back to the initial reply you got, nobody every read a software patent to understand an algorithm. People would rather decompile and deobfuscate your binary. What has the added benefit that your binary actually contains the algorithm, while most software patents do not really disclose the thing they are reserving. Algorithm secrecy was historically never a problem in software. Currently with the cloud and SaaS it is starting to be a very narrow one here or there, but since software started being protected, patents never disclosed the things they protected, and there's no movement on making they start to do that.
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    > You can't keep the functionality of your software a secret and still distribute it. This is ultimately true of any product. But if you distribute closed-source, compiled software, the only way to discover the secrets is the same as with any product: reverse engineering. Furthermore, a high percentage of software is never distributed, but exists only as back-end code, or as proprietary software only ever run on-prem.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > You can't use information that ia kept secret from you. Nor can you use obvious techniques that some prick has patented either. :(

dragonwriter 3y ago

Answered upthread: “So, a thing about patents: they are a way to reward disclosure of useful techniques with short-term exclusivity. As bad as even that type of exclusivity might be, its an improvement on keeping knowledge secret like the inner mysteries of a religious cult.” (emphasis added) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37987214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37987214 You can't use information that ia kept secret from you.

coldpie 3y ago
I'm sorry, I'm really not following the chain of events you're proposing. You're saying companies would choose not to release profitable software, if it weren't also covered by software patents? I'm skeptical.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > You're saying companies would choose not to release profitable software, if it weren't also covered by software patents? Yes, keeping software in house and selling services around itbinstead of releasing software has been a popular option as long as software has existed, and changing the IP landscape (or any other part of the legal and business context) in a way which changes the relative incentives between those options changes the frequency at which one option is chosen over the other. And that's even before considering the way that changing the IP landscape impacts the decision of whether it is worthwhile to develop software for a given market at all.
marcosdumay 3y ago
You can't keep the functionality of your software a secret and still distribute it. What goes back to the initial reply you got, nobody every read a software patent to understand an algorithm. People would rather decompile and deobfuscate your binary. What has the added benefit that your binary actually contains the algorithm, while most software patents do not really disclose the thing they are reserving. Algorithm secrecy was historically never a problem in software. Currently with the cloud and SaaS it is starting to be a very narrow one here or there, but since software started being protected, patents never disclosed the things they protected, and there's no movement on making they start to do that.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  > You can't keep the functionality of your software a secret and still distribute it. This is ultimately true of any product. But if you distribute closed-source, compiled software, the only way to discover the secrets is the same as with any product: reverse engineering. Furthermore, a high percentage of software is never distributed, but exists only as back-end code, or as proprietary software only ever run on-prem.
justinclift 3y ago
> You can't use information that ia kept secret from you. Nor can you use obvious techniques that some prick has patented either. :(