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Lots of patent hate in the first few comments. If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention how can we pr

Lots of patent hate in the first few comments. If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention how can we protect that without patent system?

anonzzzies 3y ago
> If we take the position that an inventor But most software patents aren't inventions; they're just brain farts with money behind them. They might not be trolls, but they went to the toilet, had some random idea I had 20000 times in my life already, but they patent it genuinely thinking it's anything original. There are many none trolls, like the famous Amazon one-click buy one; everyone in web dev invented that in the 90s by themselves; they patented it. How is it worth protecting? If you did invent and put the time and effort, how about selling your products; if someone else does it better, that's life. Especially in software; the pain is in the development and finishing, not the invention. The idea is absolutely worthless, outside this broken patent system.
- rockbruno 3y ago
  >had some random idea I had 20000 times in my life already, Aren't patent systems already supposed to reject "inventions" that are common sense? Perhaps the problem is not the system itself but rather the humans who are approving these.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s definitely part of it: in the 90s you saw a ton of “on the internet” patents which looked a lot like the examiners not having had enough experience to say that something was either an obvious adaptation of an existing concept to the web or that the two systems had almost nothing in common other than using a computer (I remember a patent troll hitting a customer with a 1980s patent for cash registers connected to a minicomputer using a phone line, claiming it covered their web store). A younger generation of patent clerks hired with more experience seems to have helped there. The other problem is funding: look at the patent examiner listings right now and think about how many people they’re going to be able to get with the federal pay scale having been prevented from keeping pace with the market for years: https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=public&k=patent%20examiner&p=1 https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=publi...
  - lostdog 3y ago
    The parent system will accept pretty much anything if your lawyers ask them enough times. I've seen algorithms from the 80s patented today, with no real changes. The patent examiners have no idea what's novel or common sense, and just accept everything.
  - brlewis 3y ago
    It is not reasonable to expect humans to assess the novelty or obviousness of software "inventions". Too many of them can be created too fast for any conceivable patent office to handle. The only solution is for Congress to write a law saying algorithms can't be patented. SCOTUS tentatively said it already, but nobody listens to them.
sneak 3y ago
Software patents are bogus. Under the law, algorithms cannot be patented but clever lawyers figured out ways of getting the USPTO to issue software patents despite the intent of the law.
Hikikomori 3y ago
Is that how patents are used today?
otherme123 3y ago
Industrial secrets. WD40 was not patented, they did good anyway. Wright brothers or James Watt were notoriously hard defending their patents, hindering progress and getting next to no significant profits. 3D printers only took off after key patents expired.
sam_goody 3y ago
I have an invention that I think could change the world (a better toilet). I went to a patent attorney. His advice: File a submarine patent, wait til someone else has the idea but is stupid enough to manufacture, sue him for low enough that he wants to settle. Why not manufacture? He explained that the patent system is designed to help the incumbents. If you manufacture, the big players will make some minor change, file for a patent as an improvement to the original, and ignore you. If you go to court - who has more lawyers on call? At some point, you may iterate on your original product. At that point they will sue you with the patent they have obtained for their improvement. It doesn't matter if you infringe, it doesn't matter anything. Guess who has more lawyers? If you are lucky, you can settle for just giving them your IP plus your legal fees. Many many inventions and improvements have been created by small guys, but they don't go to market. Because if it will disrupt an existing big player they will be sued. For any reason under the sun. Because the legal system favors the side with the funds. And that is even without considering the companies in China et all that will just copy your idea wholesale, at a fraction of the price, and are untouchable. The patent system helps the incumbents, but does nothing for the little guy. A better system would be to use the money currently spent on the patent system to give grants to anyone who comes up with a new idea. [And you can even perhaps have some way for the general public to weigh in.] The smaller the company, the more the grant available. With funds, you could actually try to develop a brand, and the competition across the board would help everyone.
- jeremiahbuckley 3y ago
  I like this as a direction to push, even if there may be some details that are later discovered to require correction. Is any org pushing for this?
- flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
  I'm not an expert on patetnts, but that seems backwards to me. If I get a patent for something, someone else can make a trivial change they call an improvement, admit their work is derivative, and get a patent for that without any cooperation or licensing from me? And then if I iterate and get sued, even though I can show I hold the original patent it's not a slam dunk win for me in court?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ptero 3y ago
Limiting the time of the protection would go a long way towards its acceptance. With the speed of technology today, 3-5 years seems reasonable. Anything beyond this is an overkill. This also discourages early filing (which now causes to mostly stifle related exploration) and encourages filing when the technology is ready for commercialization. I also view the goal of the patent system as benefiting a society by encouraging the people to innovate. While somewhat similar to the current goals (rewarding the inventors) it is subtly different because its success and failure is determined not by the fairness to each inventor but by its statistical impact on innovation. If it tends to encourage innovation, even if in a few corner cases the time limits are too short for the inventor to reap the full reward, so be it. If it tends to stifle innovation by focusing on fully defending every inventor it needs to be repealed. My 2c.
rakoo 3y ago
> If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention The premise is flawed, the conclusion can only be wrong. Patents are an invention by the bourgeoisie to extend their control of the production of anything and extract as much money from it, but to make it acceptable they have the play the image of the "lone inventor in their garage". This inventor doesn't exist. No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing more than hard work and selfless involvement. Nothing would be achievable without the help of society, past and present, without cooperation, and to close that off is to go against the very reason we as a species survive. We need shared creation of art, of technologies, of ideas, because this helps everyone. Look at Volvo giving away their rights on the 3-point security belt, or the penicillin being openly distributed; to favor individual wealth over collective well-being is borderline criminal. Patents do not serve individuals, the individuals are not business people. Patents only serve companies which by definition steal the production of its workers for private profits. Patents do not allow creation; patents prevent creation. Look at the history of steam machines and how many people were involved in all the subtle, incremental improvements. It's not just one guy suddenly finding out everything from scratch. One of them put a patent on his invention and froze the development of the steam machine for decades before allowing it to continue.
- Angostura 3y ago
  > No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing more than hard work and selfless involvement Straw man. No-one has suggested that the inventor invented something in a complete vacuum without support from society.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    And yet that's exactly what the patent model claims: The invention is the fruit of a single mind who must get the entirety of money ever produced by the commercialization of the product. It is a glorification of individualism
    - freejazz 3y ago
      The Patent model doesn't claim that at all, it assumes the opposite. That's one reason why patents are public.
bmacho 3y ago
> If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention how can we protect that without patent system? What about: inventors should be able to try and get profit from their invention like anyone else.
gnfargbl 3y ago
Software authors, like other authors, can protect their creations through copyright. That's as it should be. Allowing patents on software is about as sensible as allowing JK Rowling to patent the concept of a storyline about a boy who was cursed at birth by an evil wizard, and must defeat said wizard in order to fulfil his destiny.
kemayo 3y ago
The myth of patents is that some inventor working in their garage comes up with a genius invention, patents it, and then can leverage that patent-granted period of exclusivity into a thriving business. Hard work and smarts translating directly into rewards! This is, of course, a myth. It's not impossible for that to happen, theoretically, but the way the patent system actually works these days is that large companies patent anything they ever think of regardless of actual novelty, holding on to vast piles of patents as weapons of strategic deterrence. The megacorps exist in a state of patent detente -- unless someone is particularly blatant about a violation, it's better not to sue another corp because they'll just countersue with their own patent hoard. Then you'll both be stuck in years of litigation, working to get each other's patents invalidated, unsure of who is going to come out of it with a remaining claim. When the tiny independent inventor appears, however, they don't have any of that patent-hoard protection. So it's easy for a big company in a vaguely related industry to squash them if they want to. Or wait until there's enough money being made that it's worth showing up and demanding fees. Sure, the company's patents may well be bogus and unrelated, but the tiny inventor can't afford to spend the next five years litigating that.
- shagie 3y ago
  Board game rules fall under patents. It has an example of the garage process, patent, infringement, and win. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/11/26/271633.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/11/26/271633... > A company headed by a Colorado professor who invented a strategy board game has won a $1.6 million patent infringement verdict. > ... > Innovention prevailed in a patent infringement against MGA, Wal-Mart Stores and Toys R Us. A federal court in New Orleans found that MGA’s Laser Battle game, sold through the two retailers, infringed on Innovention’s patent for Khet. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16991/khet-laser-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16991/khet-laser-game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 --- Note the rarity of this happening that it makes the news compared to how often patents are thrown around in courts.
  - brlewis 3y ago
    > Board game rules fall under patents Please supply evidence. All links in your comment relate to a patent to an invention where lasers are an essential part of the claims. I'm not convinced that rules alone would be patentable subject matter.
jwr 3y ago
> an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention Well then, let the inventor try and get profit from their invention. An idea is never enough: it's the execution that matters, so let the inventor go forth and execute.
fargle 3y ago
patents were intended to protect the little-guy, the inventor (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so he could make money. they weren't intended to be used by huge companies to help further their already impressive monopolistic empires. they collect them and use them as a kind of insurance or mutual-assued-destruction policy. microsoft won't sue ibm (and so on) because both have such a vast portfolio of garbage patents that they know they could tie each other up in litigation for 100 years, and they don't feel like paying for it. then you get to the trolls. our government is actually enabling and encouraging a semi-legal form of extortion. the big companies can pay or pay to fight. it's a tax on everyone in the business though, even when winning. only the attorneys really win here. it's obvious that the time and place for patents has come and gone. - they don't do what they are intended, do much more harm than good. - other comments are 100% correct, "software" (algorithms) and other similar areas like the one in TFA should never have existed in the first place. - the pursuit of patent portfolios has created a surge of really bad patents. it's really been the entire life of the internet and modern computing. "one-click-patent", etc. and far worse. so why actually encourage more and lower quality patents? - it does no good for an inventor to go get a patent, because even if the spiffy device is successful at market, the chinese will steal it with or without the little patent number engraving on the bottom. hell, they'll copy that too. if you find out who they are and sue them, they'll pop up as another company. if that's who you are competing against, why waste time and energy on anachronistic non-functioning armor. - better option for an advantage from a unique software algorithm is to: be to market first and, if desired, keep it a trade secret. - i think it'd be relatively easy to fix. first, allow the patent-holder to pick or easily challenge the venue (to kill east-texas) and second, allow awarding of attorney costs for the defendant, and force the plaintif to post a bond to prove they can pay them. - but why bother? just abandon the whole system. it literally helps nobody.
- kiba 3y ago
  patents were intended to protect the little-guy, the inventor (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so he could make money. Did that actually broadly happened over the history of patents? It sounds intuitive enough that patent protect the little guys, it's another if it actually happened for any period of time. I remember reading that the Wright brothers spending time and money suing other inventors and pioneers over their patents. Ultimately, they weren't very successful at building a business and fell behind. That capital spent on a lawyer could be spent on their business or improving their machines.
hsuduebc2 3y ago
I'm not sure how much is current system effective today when biggest world producer's just can decide they are not going to respect that.
dcow 3y ago
The easiest way to understand the issue is to consider cooking. A chef can’t sit around and think up recipes and file thousands of patents. We explicitly agree in the law that it would be incredibly backwards negatively affect society if chefs got exclusivity on recipes and could sue home cooks for being creative. And chefs are still thinking up new recipes and using them in their restaurants because unique meals and flavors offer a competitive advantage. The reward is that you can keep your profits in our capitalist society. See Coca Cola and KFC. You have to use your knowledge in a novel invention to benefit. In the same spirit, it’s not wanted to have people sit around and ideate about which instructions, and in what order, when fed to a processor machine, make it do useful things. Thousands of people program processors every day and we don’t want them getting sued because someone else figure out an efficient way to reverse a linked list. You have to run a software service that provides value and get people’s money that way. Even if we concede that patents are useful in their intended purpose to protect actual manifest inventions, not just ideas (patent office is supposed to require a prototype invention to be registered with your patent), that’s certainly not what patent trolls are doing and that’s not how the majority of software patents work. For the purpose of discussion, to get close conceptually to some sane type of sane SW patent scheme you’d have to 1. make a linked list reversing library, 2. register the complete prototype source code with the patent office, and 3. be actively maintaining and selling your linked list reversing library for your patent to even start to hold water. But even then you’re running up against problem that software is purely algorithms (just like recipes) and those aren’t even originally patent-able. Apple can’t patent an “object oriented operating system” unless they’re offering that system in isolation and as a whole to consumers for use, which they’re not, but someone at the patent office got tricked into granting them a patent. Patents are supposed protect the inventors of complete products, not tiny building blocks of knowledge (algorithms). The “patent hate” is because despite the arguably good initial conditions, the patent system has been abused by greedy people who are not benefiting society in any way whatsoever. And you should be infuriated by that.

Lots of patent hate in the first few comments. If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention how can we protect that without patent system?

anonzzzies 3y ago

> If we take the position that an inventor But most software patents aren't inventions; they're just brain farts with money behind them. They might not be trolls, but they went to the toilet, had some random idea I had 20000 times in my life already, but they patent it genuinely thinking it's anything original. There are many none trolls, like the famous Amazon one-click buy one; everyone in web dev invented that in the 90s by themselves; they patented it. How is it worth protecting? If you did invent and put the time and effort, how about selling your products; if someone else does it better, that's life. Especially in software; the pain is in the development and finishing, not the invention. The idea is absolutely worthless, outside this broken patent system.

rockbruno 3y ago
>had some random idea I had 20000 times in my life already, Aren't patent systems already supposed to reject "inventions" that are common sense? Perhaps the problem is not the system itself but rather the humans who are approving these.
- acdha 3y ago
  That’s definitely part of it: in the 90s you saw a ton of “on the internet” patents which looked a lot like the examiners not having had enough experience to say that something was either an obvious adaptation of an existing concept to the web or that the two systems had almost nothing in common other than using a computer (I remember a patent troll hitting a customer with a 1980s patent for cash registers connected to a minicomputer using a phone line, claiming it covered their web store). A younger generation of patent clerks hired with more experience seems to have helped there. The other problem is funding: look at the patent examiner listings right now and think about how many people they’re going to be able to get with the federal pay scale having been prevented from keeping pace with the market for years: https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=public&k=patent%20examiner&p=1 https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=publi...
- lostdog 3y ago
  The parent system will accept pretty much anything if your lawyers ask them enough times. I've seen algorithms from the 80s patented today, with no real changes. The patent examiners have no idea what's novel or common sense, and just accept everything.
- brlewis 3y ago
  It is not reasonable to expect humans to assess the novelty or obviousness of software "inventions". Too many of them can be created too fast for any conceivable patent office to handle. The only solution is for Congress to write a law saying algorithms can't be patented. SCOTUS tentatively said it already, but nobody listens to them.

sneak 3y ago

Software patents are bogus. Under the law, algorithms cannot be patented but clever lawyers figured out ways of getting the USPTO to issue software patents despite the intent of the law.

Hikikomori 3y ago

Is that how patents are used today?

otherme123 3y ago

Industrial secrets. WD40 was not patented, they did good anyway. Wright brothers or James Watt were notoriously hard defending their patents, hindering progress and getting next to no significant profits. 3D printers only took off after key patents expired.

sam_goody 3y ago

I have an invention that I think could change the world (a better toilet). I went to a patent attorney. His advice: File a submarine patent, wait til someone else has the idea but is stupid enough to manufacture, sue him for low enough that he wants to settle. Why not manufacture? He explained that the patent system is designed to help the incumbents. If you manufacture, the big players will make some minor change, file for a patent as an improvement to the original, and ignore you. If you go to court - who has more lawyers on call? At some point, you may iterate on your original product. At that point they will sue you with the patent they have obtained for their improvement. It doesn't matter if you infringe, it doesn't matter anything. Guess who has more lawyers? If you are lucky, you can settle for just giving them your IP plus your legal fees. Many many inventions and improvements have been created by small guys, but they don't go to market. Because if it will disrupt an existing big player they will be sued. For any reason under the sun. Because the legal system favors the side with the funds. And that is even without considering the companies in China et all that will just copy your idea wholesale, at a fraction of the price, and are untouchable. The patent system helps the incumbents, but does nothing for the little guy. A better system would be to use the money currently spent on the patent system to give grants to anyone who comes up with a new idea. [And you can even perhaps have some way for the general public to weigh in.] The smaller the company, the more the grant available. With funds, you could actually try to develop a brand, and the competition across the board would help everyone.

jeremiahbuckley 3y ago
I like this as a direction to push, even if there may be some details that are later discovered to require correction. Is any org pushing for this?
flaminHotSpeedo 3y ago
I'm not an expert on patetnts, but that seems backwards to me. If I get a patent for something, someone else can make a trivial change they call an improvement, admit their work is derivative, and get a patent for that without any cooperation or licensing from me? And then if I iterate and get sued, even though I can show I hold the original patent it's not a slam dunk win for me in court?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ptero 3y ago

Limiting the time of the protection would go a long way towards its acceptance. With the speed of technology today, 3-5 years seems reasonable. Anything beyond this is an overkill. This also discourages early filing (which now causes to mostly stifle related exploration) and encourages filing when the technology is ready for commercialization. I also view the goal of the patent system as benefiting a society by encouraging the people to innovate. While somewhat similar to the current goals (rewarding the inventors) it is subtly different because its success and failure is determined not by the fairness to each inventor but by its statistical impact on innovation. If it tends to encourage innovation, even if in a few corner cases the time limits are too short for the inventor to reap the full reward, so be it. If it tends to stifle innovation by focusing on fully defending every inventor it needs to be repealed. My 2c.

rakoo 3y ago

> If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention The premise is flawed, the conclusion can only be wrong. Patents are an invention by the bourgeoisie to extend their control of the production of anything and extract as much money from it, but to make it acceptable they have the play the image of the "lone inventor in their garage". This inventor doesn't exist. No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing more than hard work and selfless involvement. Nothing would be achievable without the help of society, past and present, without cooperation, and to close that off is to go against the very reason we as a species survive. We need shared creation of art, of technologies, of ideas, because this helps everyone. Look at Volvo giving away their rights on the 3-point security belt, or the penicillin being openly distributed; to favor individual wealth over collective well-being is borderline criminal. Patents do not serve individuals, the individuals are not business people. Patents only serve companies which by definition steal the production of its workers for private profits. Patents do not allow creation; patents prevent creation. Look at the history of steam machines and how many people were involved in all the subtle, incremental improvements. It's not just one guy suddenly finding out everything from scratch. One of them put a patent on his invention and froze the development of the steam machine for decades before allowing it to continue.

Angostura 3y ago
> No invention ever came out of nowhere, based on nothing more than hard work and selfless involvement Straw man. No-one has suggested that the inventor invented something in a complete vacuum without support from society.
- rakoo 3y ago
  And yet that's exactly what the patent model claims: The invention is the fruit of a single mind who must get the entirety of money ever produced by the commercialization of the product. It is a glorification of individualism
  - freejazz 3y ago
    The Patent model doesn't claim that at all, it assumes the opposite. That's one reason why patents are public.

bmacho 3y ago

> If we take the position that an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention how can we protect that without patent system? What about: inventors should be able to try and get profit from their invention like anyone else.

gnfargbl 3y ago

Software authors, like other authors, can protect their creations through copyright. That's as it should be. Allowing patents on software is about as sensible as allowing JK Rowling to patent the concept of a storyline about a boy who was cursed at birth by an evil wizard, and must defeat said wizard in order to fulfil his destiny.

kemayo 3y ago

The myth of patents is that some inventor working in their garage comes up with a genius invention, patents it, and then can leverage that patent-granted period of exclusivity into a thriving business. Hard work and smarts translating directly into rewards! This is, of course, a myth. It's not impossible for that to happen, theoretically, but the way the patent system actually works these days is that large companies patent anything they ever think of regardless of actual novelty, holding on to vast piles of patents as weapons of strategic deterrence. The megacorps exist in a state of patent detente -- unless someone is particularly blatant about a violation, it's better not to sue another corp because they'll just countersue with their own patent hoard. Then you'll both be stuck in years of litigation, working to get each other's patents invalidated, unsure of who is going to come out of it with a remaining claim. When the tiny independent inventor appears, however, they don't have any of that patent-hoard protection. So it's easy for a big company in a vaguely related industry to squash them if they want to. Or wait until there's enough money being made that it's worth showing up and demanding fees. Sure, the company's patents may well be bogus and unrelated, but the tiny inventor can't afford to spend the next five years litigating that.

shagie 3y ago
Board game rules fall under patents. It has an example of the garage process, patent, infringement, and win. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/11/26/271633.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/11/26/271633... > A company headed by a Colorado professor who invented a strategy board game has won a $1.6 million patent infringement verdict. > ... > Innovention prevailed in a patent infringement against MGA, Wal-Mart Stores and Toys R Us. A federal court in New Orleans found that MGA’s Laser Battle game, sold through the two retailers, infringed on Innovention’s patent for Khet. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16991/khet-laser-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16991/khet-laser-game https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 --- Note the rarity of this happening that it makes the news compared to how often patents are thrown around in courts.
- brlewis 3y ago
  > Board game rules fall under patents Please supply evidence. All links in your comment relate to a patent to an invention where lasers are an essential part of the claims. I'm not convinced that rules alone would be patentable subject matter.

jwr 3y ago

> an inventor should be able to try and get profit from their invention Well then, let the inventor try and get profit from their invention. An idea is never enough: it's the execution that matters, so let the inventor go forth and execute.

fargle 3y ago

patents were intended to protect the little-guy, the inventor (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so he could make money. they weren't intended to be used by huge companies to help further their already impressive monopolistic empires. they collect them and use them as a kind of insurance or mutual-assued-destruction policy. microsoft won't sue ibm (and so on) because both have such a vast portfolio of garbage patents that they know they could tie each other up in litigation for 100 years, and they don't feel like paying for it. then you get to the trolls. our government is actually enabling and encouraging a semi-legal form of extortion. the big companies can pay or pay to fight. it's a tax on everyone in the business though, even when winning. only the attorneys really win here. it's obvious that the time and place for patents has come and gone. - they don't do what they are intended, do much more harm than good. - other comments are 100% correct, "software" (algorithms) and other similar areas like the one in TFA should never have existed in the first place. - the pursuit of patent portfolios has created a surge of really bad patents. it's really been the entire life of the internet and modern computing. "one-click-patent", etc. and far worse. so why actually encourage more and lower quality patents? - it does no good for an inventor to go get a patent, because even if the spiffy device is successful at market, the chinese will steal it with or without the little patent number engraving on the bottom. hell, they'll copy that too. if you find out who they are and sue them, they'll pop up as another company. if that's who you are competing against, why waste time and energy on anachronistic non-functioning armor. - better option for an advantage from a unique software algorithm is to: be to market first and, if desired, keep it a trade secret. - i think it'd be relatively easy to fix. first, allow the patent-holder to pick or easily challenge the venue (to kill east-texas) and second, allow awarding of attorney costs for the defendant, and force the plaintif to post a bond to prove they can pay them. - but why bother? just abandon the whole system. it literally helps nobody.

kiba 3y ago
patents were intended to protect the little-guy, the inventor (meaning a person), with an artificial monopoly so he could make money. Did that actually broadly happened over the history of patents? It sounds intuitive enough that patent protect the little guys, it's another if it actually happened for any period of time. I remember reading that the Wright brothers spending time and money suing other inventors and pioneers over their patents. Ultimately, they weren't very successful at building a business and fell behind. That capital spent on a lawyer could be spent on their business or improving their machines.

hsuduebc2 3y ago

I'm not sure how much is current system effective today when biggest world producer's just can decide they are not going to respect that.

dcow 3y ago

The easiest way to understand the issue is to consider cooking. A chef can’t sit around and think up recipes and file thousands of patents. We explicitly agree in the law that it would be incredibly backwards negatively affect society if chefs got exclusivity on recipes and could sue home cooks for being creative. And chefs are still thinking up new recipes and using them in their restaurants because unique meals and flavors offer a competitive advantage. The reward is that you can keep your profits in our capitalist society. See Coca Cola and KFC. You have to use your knowledge in a novel invention to benefit. In the same spirit, it’s not wanted to have people sit around and ideate about which instructions, and in what order, when fed to a processor machine, make it do useful things. Thousands of people program processors every day and we don’t want them getting sued because someone else figure out an efficient way to reverse a linked list. You have to run a software service that provides value and get people’s money that way. Even if we concede that patents are useful in their intended purpose to protect actual manifest inventions, not just ideas (patent office is supposed to require a prototype invention to be registered with your patent), that’s certainly not what patent trolls are doing and that’s not how the majority of software patents work. For the purpose of discussion, to get close conceptually to some sane type of sane SW patent scheme you’d have to 1. make a linked list reversing library, 2. register the complete prototype source code with the patent office, and 3. be actively maintaining and selling your linked list reversing library for your patent to even start to hold water. But even then you’re running up against problem that software is purely algorithms (just like recipes) and those aren’t even originally patent-able. Apple can’t patent an “object oriented operating system” unless they’re offering that system in isolation and as a whole to consumers for use, which they’re not, but someone at the patent office got tricked into granting them a patent. Patents are supposed protect the inventors of complete products, not tiny building blocks of knowledge (algorithms). The “patent hate” is because despite the arguably good initial conditions, the patent system has been abused by greedy people who are not benefiting society in any way whatsoever. And you should be infuriated by that.