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There's one thing about software patents that I've come to realize: If a products sole competitive advantage over otherwise exchangeable goods is algorithmic...

There's one thing about software patents that I've come to realize: If a products sole competitive advantage over otherwise exchangeable goods is algorithmic... Is the world a better place if those insights are kept proprietary, or if they are made public knowledge via the patent process? Software patents have been misused in many contexts, but for work that genuinely transformatively advances the state of the art, is protecting the right to have a viable business around this insight while making the mechanics of this knowledge public, is that a bad thing? And just to repeat myself, broadly yes software patents have been awarded inappropriately time and again. But for those true insights, is a world better with a patented computational insight or a proprietary one?

marshray 14y ago
Can you name very many examples of cases where researchers have been searching for an algorithm and found it buried in an expired patent somewhere? How common is it for some researcher to have an insight into an algorithm that no one else would be able to come up with independently (given 20 years) should the need arise?
prodigal_erik 14y ago
For brilliant masterworks that would otherwise have gone unknown for decades, sure. But if I demand $10M for an invention that two vendors could have otherwise independently recreated for $1M and five years each, I have made that disclosure a net loss for society and the industry. The problem is that there's no market mechanism ensuring that licenses are available fairly at lower costs than would otherwise be spent on reinvention. And of course the avalanche of patents which merely disclose the obvious and claim the entire problem, yet can only be overturned individually at enormous risk and (uncompensated!) expense. And the 3x wilful-infringement doctrine over which practitioners are well advised never to even look at patents.
carterschonwald 14y ago
Since the replies seem to be thinking about patents in the context of large businesses, let me clarify the context that I am thinking of: small businesses such as perhaps some iphone app developer that has spent some time developing an app/software that solves an "obvious problem" that no one has bothered to solve before, and that without patent protection would easily be reverse engineered for all the insights? Especially if those insights in fact also require advancing the state of the art in computer science? I'm not talking about big corp X, i'm not talking about truly obvious ideas, I am ONLY talking about small business owners who are writing software that requires computer science research that advances the current state of the art, and which have no way of protecting themselves against copycat software makers (a la happens on the various smart phone app stores) unless patent protection is possible?

marshray 14y ago

Can you name very many examples of cases where researchers have been searching for an algorithm and found it buried in an expired patent somewhere? How common is it for some researcher to have an insight into an algorithm that no one else would be able to come up with independently (given 20 years) should the need arise?

prodigal_erik 14y ago

For brilliant masterworks that would otherwise have gone unknown for decades, sure. But if I demand $10M for an invention that two vendors could have otherwise independently recreated for $1M and five years each, I have made that disclosure a net loss for society and the industry. The problem is that there's no market mechanism ensuring that licenses are available fairly at lower costs than would otherwise be spent on reinvention. And of course the avalanche of patents which merely disclose the obvious and claim the entire problem, yet can only be overturned individually at enormous risk and (uncompensated!) expense. And the 3x wilful-infringement doctrine over which practitioners are well advised never to even look at patents.

carterschonwald 14y ago

Since the replies seem to be thinking about patents in the context of large businesses, let me clarify the context that I am thinking of: small businesses such as perhaps some iphone app developer that has spent some time developing an app/software that solves an "obvious problem" that no one has bothered to solve before, and that without patent protection would easily be reverse engineered for all the insights? Especially if those insights in fact also require advancing the state of the art in computer science? I'm not talking about big corp X, i'm not talking about truly obvious ideas, I am ONLY talking about small business owners who are writing software that requires computer science research that advances the current state of the art, and which have no way of protecting themselves against copycat software makers (a la happens on the various smart phone app stores) unless patent protection is possible?