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Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use. So there are 2 possibilities here: 1. Your algorithm really req

Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use. So there are 2 possibilities here: 1. Your algorithm really requires years and millions of dollars of research to develop, in which case you have little to worry about - your competition is years behind you and probably doesn't have millions of dollars to spend on re-developing the algorithm. Trade secrets will work for you just fine. 2. Someone can quickly and cheaply come up with the same algorithm independently from you, in which case you don't deserve patent protection in the first place. When it comes to patents, everyone brings the "super hard, expensive to develop" case, which carries the assumption that they're so smart that no other persone on the planet can come up with the same idea. The reality is that even the patents that survive in courts and reap millions of dollars in damages, are laughably trivial and are a result of routine work of software developers, not to mention the vast number of patents that were granted and then stricken down during litigation, but only after both sides spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on said litigation.

rayiner 14y ago
> Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use. But how do I sell it to someone without opening the code or describing it to them? With trade secrets, I'm forced to go into the business of building military radios (or whatever). What sense does it make for a small shop of wireless technology experts to go into the manufacturing business, learning how to manage supply chains, support end-users, etc? That's the very problem patents were designed to solve 200+ years ago when they were introduced. To allow a separation of design from manufacturing. To allow the guy who invents the telephone to sell it to someone without going into the business of making telephones. Think of other property abstractions, like stock. Stock allows separation of the roles of investor and manager. The CEO doesn't have to come up with the capital to buy the company, and the shareholders don't have to figure out how to run it. That's a useful separation of concerns. Patents allow separation of the roles of designer and manufacturer. ARM can focus on designing CPU's and patenting the novel features. They don't have to get into the business of manufacturing all of the different products that might contain their CPU core.

rayiner 14y ago

> Unless you open-source your code or describe it publicly, I can't tell what algorithm you use. But how do I sell it to someone without opening the code or describing it to them? With trade secrets, I'm forced to go into the business of building military radios (or whatever). What sense does it make for a small shop of wireless technology experts to go into the manufacturing business, learning how to manage supply chains, support end-users, etc? That's the very problem patents were designed to solve 200+ years ago when they were introduced. To allow a separation of design from manufacturing. To allow the guy who invents the telephone to sell it to someone without going into the business of making telephones. Think of other property abstractions, like stock. Stock allows separation of the roles of investor and manager. The CEO doesn't have to come up with the capital to buy the company, and the shareholders don't have to figure out how to run it. That's a useful separation of concerns. Patents allow separation of the roles of designer and manufacturer. ARM can focus on designing CPU's and patenting the novel features. They don't have to get into the business of manufacturing all of the different products that might contain their CPU core.