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That's almost offensive - you seem to have a very ignorant viewpoint. Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries that become in

by ynniv 14y ago

That's almost offensive - you seem to have a very ignorant viewpoint. Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries that become incorporated into products that they do not sell. They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another team actually write the code. Why does the licensee bother to pay? Exclusivity, maintenance, further improvements, etc. Ideas that are not patentable can still be protected as trade secret, making them commercially valuable. If a company does not pay their licensing fees, the researchers might choose not to work with them in the future, providing a competitive advantage to other companies that do. Since you don't show a firm grasp on patents, let me provide an example of the problem. Remember that patents are a legal protection ignorant of independent discovery. Say that you created a new, successful communications tool. People are often bothered when someone sends them a message while they are giving a presentation, so you change their status from Available to Busy when their calendar says they are in a meeting. As you become a big commercial success, IBM sues you for infringement of their patent on changing chat availability status based on calendar free/busy. They seek damages and an injunction until the matter is resolved. They will settle for 150% of your company's worth, or they will pay their lawyers to tie this up in the courts until nobody cares about your product or you run out of money. Hopefully it is obvious that patents do not help innovation in this situation. Some will say that this is a case of a bad patent, and the solution is just to ensure that patents are good. The problem is that only a couple of people in the world could tell the difference between a bad software patent and a good one (none of them are judges or lawyers), and who are they to rule on IBM's lawsuit against you? It is now on your head to request re-examination and prove that someone else had already created a product that uses a personal calendar to change away status based solely on information in trade publications and product manuals (if you can find them). Alternatively you could attempt to prove that the invention was obvious, which requires you to recreate the environment in which the patent was filed and convince a non-technical examiner that an average programmer in that environment would have found it to be obvious. But let's cut to the chase and say that you run out of money. IBM can litigate their toilet paper patent for centuries without noticing, and you probably have a couple months of runway. This is what it means to have patent protection.

rayiner 14y ago
> Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries that become incorporated into products that they do not sell. Licensing is based on copyright, a different government-granted monopoly. Why should software libraries be protected when software algorithms aren't? What you're saying is that you should be able to protect your "yet another JS framework" under copyright, but not something like a power control loop in a wireless device under patents. > They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another team actually write the code. You can license it, but you have no legal protection to keep people from copying it. > Ideas that are not patentable can still be protected as trade secret, making them commercially valuable. 1) you can't transact in trade secrets; 2) trade secrets are of no use when embedded as software in devices. Say I come up with a new power control loop for wireless devices. The loop allows radios to cause less interference while maintaining bandwidth. Say I keep it as a trade secret. If I put it in a radio and sell it, someone can reverse-engineer the firmware and copy the design of the power control loop. Trade secrets won't protect me. Moreover, I have to get into the business of building every kind of radio I might want to sell. I can't just sell the power control loop to someone who is good at building radios, because trade secret doesn't cover things you voluntarily disclose. Imagine the situation: I go up to Raytheon and say "I've got a great power control loop, I'll sell it to you for $50m." And they say "well, how does it work? We're not paying $50m without understanding what we're buying." And you say "well pay me first than I'll tell you!" > Hopefully it is obvious that patents do not help innovation in this situation. Agreed, but that's a phenomenally bad patent. > Some will say that this is a case of a bad patent, and the solution is just to ensure that patents are good. Yup. > The problem is that only a couple of people in the world could tell the difference between a bad software patent and a good one (none of them are judges or lawyers), and who are they to rule on IBM's lawsuit against you? There are hundreds of IP lawyers with strong technical backgrounds who could tell the difference between the patent in your example and say the OFDM patent: http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=3488445&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=.... The "chat availability status" patents are getting a lot of press on HN, but I spent years working at tech companies that produced patents along the lines of the OFDM example linked-to above. I think a lot of people on HN don't have the exposure to embedded software to be able to really appreciate what the other side of the patent coin looks like.

by ynniv 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

> Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries that become incorporated into products that they do not sell. Licensing is based on copyright, a different government-granted monopoly. Why should software libraries be protected when software algorithms aren't? What you're saying is that you should be able to protect your "yet another JS framework" under copyright, but not something like a power control loop in a wireless device under patents. > They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another team actually write the code. You can license it, but you have no legal protection to keep people from copying it. > Ideas that are not patentable can still be protected as trade secret, making them commercially valuable. 1) you can't transact in trade secrets; 2) trade secrets are of no use when embedded as software in devices. Say I come up with a new power control loop for wireless devices. The loop allows radios to cause less interference while maintaining bandwidth. Say I keep it as a trade secret. If I put it in a radio and sell it, someone can reverse-engineer the firmware and copy the design of the power control loop. Trade secrets won't protect me. Moreover, I have to get into the business of building every kind of radio I might want to sell. I can't just sell the power control loop to someone who is good at building radios, because trade secret doesn't cover things you voluntarily disclose. Imagine the situation: I go up to Raytheon and say "I've got a great power control loop, I'll sell it to you for $50m." And they say "well, how does it work? We're not paying $50m without understanding what we're buying." And you say "well pay me first than I'll tell you!" > Hopefully it is obvious that patents do not help innovation in this situation. Agreed, but that's a phenomenally bad patent. > Some will say that this is a case of a bad patent, and the solution is just to ensure that patents are good. Yup. > The problem is that only a couple of people in the world could tell the difference between a bad software patent and a good one (none of them are judges or lawyers), and who are they to rule on IBM's lawsuit against you? There are hundreds of IP lawyers with strong technical backgrounds who could tell the difference between the patent in your example and say the OFDM patent: http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=3488445&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=.... The "chat availability status" patents are getting a lot of press on HN, but I spent years working at tech companies that produced patents along the lines of the OFDM example linked-to above. I think a lot of people on HN don't have the exposure to embedded software to be able to really appreciate what the other side of the patent coin looks like.