2 ms·

The real problem is just that patents are way too long for software. Long patents make sense for things in a slow changing industry. If it takes 10 years in pha

by ralferoo 11mo ago

The real problem is just that patents are way too long for software. Long patents make sense for things in a slow changing industry. If it takes 10 years in pharma for research and another 5 years to pass trials, then 20 years of protection seems reasonable to recoup the investment. But for software, I'd argue that most patents are granted on things that are pretty obvious, and in many cases, I'd suspect probably writing up the patent takes longer than actually coming up with the idea and implementation. Certainly, if an engineer is churning out multiple patents a year, then I don't think it's likely that they have enough value to society to warrant issuing a patent for. Let's not even forget the original motivation for patents, which was to increase knowledge sharing so that companies didn't keep their technology secret, and conferring an advantage on companies who chose to share their methods for others to copy and build upon. That's clearly a totally different outcome to when patent trolls are suing people for accidentally infringing a patent they didn't even know existed.

throwuxiytayq 11mo ago
Software patents shouldn't be a thing, period. 99% of modern software is complete shit, deserves no "my idea" protection, and will definitely not get any better with a higher barrier to competition. The real innovation these days is to make software that is usable, performant, and actually fucking works - and barely any company has the motivation and technical capability to achieve that. And when they do, as rare as that is, that simply cannot be copied.
dathinab 11mo ago
another problem is - measuring how well a patent office works by how many patents they grant (their purpose is to reject bad patents, it's 100% the opposite of the metrics often used) - a standard where patents are often written with the most obtuse complex language as multi layered onions, instead of clear straight forward language - no relevant consequences for most companies systematically deceiving the patent office about what they actually try to patent using artificial complex language, systematically fail to do the research into prior art and "happen" to overlook all prior art all the time - patents require a certain level of innovation _in the aspects they patent_, but in practice patent offices rarely do enforce this. A solution anyone can trivially find if they run into similar "normal" problems isn't innovation. The abstract concept of applying a concept from IRL onto games (or similar) isn't innovation. A minor tweak(1) or trivial re-combinations of existing patents isn't innovation either. etc. etc. - the patent office tends to be severely under-stocked, especially in context of AI making it easier to mass generate nonsense patents and non-clear-straight-forward language being the norm - allowing people to not (relevantly) use their patent and still sue others for using it (which is directly harming innovation and really shouldn't be allowed) - allowing absurd prices for usage permissions of patents (outside of certain especially fundamental/core patents, forgot how they are called), everyone should be able to buy _any_ patents usage right for a _reasonable_ price. Patents are for making sure companies doing innovation can re-coupe their investments, not for preventing marked competition and enforcing quasi-monopolies (1): Like a minor tweak which doesn't require tons of research, don't make a fundamental difference etc. Like think

throwuxiytayq 11mo ago

Software patents shouldn't be a thing, period. 99% of modern software is complete shit, deserves no "my idea" protection, and will definitely not get any better with a higher barrier to competition. The real innovation these days is to make software that is usable, performant, and actually fucking works - and barely any company has the motivation and technical capability to achieve that. And when they do, as rare as that is, that simply cannot be copied.

dathinab 11mo ago

another problem is - measuring how well a patent office works by how many patents they grant (their purpose is to reject bad patents, it's 100% the opposite of the metrics often used) - a standard where patents are often written with the most obtuse complex language as multi layered onions, instead of clear straight forward language - no relevant consequences for most companies systematically deceiving the patent office about what they actually try to patent using artificial complex language, systematically fail to do the research into prior art and "happen" to overlook all prior art all the time - patents require a certain level of innovation _in the aspects they patent_, but in practice patent offices rarely do enforce this. A solution anyone can trivially find if they run into similar "normal" problems isn't innovation. The abstract concept of applying a concept from IRL onto games (or similar) isn't innovation. A minor tweak(1) or trivial re-combinations of existing patents isn't innovation either. etc. etc. - the patent office tends to be severely under-stocked, especially in context of AI making it easier to mass generate nonsense patents and non-clear-straight-forward language being the norm - allowing people to not (relevantly) use their patent and still sue others for using it (which is directly harming innovation and really shouldn't be allowed) - allowing absurd prices for usage permissions of patents (outside of certain especially fundamental/core patents, forgot how they are called), everyone should be able to buy _any_ patents usage right for a _reasonable_ price. Patents are for making sure companies doing innovation can re-coupe their investments, not for preventing marked competition and enforcing quasi-monopolies (1): Like a minor tweak which doesn't require tons of research, don't make a fundamental difference etc. Like think