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>Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. I’ve seen this argument why al

>Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. I’ve seen this argument why algorithms and mathematics shouldn’t be patentable before. A fact that is always overlooked is that this hypothetical patent would have expired sometime in the 5th century BC. To make this argument one would have to find more recent examples. How about anything created within the last 20 years? In my view, the greatest things aren’t practical to be patentable and the practical ones aren’t anywhere close in magnitude to the Pythagorean Theorem. So, where is the problem? And by the way, comparing algorithms to "words" (in this context) is just silly, with all due respect to Knuth.

stonemetal 17y ago
Exactly, at one point in time the ball point pen was patented, You couldn't make a ball point pen without paying someone. How is the fruit of my labor any different from the fruit of a ME EE or ChemE's labor? The lot of us practice applied math in different domains.
- ZachPruckowski 17y ago
  A patent on a ball-point pen only affects how you make your pen. A company can make a competing, non-ballpoint pen that still writes on the same paper and is still the same color (though it might be more expensive or messier or whatever), so not licensing the patent isn't disastrous. Even with a patent on something like an engine, I can still design my own (likely less efficient) engine, which'll still drive on the same roads and probably even use the same gasoline that works slightly differently. A patent on something like MP3 or One-Click-Ordering prevents competitors from including a feature. If I want to make an e-commerce site, I have to have multiple clicks to order something or I have to license Amazon's patent. If I want to make any sort of media hardware or software that can encode/decode or import/export or even play the content out there, I need a slew of patents licensed. There's no work-around or alternative method, I simply can't include that feature without licensing. It's the difference between "licensing this patent lets me build off the work of another company to make my product better" and "licensing this patent is mandatory to compete in this field". In my mind, patents of the first type are fine, while patents of the second type are bad. I should be able to create something that can (for example) play MP3s without licensing, but do so at the cost of efficiency or power (because I'm using a less effective method).
ZachPruckowski 17y ago
The problem with this is that while 20 years isn't a long time pre-Industrial Era, and isn't insurmountably long in the Industrial Era, in the Information Age (let's say 1980 on), 20 years is a crazy long time. Twenty years ago, supercomputers where about as powerful as the desktop I'm sitting at now, a desktop that's by modern standards slow (at work, it's a P4 with like 512 RAM). Twenty years ago, BBSes and IRC were as good as it gets. The Web 1.0 forums and Geocities sites would have been cutting edge, much less something like Reddit or Wikipedia. The cutting-edge stuff people are doing on here with location-based social networking (Loopt) or seamless on-the-Internet file storage (Dropbox) is the sci-fi of 20 years ago. 1,000 bit/s was considered a decent connection speed, whereas now anything under 1,000,000 bit/s (1 Mbps, or 128 KB/s) is considered slow. In this environment, a 20-year patent lasts a life-time. Amazon's One-Click patent was granted in 1999. That means you have to steer clear of it or license it until 2019. That's 20 years that Amazon will be controlling a crucial feature of e-commerce sites. MP3's patents will run until at least 2012. By the time MP3 (standardized in 1991) is patent-free, it'll be obselete, at best a legacy format. Heck, every music player (software and hardware) for the last few years has supported either MPEG-4 audio (AAC) or WMA, both of which sound better than MP3 at the same bit-rate. By the time patents on MPEG-4 stuff expire, it'll be at least 2020, and we'll be 1-2 generations further advanced. My point is that for algorithmic, software, and business-model patents, even if they should be legitimate, a 20-year lifespan in the modern era is insane. Measured against the rate of progress, patents are lasting longer and longer, and by the time the patent is expired, there's no longer money in the previously-covered area.

stonemetal 17y ago

Exactly, at one point in time the ball point pen was patented, You couldn't make a ball point pen without paying someone. How is the fruit of my labor any different from the fruit of a ME EE or ChemE's labor? The lot of us practice applied math in different domains.

ZachPruckowski 17y ago
A patent on a ball-point pen only affects how you make your pen. A company can make a competing, non-ballpoint pen that still writes on the same paper and is still the same color (though it might be more expensive or messier or whatever), so not licensing the patent isn't disastrous. Even with a patent on something like an engine, I can still design my own (likely less efficient) engine, which'll still drive on the same roads and probably even use the same gasoline that works slightly differently. A patent on something like MP3 or One-Click-Ordering prevents competitors from including a feature. If I want to make an e-commerce site, I have to have multiple clicks to order something or I have to license Amazon's patent. If I want to make any sort of media hardware or software that can encode/decode or import/export or even play the content out there, I need a slew of patents licensed. There's no work-around or alternative method, I simply can't include that feature without licensing. It's the difference between "licensing this patent lets me build off the work of another company to make my product better" and "licensing this patent is mandatory to compete in this field". In my mind, patents of the first type are fine, while patents of the second type are bad. I should be able to create something that can (for example) play MP3s without licensing, but do so at the cost of efficiency or power (because I'm using a less effective method).

ZachPruckowski 17y ago

The problem with this is that while 20 years isn't a long time pre-Industrial Era, and isn't insurmountably long in the Industrial Era, in the Information Age (let's say 1980 on), 20 years is a crazy long time. Twenty years ago, supercomputers where about as powerful as the desktop I'm sitting at now, a desktop that's by modern standards slow (at work, it's a P4 with like 512 RAM). Twenty years ago, BBSes and IRC were as good as it gets. The Web 1.0 forums and Geocities sites would have been cutting edge, much less something like Reddit or Wikipedia. The cutting-edge stuff people are doing on here with location-based social networking (Loopt) or seamless on-the-Internet file storage (Dropbox) is the sci-fi of 20 years ago. 1,000 bit/s was considered a decent connection speed, whereas now anything under 1,000,000 bit/s (1 Mbps, or 128 KB/s) is considered slow. In this environment, a 20-year patent lasts a life-time. Amazon's One-Click patent was granted in 1999. That means you have to steer clear of it or license it until 2019. That's 20 years that Amazon will be controlling a crucial feature of e-commerce sites. MP3's patents will run until at least 2012. By the time MP3 (standardized in 1991) is patent-free, it'll be obselete, at best a legacy format. Heck, every music player (software and hardware) for the last few years has supported either MPEG-4 audio (AAC) or WMA, both of which sound better than MP3 at the same bit-rate. By the time patents on MPEG-4 stuff expire, it'll be at least 2020, and we'll be 1-2 generations further advanced. My point is that for algorithmic, software, and business-model patents, even if they should be legitimate, a 20-year lifespan in the modern era is insane. Measured against the rate of progress, patents are lasting longer and longer, and by the time the patent is expired, there's no longer money in the previously-covered area.