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And yet they had plenty of incentive to invent the spreadsheet. Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. If people

by guelo 13y ago

And yet they had plenty of incentive to invent the spreadsheet. Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. If people have the incentive to invent anyway then it is better for society to allow competition, since competition benefits consumers much more than monopolies.

dangoldin 13y ago
I might be completely wrong but I think you can make the argument that back then the challenge was in the implementation since there were so many technical difficulties and there was no need to patent an approach since it would be difficult to replicate. Now with modern tools it's pretty easy to replicate most software so getting a patent makes more sense. I don't think software patents should be granted but clearly there's an incentive to patent as much as you can.
- eterm 13y ago
  Is it actually easy to replicate most software or does it just appear that way until you try?
  - x0054 13y ago
    The problem is, the software patents don't really explain implementation, they simply describe it. Take the scan and email button patent. It presented no implementation at all, in fact the original "inventor" never actually managed to get it to work. So, what's the value to the society in that patent? What's the value to the society in a lot of software patents that offer no actual implementation, or general idea patents. It used to be that you could patent specific implementations, and of some one could come up with a better implementation, they could patent that. Nowadays, it seams like you can patent just about anything, regardless of whether or not it can be implemented at the moment. It would be like the Wright Brothers patenting "a flying device that uses an engine and a propeller" without ever even trying to build one.
    - eterm 13y ago
      This is an accurate description of the problem. In theory a patent for "A flying device by propulsion of engine and rotary propeller" is a fine patent, but the details of the patent would have to go into implementation. Patents, in theory, apply to methods rather than concepts, so if someone does patent "a one click shopping button" they should only hold patent for their implementation. The problem is both the misapplication of patents which appear to grant patents over any implementation, as well as patents over implementations which are too simple, such that anyone who wants to build a similar item would go to that implementation as an obvious solution.
  - dangoldin 13y ago
    I think given the volume of software out there now it's a lot easier to replicate than it used to be. You'd have to be pretty clever to achieve some of the things that were done before the 90s but now most products can be copied pretty easily - not necessarily scaled though.
gnaritas 13y ago
> Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. No they don't. The patent system was developed to encourage inventors to make their inventions public knowledge for the public good. It was never about encouraging invention, the limited monopoly was the means to and end, unlocking trade secrets for the public good. You've confused the means for the motive.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they would've either kept it secret or not done it at all.
  - yxhuvud 13y ago
    That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.
ggchappell 13y ago
I'm afraid that point doesn't work so well here. After Lotus brought out 1-2-3 a few years later, VisiCalc didn't do so well. VisiCorp was dead less than 2 years after the release of 1-2-3. One could argue that a patent would have kept VisiCorp alive. (Admittedly, part of the failure of the company was due to litigation with the authors of VisiCalc.)
- guelo 13y ago
  So what? Consumers preferred 1-2-3 to VisiCalc, that's how markets works. Society doesn't have to guarantee anybody a market share if their products are inferior.
  - throwawaykf02 13y ago
    It could be argued that without VisiCalc, 1-2-3 might never have existed. After all, besides the development work, VisiCalc had also done all the hard work of creating and validating a new market. If somebody does all that work only to be displaced by someone else who has the benefit of hindsight, what is the incentive for taking big risks?
  - ggchappell 13y ago
    > Society doesn't have to guarantee anybody a market share if their products are inferior. Of course not. But it remains true that your original argument doesn't work here. I imagine you're generally against software patents. So am I. But don't hold up VisiCalc as a poster child for software development without patents, because in the long run it was very much a failure as a product, and the company that sold it went broke, while this might not have happened had they patented it.
- jhdevos 13y ago
  Exactly. Innovation in the field of spreadsheet programs would have completely stagnated by keeping it limited to a company that was clearly done innovating. Their lack of further innovation would only have been greater with a monopoly.

by guelo 13y ago

dangoldin 13y ago

I might be completely wrong but I think you can make the argument that back then the challenge was in the implementation since there were so many technical difficulties and there was no need to patent an approach since it would be difficult to replicate. Now with modern tools it's pretty easy to replicate most software so getting a patent makes more sense. I don't think software patents should be granted but clearly there's an incentive to patent as much as you can.

eterm 13y ago
Is it actually easy to replicate most software or does it just appear that way until you try?
- x0054 13y ago
  The problem is, the software patents don't really explain implementation, they simply describe it. Take the scan and email button patent. It presented no implementation at all, in fact the original "inventor" never actually managed to get it to work. So, what's the value to the society in that patent? What's the value to the society in a lot of software patents that offer no actual implementation, or general idea patents. It used to be that you could patent specific implementations, and of some one could come up with a better implementation, they could patent that. Nowadays, it seams like you can patent just about anything, regardless of whether or not it can be implemented at the moment. It would be like the Wright Brothers patenting "a flying device that uses an engine and a propeller" without ever even trying to build one.
  - eterm 13y ago
    This is an accurate description of the problem. In theory a patent for "A flying device by propulsion of engine and rotary propeller" is a fine patent, but the details of the patent would have to go into implementation. Patents, in theory, apply to methods rather than concepts, so if someone does patent "a one click shopping button" they should only hold patent for their implementation. The problem is both the misapplication of patents which appear to grant patents over any implementation, as well as patents over implementations which are too simple, such that anyone who wants to build a similar item would go to that implementation as an obvious solution.
- dangoldin 13y ago
  I think given the volume of software out there now it's a lot easier to replicate than it used to be. You'd have to be pretty clever to achieve some of the things that were done before the 90s but now most products can be copied pretty easily - not necessarily scaled though.

gnaritas 13y ago

> Patents grant a government protected monopoly in order to encourage people to invent. No they don't. The patent system was developed to encourage inventors to make their inventions public knowledge for the public good. It was never about encouraging invention, the limited monopoly was the means to and end, unlocking trade secrets for the public good. You've confused the means for the motive.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they would've either kept it secret or not done it at all.
- yxhuvud 13y ago
  That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.

ggchappell 13y ago

I'm afraid that point doesn't work so well here. After Lotus brought out 1-2-3 a few years later, VisiCalc didn't do so well. VisiCorp was dead less than 2 years after the release of 1-2-3. One could argue that a patent would have kept VisiCorp alive. (Admittedly, part of the failure of the company was due to litigation with the authors of VisiCalc.)

guelo 13y ago
So what? Consumers preferred 1-2-3 to VisiCalc, that's how markets works. Society doesn't have to guarantee anybody a market share if their products are inferior.
- throwawaykf02 13y ago
  It could be argued that without VisiCalc, 1-2-3 might never have existed. After all, besides the development work, VisiCalc had also done all the hard work of creating and validating a new market. If somebody does all that work only to be displaced by someone else who has the benefit of hindsight, what is the incentive for taking big risks?
- ggchappell 13y ago
  > Society doesn't have to guarantee anybody a market share if their products are inferior. Of course not. But it remains true that your original argument doesn't work here. I imagine you're generally against software patents. So am I. But don't hold up VisiCalc as a poster child for software development without patents, because in the long run it was very much a failure as a product, and the company that sold it went broke, while this might not have happened had they patented it.
jhdevos 13y ago
Exactly. Innovation in the field of spreadsheet programs would have completely stagnated by keeping it limited to a company that was clearly done innovating. Their lack of further innovation would only have been greater with a monopoly.