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> Patents are designed to protect an implementation of an idea, not the idea itself Nope. In fact, one doesn't even have to have an implementation whatsoever
by diminoten 13y ago
> Patents are designed to protect an implementation of an idea, not the idea itself
Nope. In fact, one doesn't even have to have an implementation whatsoever in order to be granted a patent.
Just reading the rest of the article, it seems like ya'll don't know a whole lot about patent law.
I don't either, but I do know enough to know that forcing patent holders to "go after the largest infringer" is a silly idea. How would you determine "largest"?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoI'll be the first to tell you I'm not an expert in patent law but the point I'm trying to make is this: if patents on software are truly about protecting legitimate interests and not intended to encourage anti-competitive behavior, then we could fix a lot of what's wrong by requiring patent-holders to only sue up, as one example.
- diminoten 13y agoThat specific suggestion is more or less impossible to implement. How would you determine what "up" is?
- bdamm 13y agoWouldn't it be measured by the claimed damages?
- diminoten 13y agoWhat does that change, except for forcing mom-and-pop inventors to go after GE?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoIt would actually prevent this exact situation - stopping larger companies from suing upstart competitors.
- diminoten 13y agoHow would it stop that at all? Explain how this would work, in practice. So Google sues Joe Individual over patent infringement. What now?
- dublinben 13y agoThe case could be thrown out. Google gets nothing, Joe continues to infringe.
- diminoten 13y agoThat's... what? No one has mentioned this yet, and that's completely absurd anyway.
- nknighthb 13y agoGoogle would be suing the wrong entity and the case would be dismissed by an unamused judge who sanctions Google's lawyers for being idiots who wasted the court's time. Google needs to sue the limited liability entity Joe is working within.
- diminoten 13y agoIndividuals can infringe on patents too.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoDoesn't seem that hard. Revenue, market cap, funding, to name just a few.
- diminoten 13y agoDo you, personally, have a market cap?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoFor private companies, that equates to valuation. So, yes.
- diminoten 13y agoNo, I mean you specifically.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoI don't think there is such a thing, at a personal level. At least I've never heard of one before. Why?
- diminoten 13y agoThen how do I, diminoten, sue you, rgrieselhuber, for patent infringement, if we're basing things on "size"?
- nknighthb 13y agoYou don't sue individuals for patent infringement unless they're so stupid as to do business as a sole proprietor, which is a bad idea for a host of reasons quite aside from patent infringement. You will not find anyone with deep pockets to sue for patent infringement individually. It is distressing that someone obviously so utterly clueless about law has the top comment on this story.
- lotsofmangos 13y agoI'm against software patent law, but trying to legislate only suing up takes an awful thing and makes it even worse. People would construct multiple businesses around the premise of keeping each one smaller than the dominant player. It would take the existing bureaucratic nightmare and add an entire new level of complexity to it.
- bmm6o 13y agoYeah, it's not very well thought-out. "The fact that patent holders are not required to go after the biggest perceived infringer or, more importantly, ALL infringers, and unilaterally get to choose infringers further proves the illegitimacy of software patents in the first place." [emphasis mine]. That patent law doesn't include this thing he just thought up proves that they are illegitimate (whatever that means in this context)? It doesn't follow. Does the fact that copyright litigation not require you to go after the "biggest" infringers prove its illegitimacy?
- AnimalMuppet 13y agoYou may be confused here. Copyrights are meant to protect the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Patents are meant to protect an idea - but it has to be the right kind of an idea. It has to be "how to do something", not "what to do". You can't patent the idea of a time machine; you can patent a specific way to make one. But note well: That's the intent. The patent office has kind of messed up that intent by issuing a bunch of vague patents that never should have been issued.
- diminoten 13y agoYou can very much patent "what to do". They're called business method patents, and they're how software is actually patented in the US. There is no "software patent", strictly speaking.
- AnimalMuppet 13y agoAnd business method patents are a mistake. They should never have been issued. And the Supreme Court is currently headed in the direction of scaling them back, if not eliminating them entirely.
- diminoten 13y agoNo they're not.
- BrainInAJar 13y ago> Just reading the rest of the article, it seems like ya'll don't know a whole lot about patent law. Nonsense. This is HackerNews, where writing some half-baked website code makes you an expert in both business and law
- georgemcbay 13y agoActually the idea that they should be forced to go after the largest infringer is a really good one, one which I haven't seen advocated for very much and seeing it there turned my initial first reaction of the piece upside down (nothing personal to original blog author, I just have a strong negative bias towards SEO). Though you can handwave the idea away by the technicality of it being difficult to determine who the "largest" infringer is, you could achieve the gist of idea by structuring enforcement of the IP protection such that if you know about infringement or can reasonably be assumed to know about infringement (because it is happening very publicly), you must take action or risk losing the protection. This is already how trademarks work, why not patents? There is some initial bad fallout that would come from a system like this in that there are surely companies who know about infringers of their patents who let it slide for whatever reason and this might force them to act, but I think the eventual positive effects this sort of system would have (IMO) would be worth that initial pain.
- diminoten 13y agoWhat you're saying is a terrible idea, because it shifts due diligence to the infringing party. This means that whenever I create something, I'd have to hire a legal team to figure out if I'm infringing on something or not, or risk losing the ensuing lawsuit. Furthermore, I resent the notion that I'm just "handwaving" at all here. It's not only difficult, but completely and entirely impossible. It's entirely untenable, and it's a little silly to take patent law reform advice from someone who admits to not knowing much about patent law.
- marcosdumay 13y ago> This means that whenever I create something, I'd have to hire a legal team to figure out if I'm infringing on something or not, or risk losing the ensuing lawsuit. What's the difference from the current situation?
- diminoten 13y agoIt's currently... not that way?
- kenrikm 13y agoThey use a bad example of Pepsi and Coke since you can't patent a recipe and that's why they guard the "trade secret recipe" a more fitting example would be Ford Mustang vs Chevy Camero.