3 ms·

Why is it with patents everything has to be nothing ever, never a good reason? I'm sure my perspective here might get this downvoted to oblivion, but really, t

by bbarn 12y ago

Why is it with patents everything has to be nothing ever, never a good reason? I'm sure my perspective here might get this downvoted to oblivion, but really, think for a second what would happen if tomorrow, no software was patentable? Why would a large company focus any effort on R&D, new idea development, vs investing that money in just ripping off the competition and scaling it better? (not that that ever happens as is..) There are lots of us that make our living designing or developing things that some business or shareholder wants developed simply because they want to be the ones that did it, or did it in a way no one else could steal. I don't think zero patents for software is a great idea, but I also don't think the lawyerization of patents has helped anyone long term. Perhaps a better approach is to get actual developers and software professionals in patent approval/dispute resolution positions? A parallel to that might be the advent of the Test Engineer or the Dev Ops positions. Test Engineering showed the world the value someone with development skills could have over classic point and try to break testing, just as Dev Ops showed what having some dev chops does for deployment/network infrastructure.

shmerl 12y ago
I think zero patents for software is a good idea. At least it's better than leaving the situation as is. May be there are better ways of fixing the current mess (something more generic, than simply carving software out of patentability, since such singled exceptions make the law more complicated), but I didn't see practical proposals.
krschultz 12y ago
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note that according the US Constitution the most important reason for the existence of patents & copyright is the promotion of science & art. If the net result of the patent system is not promoting science & art, it is not operating as intended. Certainly there will be winners and losers under any scheme, but in my experience the current setup is a net drag on innovation. Making buckets of money by being first and being innovative is reward enough to incentive progress. These days most companies filing for patents are doing it defensively anyway.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
When the software business was young, software was not patent-able at all. And that was good so, because if it where in the same degree as today, I guess we all would still have DOS on our desktops or worse. Just think, quicksort would have been patented. Or binary trees, or arrays. The horror scenario that you give is just a bad example that could have been constructed by patent attorneys. Of course you can not just rip-off the software of a competitor, because the software itself is copyrighted. We all are profiting from the fact, that many things in the software world are just not patented. Because in the knowledge world and more so in the software world, nobody just sits on his island and makes something totally new ... everybody depends on the work of others. The patent system taken to extreme: Only a handful companies dominate the market and nobody else can do anything anymore. As much I understood, in the hard disk business we have this situation already -- three to five big corporations dominating the market, because they own the key patents.
onion2k 12y ago
Patents don't really work in software because a patent is supposed to be a temporary monopoly on a method of implementing something, and in software there's always more than one way to implement something. A patent on, for example, "enabling the user to buy something with one click" is far too broad - it covers any implementation on a relatively trivial idea. That's the fundamental problem with patents today - at some point they switched from being protection of a process for making something to "idea copyright". Now, the broader you can make your patent the more money you'll reap from it. Patenting an algorithm, if it's truly non-obvious and hasn't been done before is fine in my opinion. The R&D dollars should still be spent, but spent on things that move humanity forward and not nonsense like buying a monopoly on "a process people have done for decades, but on a computer!"
- euank 12y ago
  The problem with "patenting an algorithm" is that it's "not allowed" by the rules of patents. You cannot patent laws of nature, like math (not that that stopped everyone [0]). Algorithms are purely mathematical constructs. The idea that someone "owns" something just because they discovered it, not invented it, is scary. Of course, I'll give you that algorithms sort of feels like a gray area. Even though they're pure math, they also sometimes feel like inventions to me. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749422 http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749...
Expez 12y ago
There are no software patents in Europe. I've seen nothing to suggest that European software companies are less competitive. In my daily work as a developer I've not once heard anyone talk about the competition 'stealing our ideas'. The reason I think software patents are a net negative is that it's the sum of the parts that make a software product valuable. Patenting some of the algorithms used to develop this software product is not going to protect you from the competition in any meaningful way. Contrast this with pharma where the end-product is simple, often a single easily reproduced compound.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  European software companies do [ab]use patents widely - a historically sensitive example is Fraunhofer institute (Germany) and patents on their invention of the mp3 encoding methods; it brought significant revenue for them, making them competitive; and the patent restrictions also had significant effect on the music software&device market.
  - Expez 12y ago
    This is a good example. There is indeed nothing that prevents an EU based company from filing for a software patent in the US (or other markets). This particular patent has likely been so lucrative (~$100m in revenues) because it's so easy to spot infringements.
- peteri 12y ago
  Depends on the patent office, both the German & European patent offices are fairly liberal in allowing software patents. The UK patent office is currently harder to get a pure software patent in. It's certainly possible to get patents on software particularly if it has a technical effect. The UK patent office gives an example of software that improves a car breaking system would be patentable.
comex 12y ago
But what kind of patent infringement cases and/or notable patent avoidance in computing do we actually see in practice? Off the top of my head: - patent trolls, lots and lots of patent trolls, throwing around patents for things like in-app purchases and SSL - Samsung and Apple throwing random patents at each other and mostly not accomplishing anything - file systems - FAT LFN, exFAT - machine instruction sets - video codecs - ClearType Out of those examples, the first two are clearly awful, and the second two are pretty bad because they prevent compatibility/competition. The last two are relatively OK - with video codecs patent uncertainty is very damaging, but as long as we're hypothetically revamping the system we can fix that. But the last two are also pretty unimportant compared to the software industry as a whole; keeping or abolishing them wouldn't make a huge difference to anyone other than MPEG LA. I'll make a bit of an extrapolation and claim that after factoring out undesirable use of software patents, the same would apply to abolishing them entirely: there would be little effect, because patents never effectively prevented ripoffs in the first place. Yet in the present, plenty of companies focus plenty of effort on R&D. Why they'd do so without patents is the same as why they do so today: most significant functionality takes a lot of time and work to implement, so being first is a large competitive advantage. I guess we're not restricted to looking at what's currently patentable; if you really wanted to discourage ripoffs, you could expand the patent system along those lines at the same time as weakening the current system. But personally, today's patents are dangerous enough that any thought of expansion really scares me.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Video codecs patents aren't OK. They are one the worst things used to keep the Web locked into proprietary technology. And not only the Web. It's clearly an anticompetiive tool of control, and not a way to return investments spent on innovation.
beepp 12y ago
With almost anything else, what you really need isn't the idea, but the factory to make the idea. You could tell me everything there is to know about making a Ferrari, but the likelihood that I could build a factory that could replicate Ferrari's is relatively small. Now look at software. The "factory" can be obtained for free by going to a public library. As such, I'd argue that 1) the broadness of many of the patents that already exist is ridiculous, and was earned by nothing more than a rudimentary understanding of programming and 2) the relative likelihood that you're going to have a TRULY novel idea is lower due to the size of the population and amount of collaboration inherent in programming. On top of all that, you don't see "first, invent a programming language that allows me to do all this neat stuff." They're already building on so much groundwork that they don't understand, it's sort of belittling the achievements of the people who truly created NEW things in computer science, to say that rounded corners on a texting app or whatever deserve a monopoly that could crush other applications.
Yetanfou 12y ago
What would happen with the demise of software patents is an explosion of creativity, no longer bridled by the threat of shady actors (ab)using their patents to extract money from those who create. The only net loss would be for the legal profession. Less money to the lawyers, less money to the patent office. More money to the rest of the economy. Like the parable of the broken window, money going to these actors is actually money lost to the economy. These actors do not create value, they only consume. In other words, the software industry would be rid of a parasite.

by bbarn 12y ago

shmerl 12y ago

I think zero patents for software is a good idea. At least it's better than leaving the situation as is. May be there are better ways of fixing the current mess (something more generic, than simply carving software out of patentability, since such singled exceptions make the law more complicated), but I didn't see practical proposals.

krschultz 12y ago

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note that according the US Constitution the most important reason for the existence of patents & copyright is the promotion of science & art. If the net result of the patent system is not promoting science & art, it is not operating as intended. Certainly there will be winners and losers under any scheme, but in my experience the current setup is a net drag on innovation. Making buckets of money by being first and being innovative is reward enough to incentive progress. These days most companies filing for patents are doing it defensively anyway.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

When the software business was young, software was not patent-able at all. And that was good so, because if it where in the same degree as today, I guess we all would still have DOS on our desktops or worse. Just think, quicksort would have been patented. Or binary trees, or arrays. The horror scenario that you give is just a bad example that could have been constructed by patent attorneys. Of course you can not just rip-off the software of a competitor, because the software itself is copyrighted. We all are profiting from the fact, that many things in the software world are just not patented. Because in the knowledge world and more so in the software world, nobody just sits on his island and makes something totally new ... everybody depends on the work of others. The patent system taken to extreme: Only a handful companies dominate the market and nobody else can do anything anymore. As much I understood, in the hard disk business we have this situation already -- three to five big corporations dominating the market, because they own the key patents.

onion2k 12y ago

Patents don't really work in software because a patent is supposed to be a temporary monopoly on a method of implementing something, and in software there's always more than one way to implement something. A patent on, for example, "enabling the user to buy something with one click" is far too broad - it covers any implementation on a relatively trivial idea. That's the fundamental problem with patents today - at some point they switched from being protection of a process for making something to "idea copyright". Now, the broader you can make your patent the more money you'll reap from it. Patenting an algorithm, if it's truly non-obvious and hasn't been done before is fine in my opinion. The R&D dollars should still be spent, but spent on things that move humanity forward and not nonsense like buying a monopoly on "a process people have done for decades, but on a computer!"

euank 12y ago
The problem with "patenting an algorithm" is that it's "not allowed" by the rules of patents. You cannot patent laws of nature, like math (not that that stopped everyone [0]). Algorithms are purely mathematical constructs. The idea that someone "owns" something just because they discovered it, not invented it, is scary. Of course, I'll give you that algorithms sort of feels like a gray area. Even though they're pure math, they also sometimes feel like inventions to me. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749422 http://www.amazon.com/Math-You-Cant-Use-Copyright/dp/0815749...

Expez 12y ago

There are no software patents in Europe. I've seen nothing to suggest that European software companies are less competitive. In my daily work as a developer I've not once heard anyone talk about the competition 'stealing our ideas'. The reason I think software patents are a net negative is that it's the sum of the parts that make a software product valuable. Patenting some of the algorithms used to develop this software product is not going to protect you from the competition in any meaningful way. Contrast this with pharma where the end-product is simple, often a single easily reproduced compound.

PeterisP 12y ago
European software companies do [ab]use patents widely - a historically sensitive example is Fraunhofer institute (Germany) and patents on their invention of the mp3 encoding methods; it brought significant revenue for them, making them competitive; and the patent restrictions also had significant effect on the music software&device market.
- Expez 12y ago
  This is a good example. There is indeed nothing that prevents an EU based company from filing for a software patent in the US (or other markets). This particular patent has likely been so lucrative (~$100m in revenues) because it's so easy to spot infringements.
peteri 12y ago
Depends on the patent office, both the German & European patent offices are fairly liberal in allowing software patents. The UK patent office is currently harder to get a pure software patent in. It's certainly possible to get patents on software particularly if it has a technical effect. The UK patent office gives an example of software that improves a car breaking system would be patentable.

comex 12y ago

But what kind of patent infringement cases and/or notable patent avoidance in computing do we actually see in practice? Off the top of my head: - patent trolls, lots and lots of patent trolls, throwing around patents for things like in-app purchases and SSL - Samsung and Apple throwing random patents at each other and mostly not accomplishing anything - file systems - FAT LFN, exFAT - machine instruction sets - video codecs - ClearType Out of those examples, the first two are clearly awful, and the second two are pretty bad because they prevent compatibility/competition. The last two are relatively OK - with video codecs patent uncertainty is very damaging, but as long as we're hypothetically revamping the system we can fix that. But the last two are also pretty unimportant compared to the software industry as a whole; keeping or abolishing them wouldn't make a huge difference to anyone other than MPEG LA. I'll make a bit of an extrapolation and claim that after factoring out undesirable use of software patents, the same would apply to abolishing them entirely: there would be little effect, because patents never effectively prevented ripoffs in the first place. Yet in the present, plenty of companies focus plenty of effort on R&D. Why they'd do so without patents is the same as why they do so today: most significant functionality takes a lot of time and work to implement, so being first is a large competitive advantage. I guess we're not restricted to looking at what's currently patentable; if you really wanted to discourage ripoffs, you could expand the patent system along those lines at the same time as weakening the current system. But personally, today's patents are dangerous enough that any thought of expansion really scares me.

shmerl 12y ago
Video codecs patents aren't OK. They are one the worst things used to keep the Web locked into proprietary technology. And not only the Web. It's clearly an anticompetiive tool of control, and not a way to return investments spent on innovation.

beepp 12y ago

With almost anything else, what you really need isn't the idea, but the factory to make the idea. You could tell me everything there is to know about making a Ferrari, but the likelihood that I could build a factory that could replicate Ferrari's is relatively small. Now look at software. The "factory" can be obtained for free by going to a public library. As such, I'd argue that 1) the broadness of many of the patents that already exist is ridiculous, and was earned by nothing more than a rudimentary understanding of programming and 2) the relative likelihood that you're going to have a TRULY novel idea is lower due to the size of the population and amount of collaboration inherent in programming. On top of all that, you don't see "first, invent a programming language that allows me to do all this neat stuff." They're already building on so much groundwork that they don't understand, it's sort of belittling the achievements of the people who truly created NEW things in computer science, to say that rounded corners on a texting app or whatever deserve a monopoly that could crush other applications.

Yetanfou 12y ago

What would happen with the demise of software patents is an explosion of creativity, no longer bridled by the threat of shady actors (ab)using their patents to extract money from those who create. The only net loss would be for the legal profession. Less money to the lawyers, less money to the patent office. More money to the rest of the economy. Like the parable of the broken window, money going to these actors is actually money lost to the economy. These actors do not create value, they only consume. In other words, the software industry would be rid of a parasite.