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> > but the system is not completely broken > That's demagogy. Uh... what? I think the claim that the system is not completely broken is very fair. If you wan

> > but the system is not completely broken > That's demagogy. Uh... what? I think the claim that the system is not completely broken is very fair. If you want to prove it wrong, show that 90%+ of the patents are junk. > Completely or not completely is irrelevant. If it's passing through tons of patents It doesn't matter which patents pass, what matters is which absurd patents go to court and win. So, let's see, how many court cases have we seen this past decade where absolutely absurd patents ended up winning in court? Don't get me wrong, I think the system has problems, I just don't think it's broken and needs to be completely abolished. We need to find a way to eradicate patent trolls and there are a lot of potential solutions to this. For example, if company A acquires company B, then company B's patents become void and null unless A can prove these patents are applicable to its business. Blam. All patent trolls vanish. Once you eliminate the problem of patent trolls, you realize that the idea behind software patents is sound and actually promotes innovation, start ups and entrepreneurship.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
You are a small businessman. You get a letter demanding $5000 because you are infringing on this stupid patent. How often would you choose to spend $1M or more to fight the patent? Don't you see how ludicrous your test for correctness is?
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> Once you eliminate the problem of patent trolls, you realize that the idea behind software patents is sound and actually promotes innovation, start ups and entrepreneurship. Eliminating patent trolls would eliminate that problem for large corporations, although it would still cost them million of dollars to apply for patents solely to cancel out others' patents through cross-licensing. Start ups are even more screwed because all of the large incumbents still each have a huge arsenal of broad software patents and can bury any software start up in litigation who tries to compete with them. This also makes having a software patent essentially useless for a start up because any attempt to assert it against an incumbent would only result in counterclaims and ruinous litigation costs. The idea that a small practicing entity can realistically assert a software patent against a large tech corporation is beyond belief. And that's before you even consider the six-figure cost of paying lawyers to get a patent through the patent office, which then generally isn't even issued until the technology at issue is either obsolete and disused or so common and ingrained in the status quo that issuing an effectively retroactive patent on it without prior notice to those who have since adopted it is inherently unreasonable. Software patents are fundamentally useless and should be abolished.
- Loughla 12y ago
  If you will excuse my directness, all of these arguments come across as 'it isn't fair that they're bigger than we are.' If large incumbents didn't have broad software patents to bury start-ups, they would use their market coverage. If they don't use that, then they can just use their connections to the government to legislate start-ups out of existence. If they don't use that, they can just buy the property the start-up physically occupies and burn it to the ground. Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous. Reform and overhaul using principles guided by rational, current, and quantifiable evaluation, with an established timeline for recurring review and reform. That's what we need (in many more systems than patents as well; education, I'm looking at you). Life isn't always binary. There are more answers than all or nothing.
  - jdjb 12y ago
    "If large incumbents didn't have broad software patents to bury start-ups, they would use their market coverage." I'm not sure what you mean by market coverage but if you mean their incumbent product then that's exactly what a startup usually seeks to disrupt (successful or not this is the challenge the startup is taking on anyway). "If they don't use that, then they can just use their connections to the government to legislate start-ups out of existence." In a way this is exactly what the current patent system accomplishes. Except it's through litigation, not legislation (but it's legislation allowing for the grounds of litigation). "If they don't use that, they can just buy the property the start-up physically occupies and burn it to the ground." Now you're just being absurd. "Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous." What we have now is a wild-west scenario where submarine patents and overly broad patents allow trolls (and even practicing entities looking to squash competition) can simply litigate at will and the costs of defending overwhelm their competition (unless they're equally large or play the same game with cross licensing patents).
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > If you will excuse my directness, all of these arguments come across as 'it isn't fair that they're bigger than we are.' Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's obvious that large entities have more power than small entities, but that's hardly an excuse to give them more. Especially when the argument being made is that it will help small entities which it empirically does not. > Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous. There should be corollary to Godwin's law that anyone who describes the tech industry as the wild west automatically loses the argument. There are no gunslingers here. You've already listed plenty of reasons why Microsoft is not going to be felled overnight by some startup in the absence of software patents. > Reform and overhaul using principles guided by rational, current, and quantifiable evaluation, with an established timeline for recurring review and reform. There is nothing to reform. The essential failure isn't in the specifics of the law, it's in the concept of patenting what is fundamentally information. Under the same law the patent system works largely as it's expected to in the pharmaceutical industry or the auto industry. It fails spectacularly in the software industry because software is not supposed to be patentable subject matter.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago

You are a small businessman. You get a letter demanding $5000 because you are infringing on this stupid patent. How often would you choose to spend $1M or more to fight the patent? Don't you see how ludicrous your test for correctness is?

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> Once you eliminate the problem of patent trolls, you realize that the idea behind software patents is sound and actually promotes innovation, start ups and entrepreneurship. Eliminating patent trolls would eliminate that problem for large corporations, although it would still cost them million of dollars to apply for patents solely to cancel out others' patents through cross-licensing. Start ups are even more screwed because all of the large incumbents still each have a huge arsenal of broad software patents and can bury any software start up in litigation who tries to compete with them. This also makes having a software patent essentially useless for a start up because any attempt to assert it against an incumbent would only result in counterclaims and ruinous litigation costs. The idea that a small practicing entity can realistically assert a software patent against a large tech corporation is beyond belief. And that's before you even consider the six-figure cost of paying lawyers to get a patent through the patent office, which then generally isn't even issued until the technology at issue is either obsolete and disused or so common and ingrained in the status quo that issuing an effectively retroactive patent on it without prior notice to those who have since adopted it is inherently unreasonable. Software patents are fundamentally useless and should be abolished.

Loughla 12y ago
If you will excuse my directness, all of these arguments come across as 'it isn't fair that they're bigger than we are.' If large incumbents didn't have broad software patents to bury start-ups, they would use their market coverage. If they don't use that, then they can just use their connections to the government to legislate start-ups out of existence. If they don't use that, they can just buy the property the start-up physically occupies and burn it to the ground. Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous. Reform and overhaul using principles guided by rational, current, and quantifiable evaluation, with an established timeline for recurring review and reform. That's what we need (in many more systems than patents as well; education, I'm looking at you). Life isn't always binary. There are more answers than all or nothing.
- jdjb 12y ago
  "If large incumbents didn't have broad software patents to bury start-ups, they would use their market coverage." I'm not sure what you mean by market coverage but if you mean their incumbent product then that's exactly what a startup usually seeks to disrupt (successful or not this is the challenge the startup is taking on anyway). "If they don't use that, then they can just use their connections to the government to legislate start-ups out of existence." In a way this is exactly what the current patent system accomplishes. Except it's through litigation, not legislation (but it's legislation allowing for the grounds of litigation). "If they don't use that, they can just buy the property the start-up physically occupies and burn it to the ground." Now you're just being absurd. "Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous." What we have now is a wild-west scenario where submarine patents and overly broad patents allow trolls (and even practicing entities looking to squash competition) can simply litigate at will and the costs of defending overwhelm their competition (unless they're equally large or play the same game with cross licensing patents).
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  > If you will excuse my directness, all of these arguments come across as 'it isn't fair that they're bigger than we are.' Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's obvious that large entities have more power than small entities, but that's hardly an excuse to give them more. Especially when the argument being made is that it will help small entities which it empirically does not. > Gigantic, established companies will always have an edge, regardless of patents. Abolishing the system and creating a wild-west scenario is ridiculous. There should be corollary to Godwin's law that anyone who describes the tech industry as the wild west automatically loses the argument. There are no gunslingers here. You've already listed plenty of reasons why Microsoft is not going to be felled overnight by some startup in the absence of software patents. > Reform and overhaul using principles guided by rational, current, and quantifiable evaluation, with an established timeline for recurring review and reform. There is nothing to reform. The essential failure isn't in the specifics of the law, it's in the concept of patenting what is fundamentally information. Under the same law the patent system works largely as it's expected to in the pharmaceutical industry or the auto industry. It fails spectacularly in the software industry because software is not supposed to be patentable subject matter.