4 ms·

I am proud of some of my patents. The inventions behind them are works of art just like what an open-source contribution may be. These are not inventions that

by alok-g 12y ago

I am proud of some of my patents. The inventions behind them are works of art just like what an open-source contribution may be. These are not inventions that everyone or anyone could come up with. At least in one remarkable case, many people were working on the problem at hand but could not figure even how to start. To summarize, do not confuse bad cases from good cases. You cannot have a blanket statement of the type, "some people are proud of their open-source contributions ... I was surprised about it".

viraptor 12y ago
Yes I can, this is my statement. At least for the CS related people. I'm not confusing good and bad cases, I disagree with the abstract ideas patents (any programs included) completely and other patents to some extent. Basically I disagree with the current state where if I came up with the same idea you did and patented, I owe you something. Both because I don't and because it's not feasible to actually check all granted patents before you do anything.
- alok-g 12y ago
  What is flawed is the state of the affairs in the patent mechanism, not the premise of the patents in principle. I am against the issues resulting from frivolous patents too. Unfortunately, in my opinion, most people against patents do not reason about their philosophy making it harder to convince the authorities against patents. My understanding is that before patents, people and companies would invent but keep their invention a trade secret for as long as they can, which meant they had exclusivity to the invention. Patents allow such exclusivity for a limited period of time in exchange of disclosing the invention and losing rights over it after a specified period. The patents applicability criterion correspondingly includes non-obviousness which is to judge if someone else could come up with the same invention without investing significant time and effort or not. Majority of the ideas are "supposed to be" ruled out by this criterion. The state of the affairs however is that most obvious of the things get patented because (1) obviousness is unmeasurable, and (2) searching the prior art fully is impractical. Short message: You cannot call all swans white simply because most you see are white.
deleted 12y ago
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icebraining 12y ago
So it's the patent that makes you proud? Would you not feel proud if you didn't have the piece of government-issued paper?
- alok-g 12y ago
  Correction to my previous comment: I feel proud of the invention indeed, not the patent-sans-the-invention.

by alok-g 12y ago

viraptor 12y ago

Yes I can, this is my statement. At least for the CS related people. I'm not confusing good and bad cases, I disagree with the abstract ideas patents (any programs included) completely and other patents to some extent. Basically I disagree with the current state where if I came up with the same idea you did and patented, I owe you something. Both because I don't and because it's not feasible to actually check all granted patents before you do anything.

alok-g 12y ago
What is flawed is the state of the affairs in the patent mechanism, not the premise of the patents in principle. I am against the issues resulting from frivolous patents too. Unfortunately, in my opinion, most people against patents do not reason about their philosophy making it harder to convince the authorities against patents. My understanding is that before patents, people and companies would invent but keep their invention a trade secret for as long as they can, which meant they had exclusivity to the invention. Patents allow such exclusivity for a limited period of time in exchange of disclosing the invention and losing rights over it after a specified period. The patents applicability criterion correspondingly includes non-obviousness which is to judge if someone else could come up with the same invention without investing significant time and effort or not. Majority of the ideas are "supposed to be" ruled out by this criterion. The state of the affairs however is that most obvious of the things get patented because (1) obviousness is unmeasurable, and (2) searching the prior art fully is impractical. Short message: You cannot call all swans white simply because most you see are white.

deleted 12y ago

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icebraining 12y ago

So it's the patent that makes you proud? Would you not feel proud if you didn't have the piece of government-issued paper?

alok-g 12y ago
Correction to my previous comment: I feel proud of the invention indeed, not the patent-sans-the-invention.