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| 'The patent, used as a sword' |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-08 09:24:52 |
| The failing US patent system is getting ever more mainstream - The New York Times is running a long and details piece on the failings of the system, especially in relation to the technology industry most of us hold so dearly. Most of the stuff in there isn't new to us - but there's two things in the article I want to highlight. |
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| RE: My two cents |
| By Gullible Jones on 2012-10-08 16:57:44 |
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I honestly don't see how an idea can belong to anyone. e.g. Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently, at roughly the same time. Archimedes, unknown to either, had also discovered a form of integral calculus much earlier. To which of them did the fundamental concepts belong? |
 - Score: 5 |
| RE[5]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By silix on 2012-10-08 17:03:17 |
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> I'm going to guess you aren't a software engineer. bad guess then, because i'm actually a sw engineer just, one who doesnt believe in security by obscurity but OTOH believes that sw development methods (see later) and the possbility to protect IP are orthogonal matters... > Software innovation generally comes down to one thing: algorithms. The thing is, when you release a product, the algorithms are hidden. the thing is, not always, not forever: there's reverse engineering; there are code leaks; and there's open source let's say i develop a product using a (more or less) public source tree to suit a business model that i may chosen (based on expertise and customisation rather than initial license fees) and to involve and allow other parties to cooperate this doesnt mean i alienate any rights to patent the techniques that i use for the internals of the product, or that anyone who happens to have a look at the code and learn about them, is ok with reusing them in his own product... > Think of Google. When it came out, it was successful because of the algorithm development they did. It isn't protected by patents though. It's protected because only Google employees know the exact parameters (despite the overall idea of the algorithm being common knowledge). google's ip has been protected by obscurity, shall we assume it's the only possible way for anyone else? > What people call software patents have always been either trivial and obvious (such as forwarding packets in a router) there's no such thing as obvious stuff, otherwise it would have existed since the dawn of time - but actually it hasnt, and took some guy (who most likely didnt think he was doing something obvious at the time) to materialize but, there exist millions of sw patents, and though many are about stuff that by today's standard we dismiss as trivial or appear as a mere application of an everyday "something" to the IT field, most of them trivial are not > or really design patents. That is, the outcome of the program and the way it works and interacts with the user. design patents are mostly about the aesthetics of a product, technical solutions (inventions), which also are fit for protection, fall under a different category... more or less like about cars... the bodywork shape is one thing, the way the chassis is made is another(or you think hydroforming, or more recently, aluminum/steel welding processes are not patented with all the research that has gone into them?) > It's not an innovative algorithm that someone can develop a competing algorithm for. as frivolous or useful as it may be (like all *inventions* in any product field) it's a sw *invention* that noone else had before (then it's not obvious) anyway, and deserves protection as such... > Now, no other company is allowed to search for users in their mapping program. At all. Ever. unless the patent is negotiated for licensing and royalties are paid, usually... why does nobody ever take this option into consideration? > Or at least until the patent expires in a few decades. so if the several-decades protection time window is (rightly) too long for the sw field, the patent system shall be abolished altogether instead of thinking about a shorter patent lifetime? > I suppose what I'm trying to say is that genuine software innovation is already protected by the fact that it is secret except when it's not.. > and all the other "software patents" that exist today, should probably fall into a different area (like design patents) and the idea of software patents be thrown out. but since the interaction model accounts for only a part of a program's development effort, you'd be leaving behind those working on the rest... Edited 2012-10-08 17:04 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: My two cents |
| By JoshuaS on 2012-10-08 17:13:14 |
| Terrible conterexample. Is F = ma a product produced by a company? No. Patents aren't a tool to get a monopoly on applying a law of nature. They're on getting a monoply on a product you conceived. A good patent office would know this. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[6]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By Thom_Holwerda on 2012-10-08 17:14:02 |
| Your code is protected by copyright. What's good enough for an author is good enough for you. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By Tony Swash on 2012-10-08 17:33:37 |
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Based on the interesting and thoughtful comments here it is clear that patent reform is not easy, and there are lots of ways to go about it and lots of opinions about how it should be done. The really contentious area is software patents, and it looks like the suggested ways to reform those (essentially that boils down their abolition) may open up new problems particularly for those with an investment in creation of software. It is likely that any reform of patents, and of software patents in particular (as the suggestion is for the most radical change in that area), may well open up new sorts of problems and will almost certainly be very contentious. All of the above is not meant to argue against reform but simply to sketch out why it is so tricky and why in a realpolitik process, legislators my just choose to kick the can along the road. I would repeat my point that in any given field IP legal activity tends to come in waves, usually associated with particularly disruptive technical change, and then to subside. Currently such a wave is affecting technologies, products and companies that interest people in forums such as this but tomorrow it could be in an entirely different field. Does anybody remember the bitter IP wars around photocopying technology? I think in a world and in markets where a couple of years of technical advantage can mean the difference between success and failure it is understandable that companies that introduce what they consider to be particularly innovative and disruptive products will seek to protect them with legally enforceable IP rights. It is also inevitable that other companies will seek to outflank and render useless that IP protection and will almost certainly always win in the long run. I don't want to open a can of worms by defending Apple but I do think that they are realistic about what they can achieve in the realm of IP protection and what they want is for other companies to be deterred from automatically and immediately lavishly copying Apple's every move and every product. To some extent Samsung has pulled back from doing that lately but for while they really were blatant about shadowing Apple's every move. Whose to blame them as it it resulted in pretty much Android's only money making success. And whose to blame Apple for trying to stop them? In the long run if Apple aspires successfully to be a leader in product design it has to accept that eventually others will emulate their approach and emulate the various designs they produce. That's what happens to cutting edge design, it sets trends in motion. But I think it is good to have a system that makes sure that that doesn't happen the next day, or in a an utterly blatant fashion (like sticking iTunes and Safari icons on the walls of Samsung's retail stores - Samsung actually did that). Personally I wish they the IP wars could die away and that innovation could be more widespread in the industry. I am also hoping for a white Christmas :) |
| - Score: 2 |
| Comment by jared_wilkes |
| By jared_wilkes on 2012-10-08 18:01:48 |
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My guess is the 20 billion estimate includes the entire MMI purchase, which is obviously a hugely flawed assumption. I'm certain it would include the 4+ billion used to acquire the Nortel patents -- but those were valued at 1.5 billion well ahead of much of the patent wars. And I'd wager that "up to" 20 billion is rather generous. So I don't find this "estimate" very telling at all. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: My two cents |
| By Gullible Jones on 2012-10-08 18:06:39 |
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Okay, I suppose that's not a great example. Even so... They're on getting a monoply on a product you conceived. How is this not a problem? Even in theory it allows the inventor to have a stranglehold on X product and anything derived from X product. Yay price fixing. Mind, IRL it's usually not the inventor who has the patent, it's the corporation the inventor works for. So it's not even like the interests of the actual inventor are being protected. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[3]: My two cents |
| By intangible on 2012-10-08 18:07:53 |
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"If only we have the right people in charge it would be okay" (in this context, "smarter patent authority")... I dunno about you, but after seeing government after government try that route, I just don't think it's going to work. Those with incentive to game the system end up corrupting it through various influences; the only way to win is to reduce the power of the system. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[7]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By silix on 2012-10-08 18:16:25 |
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> Your code is protected by copyright. What's good enough for an author is good enough for you.except that i'm not an author, and a sw is an industrial product resulting from a development process and containing technical and design features, more like a car than a book... now, the car as an industrial object is patentable at all levels (from the suspension strut arrangement to materials - eg pvc laminated steel, or new more efficient noise aborbers - in the product itself, but also the part stamping / welding / mounting process itself - eg friction for welding different metals like steel and aluminum.. and so on and so forth) wherever something novel was adopted and i doubt you'd call an automotive engineer "a line drawer" based on the fact that blueprints result from the design process... but then why only those working on sw shall be degraded to second class industrial world citizen and deserve lesser consideration than their colleagues from other fields, just because they happeen to use a keyboard? |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[4]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By Adurbe on 2012-10-08 19:27:06 |
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Patents worked in the vacuum cleaner industry. James Dyson patented his cyclone vacuum design (which apparently went through 5,127 prototype designs between 1979 and 1984). As a startup he went to all the big names in the industry to license the design, including Hoover, who turned him down. As soon as his invention caught on (early 1990s), Hoover copied it and undercut Dyson's prices. He sued Hoover for the infringement and won. The patents he took out protected his investment of time and money from a big/established corporation/brand simply muscling their way in and stealing his ideas. Innovation hasn't stopped as a result though. Almost all manufactures now have an equivalent technology on sale. |
| - Score: 3 |
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