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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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| are you reading your own shit right now? |
| By kristoph on 2012-10-09 01:19:01 |
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> This insipid sentiment is one you hear often from people who clearly have little to no experience with what the real world is like. Academics, lawyers, politicians, government officials, higher-ranking company executives - they live in a world where theory is more important than practice, or where millions and billions of dollars are just another set of zeros on a piece of paper. So you, Thom, with no formal education or experience in law, business, technology, or anything even remotely related to the industry are competent to make this judgment call while the people who study this stuff, whose decisions make or break their constituencies and their companies, are not? Seriously, dude, someone needs to learn to live in the 'real world' but this person your castigating is not on the top of the list. |
 - Score: 0 |
| RE: Comment by Luminair |
| By Luminair on 2012-10-09 01:41:26 |
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point is: the strict IP law we call "patent" is a business tool to increase profit by increasing the exploitation of customers by reducing their choice by reducing competition. people didn't vote in the "patent" -- influential organizations requested lawmakers introduce it and they did. or at least that is what wikipedia says. business organizations are not people deserving justice by the people. but they are powerful and able to sway lawmakers to give them monopoly power and the legal rights of people. that is the history of IP. people got copyright, businesses got patent. how far should your government go to protect business anti-competition? |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[8]: Can anyone justify such a system ? |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-09 03:35:19 |
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silix, Most indy developers hate software patents because it's alot of pain with virtually no gain for most of us. We simply don't have the resources to hire legal teams to file patents and assert them, and even if we did that's not the direction we want for our businesses. Now maybe patent trolling/suing can be profitable for those who specialise in it, but I'd be ashamed of anyone whose freshman CS/SE dream job was becoming a patent troll. Maybe it's just a fact of life that we have to live with, but do we? Software development flourished prior to being patentable. All this patent overhead (20% of R&D from the article) is a significant burden on the tech sector and there's little doubt that the product of this is wasted human endeavour. We prefer copyrights to protect our work since a copyright don't exclude multiple developers from working independently with the same ideas - that's how writing code is similar to writing literature, and that's were patents fundamentally break down. There just aren't enough good & unique solutions available to go around to all developers working on the same problems, this implies overlap. For instance, if you develop a video/voice over IP solution, you will necessarily step over the work over others before you. If you write an email client, same deal. If you write a game, there again you'll infringe someone else's algorithms. Mind you it's not that you "copied" them, no not at all. It's that the best solution you derived for yourself has already been derived by someone before you. This is my biggest gripe with software patents, they are being used as weapons against other competitors who are solving the same problems, rather than as a means of recouping development costs. We may disagree on ideology, but I hope we can agree on one fact, a patent system that is faithfully adhered to by every software developer (corp & indy) is fundamentally unscalable. Or more succinctly, it requires ever more resources year by year to be committed to cross checking claims such that development eventually becomes economically non-viable for an increasing number of software developers due to patent system overhead. Edited 2012-10-09 03:42 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| Personal experience |
| By ingraham on 2012-10-09 03:59:29 |
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My company designed, built, and sold a machine, in the field of automated material handling. Our competitor had machines in the same plant where our machine ended up. They looked at our machine and felt that it infringed one of their patents. They were quite wrong; they completely misunderstood how our machine worked. Their patent was over two side-by-side belts moving at different speeds so that product conveyed on the belt would rotate to compensate for the angle the entire machine was rotated at. They saw that our machine had two belts and jumped to conclusions. In fact, our belts could not be driven at different speeds; they were both on the same drive shaft with no clutches or gears or any other way to separate them. Their lawyers sent us a letter. Our lawyer sent a letter back that said, "No, you misunderstood how our machine works." End of story. You know what it cost to have our lawyer write that letter? Ten thousand US dollars. And we have a lawyer who is relatively inexpensive for his quality and level of expertise. By the way, should it really be patentable to have two side-by-side belts run at different speeds to cause rotation? Isn't that essentially how tank treads work, even though that's upside down from a conveyor application? |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Personal experience |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-09 04:36:33 |
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I had aspirations to write & sell my own DVD editing & authoring software back around 2000. I had purchased several entry level commercial video packages, but there was an obvious gap in features. I saw it as an opportunity to write my own software and market it. I started prototyping and playing with my own ideas, which was fun, but at some point I'd need to license numerous multimedia patents in order to be compatible with the files & media at the time. I don't remember the specifics, but authoring licenses were typically a magnitude more expensive than playback licenses. I specifically wanted to support surround sound, but I was horrified when I discovered that dolby's DVD surround sound patents alone would cost several times more than I wanted to ask for my video authoring software. Apparently most commercial licensees could pay a couple million for a flat license, but this was obviously out of my range. I learned that the reason entry level software packages were lacking features had nothing to do with the difficulty of incorporating them, but that the patent licensing fees made it impossible to incorporate them at those price points. I also learned since then that researching patents (trying to do things the "right way") could lead to triple damages if you are sued in court and found to infringe, so I've never looked up patents since to see whether something I've written infringes or not. Luckily patents are poorly enforced, and most software shops fly under the radar; we're just not worth suing over until we're worth a few million anyways. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: are you reading your own shit right now? |
| By Thom_Holwerda on 2012-10-09 07:20:48 |
| "I have no arguments to counter the article, so let's attack the author instead. That'll show 'm!" |
| - Score: 2 |
| Comment by jangoboy |
| By jangoboy on 2012-10-09 09:35:39 |
| the first thing thing and last thing legal systems should do is uphold ethical behavior. I don't care if its hard, you do it anyway. Whose work was it, what is a reasonable degree of protection for it, and what is a reasonable way of protecting it. If you didn't invent anything than maybe copyright covers what you actually did. But to me patents are a flawed idea anyway. If someone somewhere invents the flying car and someone somewhere else also invents the flying car using the same principle at a later date from the they both invented the flying car. In the patent system the first guy has commercial rights and the second guy isn't allowed to sell his idea but it was his idea and he made it himself; that's theft, stolen by the government for the first guy. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: are you reading your own shit right now? |
| By jangoboy on 2012-10-09 09:41:20 |
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um being the little guy without money sprouting out his ass with an interest in the subject is not enough experience to realize he cant afford pursue his interest because of the great and vaunted patent system? How retarded are you to think this works for him? Your not the only one who can talk out his ass I can do it to! Oh and lets not forget how much extra credibility being insulting adds my arguments, atleast in your circles... But I will throw a word out there sycophant and an analogy that even a non formally trained person might get. If your TV doesn't work do you need to be a TV repairman to tell you that? If a TV repairer tells you its working do you decide your vision no longer works and only see static when u look at it or think there an idiot and look for a new TV repairman. Edited 2012-10-09 10:00 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Beyond frontiers |
| By adkilla on 2012-10-09 11:49:18 |
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"But we are Americans. We don't quit just because we're wrong, we keep doing the wrong thing till it turns out right." - Ed Wuncler, The Boondocks (Season 3, Episode 3) Edited 2012-10-09 11:49 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by jangoboy |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-09 13:57:49 |
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jangoboy, "In the patent system the first guy has commercial rights and the second guy isn't allowed to sell his idea" +1 It gets even more ridiculous when we consider all the developers who, in the course of their jobs, are working independently to solve the same problems. Does it make sense to invalidate all their collective hard work to favor the first one to file a patent? The first developer is entitled to the idea, but no one else is? The ownership of abstract software ideas is something that's inherently flawed, in my opinion. We should drop software patents, this would be a welcome change to most developers who try to ignore software patents anyways to focus on their work. |
| - Score: 4 |
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