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Domain: webmink.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to webmink.net.

Comments · 4

  1. Customers lose:Does society or any "inventor" win? by D4C5CE · · Score: 1 · on TiVo Wins Permanent Injunction Against EchoStar
    that's the price of protecting the inventors.
    The term "inventor" is a rather debatable description of someone who has been awarded a software, business method or bio-patent.

    See e.g. http://www.webmink.net/2006/08/breach-of-contract. htm#115565138813415169.

  2. Simon Phipps (Sun):"the social contract is broken" by D4C5CE · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Patent Reviews Via Wiki
    In a recent post on his personal blog, he had this to say:
    For it to be worthwhile for society to grant these "temporary monopolies", both sides of the deal have to be maintained. I filed a few patents back when I was at IBM, and none of them seems to me to convey the know-how for a skilled programmer to be able to use the idea readily. They are patterns designed to help a patent attorney identify infringement. While the progress of the software industry's know-how was only being advanced by corporations, there was a (barely plausible) rationale for software patents; their lawyers could decode the patents. But now the individual developer acting in community is an equal source of progress, it is clear to me that the social contract is broken.
    In this setting, it seems unlikely that asking the public, and software developers in particular, to verify (or do) the patent examiners' work can be of any use. It's a remedy that does not quite fit the problem, which is granting patents on matters that once were excluded for good reason.

    Moreover, the articles also linked there indicate that in the field of software at least, quite probably there never even really was such a time when the "industry's know-how was only being advanced by corporations" (rather than e.g. academics and individual inventors).

  3. Simon Phipps (Sun):"the social contract is broken" by D4C5CE · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Patent Reviews Via Wiki
    In a recent post on his personal blog, he had this to say:
    For it to be worthwhile for society to grant these "temporary monopolies", both sides of the deal have to be maintained. I filed a few patents back when I was at IBM, and none of them seems to me to convey the know-how for a skilled programmer to be able to use the idea readily. They are patterns designed to help a patent attorney identify infringement. While the progress of the software industry's know-how was only being advanced by corporations, there was a (barely plausible) rationale for software patents; their lawyers could decode the patents. But now the individual developer acting in community is an equal source of progress, it is clear to me that the social contract is broken.
    In this setting, it seems unlikely that asking the public, and software developers in particular, to verify (or do) the patent examiners' work can be of any use. It's a remedy that does not quite fit the problem, which is granting patents on matters that once were excluded for good reason.

    Moreover, the articles also linked there indicate that in the field of software at least, quite probably there never even really was such a time when the "industry's know-how was only being advanced by corporations" (rather than e.g. academics and individual inventors).

  4. For the extended-attention-span people: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative · on EU Patent Wars to Resume

    Some industry insiders' views on software patents as well as links to several interesting papers can be found in the blog of Sun's Simon Phipps.