Perens on Patents

mowa sent us a link to the one of the latest interviews on sendmail.net. This time around they're talking with Bruce Perens, concerned primarily with the issue of patents. The interview uses Amazon as its example of patents gone awry - nothing much new here, but yet another perspective on the whole issue.

Update: 02/16 11:40 by michael : A while back, we received a submission that never made it into a story of its own, but will fit nicely here. Bryce wrote: "Several of the WorldForge developers, impressed at the quality of comments on the patent story posted a few days ago and wanting to see those comments preserved in a useful form, edited all of the replies into a useful, readable set of documents. The article is most definitely, "Written by Slashdot, For Slashdot". Many of our team members put in a few hours each sorting and summarizing, in the hopes it'd get some good press for WorldForge."

Comments

IMHO

[jd]

It would make much more sense to abolish the concepts of patents, copyrights and intellectual property, and replace them with intellectual privacy, anti-exploitation and a stronger concept of "fair use".

What do these offer?

Well, "Intellectual Privacy" is a drop-in replacement for the idea of a patent, except that it doesn't matter if there's prior art. You couldn't rip-off someone's ideas, any more than it's legal to steal someone's identity or personal papers. On the other hand, it doesn't cause havoc if multiple people come up with the same idea. There would be no penalty for getting there second. The only penalty would be in appropriating someone else's work without permission.

"Anti-exploitation" laws, to me, would be much stronger than patents, and much more effective. Together with the concept of Intellectual Privacy, they would prevent someone from cloning work and pricing researchers out of business. Patents, to me, hinder the researchers more than anyone, as researchers outside of large companies don't generally have the money to file and defend patents. This makes it a very scary prospect to go out and try and sell an invention. Any company or customer could rip the idea off, patent it, and sue the inventor! I'd rather see exploitation banned, than real work.

Then there's "Fair Use". In the DeCSS fiasco, I'd say that reverse engineering the algorithm, from the data to hand, was fair use. Pirating the CSS algorithm from the manufacturer should be a big no-no, but deriving it by reasoning and deduction should be not only legal but encouraged. The Free Market -depends- on free trade and competition. Without these, market forces don't exist. You have a totalitarian regime.

Re:IMHO

[coaxial]

Your concepts of "Intellectual Privacy" and "anti-exploitation laws" are completely unworkable even in an ideal world, which this is not.

You claim that Intellectual Privacy would behave the same as a patent only that it didn't hurt someone from developing a solution second, but would punish those that "ripped off" someone else's idea. I don't see how this would work in practice. What would keep 1st Company from crying "2nd Company stole my idea!!"; while 2nd Company calls out "Uhh uhh!" Thus the long and protracted childish game of Uh-Huh-Uhh-Uhh (read: suits, countersuits, and appeals) until one company either loses interest, or goes bankrupt.

Of course, any sane person would see key issue in any Intellectual Privacy suit would be implementation, but this isn't ncessarily would would be the deciding factor. 1st Company could always claim the concept, along with the implementaion and thus closing out any competitors. There's also some concepts that are so basic, that they must be intentionally obfusicated to avoid the "cannonical implimentation" (i.e. cat(1)).

Your Anti-Explploitation law doesn't reinforce the benefits of Intellectual Privacy, but rather directly hinders them. 1st Company creates a widget. Everyone like the widget. 2nd Company says, "Hey, we can make a better widget and make it fully compatable with 1st Company's widget, and make it for less money too."

Since the 2nd widget is effectively a cheaper clone of the 1st wideget, 2nd company would be charged under you anti-exploitation law.

Your goals are admirable, but they simply won't work in the Real World. Companies are already quick to sue anyone that looks at them funny; your mock-laws simply renforce this behavior to the detriminete of everyone.

A Broader Point

[Jim Tyre]

Perens makes a broader point, one which applies well beyond just the areas of patent and copyright law:

This is a classic problem of the nerd personality: we're both the alienated and the alienator. We only want to hang with people like us. Well, the next ten years can't be like the last twenty. We can't go off and form our own country; we have to educate the people around us. That's a real jump. That means: Let's not talk like nerds to them. Let's translate these hard things into something they can understand. The consumer electronics companies, the big Web conglomerates, the traditional media companies like Disney and NBC have been expert at taking something very technical and making it palatable to the public, because they provide those things as products. We have to use the same language. We have to say, "Hey, public, here's how you'll be living in ten years. This is how you'll be reading the paper over your morning coffee. And this is how people want to make that hard for you. This is how they want to reduce your rights."

It is wonderful to understand from a technical perspective what is going on, to be able to parse it, to preach to the choir. But unless the concepts are articulated in layperson's terms, understandable to those not as well versed in the tech as regulars here, any impact one might hope to have will be minimal at best. The masses may or may not be clueless, but unless those who have a clue speak to them, in a language which they will understand, don't expect even the hope of change.

XXIV. Of Speaking in the Congregation in such a Tongue as the people understandeth.

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church to have public Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understanded of the people.

That just screws the little guy

[/]

Big corporations have deep enough pockets to pay most any fine you can set -- it's the little guy who can't afford to hire the same teams of lawyers who can't afford to pay any fine who would lose out. Besides, since half the reason why corporations file these sorts of patents is to slow their competition by means of lots of litigation, something that wouldn't be reduced (and perhaps would be increased) under your system. If you can prevent your competition from earning a billion dollars, it might be worthwhile to pay a million dollar fine.

You'd just be creating another class of lawyers who would (on contingency) blanket the talk-show airwaves with ads encouraging more people to sue more people. We hardly need more of that.

Reform has to come, but it won't look like that. Perhaps if we start docking the salaries of the USPTO apes who process these patents.... :-)

editorial neutrality

[Signal 11]

Rob, please tell the slashdot authors to stop interjecting their personal beliefs / commentary into the news posts. I've been watching this for some time and it's really starting to grate. Let ME be the judge of whether it's new and insightful (or inciteful) or not.

Put your comments down here with the rest of us if you feel the need to comment - but stop biasing things. Bruce has consistently made intelligent commentary on things and even if YOU don't think it's new, maybe some of US do. Let us make up our own mind.. instead of being like conventional media and telling us how we should think.

(Score: -1, un-pc)

bad patents.

[angelo]

What sickens me about patents is the broad brush by which they are applied. to say "method of making greeting cards" and simply copy it as a derivative work by placing "electronically" or any other postfix is part of the problem. I'm not against patents, but rather against broad patents.

One example is a process patent. The way we do things to a certain extent is determined by the way we think. Patenting a process is like patenting a thought to an extent. As a matter of chemistry, culture and education 2 people just might come up with the same idea despite never having met, or seen each other's work. One isn't allowed to use his/her thoughts because he/she didn't patent it and the other did.

I am willing to give in on some points though. One such point is software that is truly unique. The truly non-obvious stuff should be patentable. Now what is obvious? I'd have to say that anything that makes at least a majority of the population say "well duuuuh." If you look at IBM's Patent Server you'll see quite a few duh's out there.

One click shopping springs to mind. While it has not real analogue to real life, it has to be common sense that the least steps anything can be done in is one. That goes for anybody out there who wishes to capatilze on one step processes of any sort. The number of steps in a process is not something on which to base a patent.

I'm personally ok with patents on algorithms. However, algorithms that are derivitive works shouldn't even get to be an issue. Modifying something existing does not make it yours. You also shouldn't be able to patent nature. Why patent leaf patterns?

I ramble as usual, boring slashdot to tears. Parting shot : Patents are good for physical things, dubios for processes, and OK for original software in my book. I don't mind flames :)

No! that would ruin the site

[Smack]

First off, links with no commentary are boring and soulless.

"Let ME be the judge of whether it's new and insightful (or inciteful) or not."

This implies that when the authors add commentary, they AREN'T letting you be the judge of wether it's new and insightful. But they aren't doing anything of the sort. They're only providing their view of it, and you are free to ignore it.

But I don't think you're actually saying that YOU personally would be be misguided by their comments. I mean, you clearly saw through it on this story. Rather, I think you're looking down at the the other slashdot readers and thinking that they might not be as smart as you, and might not be able to think for themselves, and WILL be misguided. Which is really degrading... you should be ashamed of yourself.

I'll say it again. and again... and again...

[bons]

The problem with the patent system has nothing to do with laws, clueless judges, lawyers, or anything else of that ilk.

If you want to fix the system you need the following:

An internet based database of prior art. This database will allow anyone to enter in data and the data within the database will be open to all. Data in the database will be dated according to the date it is entered into the database or the date the same data was entered into another accepted prior art database, such as the current U.S. patent database.

By creating and maintaining this database we have an effective tool to fight patents in court and to keep our inventions as our own without using the patent system.

In short, we create "open patents".

Please don't bother moderating this article as it's just after the magical #50th reply where moderation no longer seems to happen.

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