Slashdot Mirror
James Gleick On Software Patents
haase writes: "James Gleick has written a thoughtful and compelling piece on software patents for the New York Times magazine. This would be a good piece to send to your representatives. You can read it at
the NY Times Web site. (Registration required.)
"
The About.com site here.
The sidebar is very good, but you have to hunt for the links if you are using a CSS enabled browser and the article as a whole suffers from formatting problems. Still it is a very good article and I really liked the illustration "Procedure for Simultaneously Walking and Chewing Gum" by Dugald Stermer.
Nonetheless there really isn't much new here for us Slashdot folks. That is, other than some really good new ammunition for the next time you want to talk about stupid patents. (I really cannot believe someone got a patent for measuring breast sizes with a measuring tape!) For us Mr Gleick is preaching to the choir.
Our real hope is that everyone else wakes up and realizes the danger stupid patents (and, perhaps, software patents in general) represent to our currently flourishing 'New Economy'...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
James Gleick is an outstanding non-fiction science author. He wrote Chaos, a very good introduction to Chaos theory and Genius, a biography of Richard Feynman (now don't say who the #$^*@ is Feynman!). I find his writing to be technical enough to be interesting, but not over my head. While not exactly written for the layperson, his books make science more approachable to us non-PhD's.
If anybody knows of other books by him, please let me know. I'll read anything he's written.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
...and check out the article at James Gleick's personal site, around.com:
http://www.around.com/patent.html
The old world is not going to go down without a struggle, nor should they be expected to. And so it's war, and they are coming after the internet, and all of its "free" this, and "open" that, with everything they've got. What this amounts to is an attempt to "fence in the frontier", and it is a direct and strategic attack on open source - you can't GPL it if someone's already patented it - and more broadly an attempt to kill off the ecosystem that has allowed it to flourish.
Someone needs to start the Gnu "prior art database" to catalog all of the unpatented implementations and algorithms. And sooner or later, the geek tribe needs to become a political force and kick some butt in Washington.
"Fig.1 - a device for knocking patent officer's heads together..."
http://www.around.com/
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
But this is not longer true. It appears that the European Patent Office does not issue patents not because they believe that "software is inherently unpatentable", but because originally they believed that they did not have the equipment of skills to judge their quality!
IBM (all hail the mighty patent machine) lodged a software patent with the EPO last year and had it turned down (as per their plan one would assume) and then lodged an objection and while the patent was still refused the appeal ruled that the exclusion of software from patents is not valid under all circumstances
Which all means that companies are falling over themselves to get software patents out in the EU as well, left the good times roll
EPO Appeal search engine, search on software
IBM Appeal (PDF)
C.
I sometimes write stuff
There is a skill that is antithetical to programming which is nevertheless very valuable in real life. It was taught in Greece and Rome, and was at the core of the humanistic curriculum in the Renaissance. This is the art of rhetoric, the study of the methods by which you can persuade your fellow citizens to accept your views and act on them.
You hardcore coders at Slashdot all p*** on this skill, but it is the way the world works, customs are established, and laws get enacted. It is how the ignorant multitudes are induced to vote for the system we have now. You can treat it with scorn, but you will in turn be dismissed as a kook whose ideas are of no interest.
So you can say this article is nothing new, or that everybody knows this, or that his examples are stupid, or that he never wrote a line of code in his life--but articles like this are more likely to bring about change in the law than all your whining.
One point in the articles was very revealing to me - the pay and bonuses for the patent examiners comes from approved patent applications. This is a serious management mistake. A better approach would be to charge a signinficant fee for an application, refundable on approval but forfit if the application is denied. I doubt it would ever happen but it does strike me as fairer and more efficient.
Fairer because approved applications are presumably a public boon, so it is only fair that they be publicly funded, while denied patents are just a public nuisance consuming public officials time and energy, so it would only be fair to make the applicant pay.
More efficient because they would give the examiners an incentive to deny frivolous applications and fees could be set at a level that would be a disincentive to frivolous applications.
As I said I doubt it will happen, but it appeals to me because it would reverse a system that currently seems to be travelling flat out in the wrong direction.
Current practice, however, is to patent the "use of a calculating device and communications network to distribute news in a timely manner". Suddenly Slashdot, the NY Times, and dozens of sites owe me 0.25% (I wish), even though each uses different methods to implement the concept.
It used to be that people patented specific, and presumably better, designs for implementing a carburator. Now they patent the very idea of a carburator.
If the US Patent Office violates its constitutional mandate, shouldn't we be able to sue them? (Note that the constitutional mandate may be completely different from the statutory mandate - they may be following the laws passed by Congress to a "t", yet still violating the constitution). Constitutionally, the purpose of patents is "to Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If the Patent Office is not doing this, then I would suggest that they are engaging in some kind of illegal restraint of trade.
BTW, I don't see any kind of change occurring until the megacorps decide that it is in their best interests.