Slashdot Mirror
Tech Patents on Science Friday
lyonsj writes "NPR's Science Friday show is discussing technology patents today; it sounds like this one is going to be well worth a listen. They'll be discussing Jeff Bezos' letter about patent reform, and the bar's reaction to that letter (which everyone should read). Call in and talk about tech patents with a law professor, a guy from the USPTO, and the chairman of Aurigin Systems. " Check out NPR's website for radio stations, and you can grab the archive of the show later on.
That's right, they assume that anything worth knowing about any field has been published in some journal somewhere. Anything not published is beneath consideration for any true expert in the field. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not a true expert. The USPTO and patent attornies are firmly entrenched in the academic world of several decades ago. Take a minute to let this sink in.
They don't realize that "prior art" exists in everything from source code, to round-table discussions, to personal conversations. In fact, some of the most important prior art exists in these forms, which cannot be indexed, cataloged, and numbered in their database.
It is impossible to have a complete prior-art database, and they should not pretend that it's possible!
I think patents...
Are a good idea
___________________ 3 votes
Microsoft sucks!
||||_______________ 230 votes
Information wants to be free
|||||||||||________ 1394 votes
f1$t p0$t d00d!
|__________________ 1 votes
Hemos/Katz/Malda sucks
||||||_____________ 694 votes
And there you have it!
Ok, here's MY claim to fame: Pat.No. 10,385,288:
----------------------
1) A software control structure means comprised of a repeatable code block consisting of a start address, and end address, and a code block variable, said variable alterable by instruction in the code block, said code block terminated by a decision means to test the code block variable for compliance with a preestablished condition, said decision means directing program flow to either
repeat the code block at the code block starting address, untill the decision means determins that said preestablished condition has been satisfied, otherwise direct program flow to code following said code block and the code block ending address.
----------------------
That's right, I own the DO...LOOP. If anyone uses a similar control structure in their software projects please contact our licensing office at http://www.doloop.com to arrange for our easy royalty payment plan. This week only we are having a sale; you can get 10 do...loop license-paks for the price of 1. Hurry! Supplies are limited! There may never be an offer like this again!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this?
They can't.
We're bound by a treaty, and according to Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S Constitution, treaties are "the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
The treaty itself says that for any change in the time limits, the signees must agree UNANIMOUSLY.
The only thing we could do unilaterally is denounce the entire treaty, which (fortunatly) is allowed by the treaty itself. If that clause wasn't in there, we couldn't abrogate the treaty legally without agreeing to a new one with all the signees!
If we did denounce it, no signee nation would be required to observe our patents at all anymore!
It's a much bigger fight than just convincing your Congressman. He doesn't even have a say in it.
I find it somewhat incongruous for lawyers to opine on policy matters. "Booksellers" like Bezos are the constituency, beneficiaries, and subjects of the patent system. Economists and social scientists are qualified to make statements about the long term impact of changes to the patent system.
Lawyers? Lawyers are trained in the patent system as it is and its historical development. While those are interesting aspects of patents that are to be considered in any reform, they are hardly of primary importance. Lawyers also have a strong self-interest to generate legal fees from patent filing and lawsuits.
First we need to decide where we want to go as a society, then lawyers can help us translate that into legal language and enforce it.
For a closer look at how we got into this mess, check out this december article on Linux Journal, it details how it all started in 1952 in a congressional commission chaired by a patent attorney named Giles S. Rich, that changed the wording of the Patent Act to cover 'Processes'.
Mr. Rich subsequently embarked on a long term plan to expand the scope of wat is patentable. These efforts culminated in the 'State Street Bank & Trust vs. Signature Financial Group' decision of 1996, over which Giles S. Rich, now a judge in his nineties, presided. This decision created the current situation where a computer mediated business process is patentable.
There were a few other steps along the way, but Judge Rich was definitely instrumental to the chain of events, and as a patent attorney, was hardly a disinterested party. Unfortunately, He's now safely dead, so we can't call him up and ask: 'What were you thinking?'.
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
Even if we can't (yet) convince the patent office and legislatures about the harm of (software) patents, businesses who would rather bypass the whole mess but need to have their own patents for defensive reasons can still cross-license their patents among themselves.
It's not as effective a solution as international patent law reform, but at least it can be a partial solution for Open Source writers as well as give those who have defensive patents an even greater defense against any who use patents offensively, and it doesn't require an act of congress to implement.
That's the sort of solution I'm wanting to promote with the Open Patent License in development at www.openpatents.org.
If you have any suggestions as to how to better go about this, or suggestions on improvements to the license, please let me know, or join the mailing list.
It distresses me that the lawyers have taken the wheel a vehicle that was designed to protect the rights of inventors and will not steer where the inventors wish to go. It would seem to me that in patent law, the lawyers are providing the service of protecting the interests of their clients. If the clients decide that their interests don't need as much protection as the lawyers believe, wouldn't it seem reasonable that the lawyers would allow the rules to be changed to support the desires of their clients?
I believe that almost everyone in the software industry understands that the rate of innovation is such that 20 years from now any patent they hold will have been rendered obselete. If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this? It would certainly seem that the patent office and the lawyers have allowed this to take a life of its own, forgetting the original purpose.
This arrogrance is very disheartening.
Hmm. It's fairly obvious where the interests of the Patent Lawyers lie here - in more, longer and wider patents that cover stuff the Patent office isn't capable of scanning for prior art.
However, do we need to get their approval? If some of the bigger players (Amazon for instance) agreed to place any or all software / business method patents into a common pool three years after they are granted, with free licencing for anyone willing to make the same commitment for THEIR patents, I can't see how the Patent office can fail to accept it as a de-facto standard - particularly if their own supporters start to suffer from being excluded from (and sued by) members of the common pool....
--
-=DaveHowe=-
After reading this article, and the article at lawnewsnetwork, I can only say that I see no argument to the side that thinks the current patent laws are fine for software and high tech business methods. Sure some guys, like the patent office issue a statement like "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies." Okaaaay. Care to give us any reason why?
There are a lot of very cogent arguments why the current software patent law is impractical and even detrimental. See RMS for some extreme views or Bezos for a more moderate plan. However, in my brief searches I've really found no argument that really supports the other side. Saying that Bezos suggested changes "could be absolutely devastating" to this country's high-tech economy. "If you look at companies that live and die by their intellectual property, these changes would be their worst nightmare," Sure, some companies definitely have something to lose if you change the laws, but if they've been relying on laws that are unjust, and likely to change, thats their own fault for not coming up with some other plans to sustain them when they do change. What about all the companies that have something to gain by patent laws being changed? Doesn't that outweigh the cost? These are just a few thoughts of mine. If anyone really knows a good reason that the current patent laws should be kept the way they are with regard to software, please tell us, i'm willing to listen.
Spyky
Well, colour me quite impressed. The article in lawnewsnetwork was surprisingly well written and balanced. I have a few objections to it, though.
1) They didn't really _explain_ why those of us opposed to the current state of patent laws feel the way we do.
2) Somehow Jeff Bezos, the man behind some of the most grievous patents in existence, has become our mascot for patent reform. Does anyone else find this ironic and disturbing?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The patent office just doesn't get it. Aside from the normal arguments, look at it this way. The US Patent Office views all patents, from new mechanical gizmos, new patterns on bricks and tiles, to software and it's implementation all as the same thing. Unfortunately they are not the same thing. Software implementations and the like are equivelant to me patenting the way I personally have the folks in my company use a screwdriver. Hold it wiith your fingers this way, turn it that way etc. The problem I feel, is in the implementation of the tools. Data is not as physical as a brick or a gizmo and therefore must be addressed by the US Patent Office differently, using an entirely different model. When data and technology software innovations are made, they must be handeled in a different way than a gizmo.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Although IANAL, I play one on TV (actually, I am an historian and have studied Constitutional law a fair amount and patent law a little), and I feel that the dialogue currently happening will be subceptible to public opinion if expressed maturely (no fl@m3rz) through forums like Slashdot, Salon, Slate, and direct mailings to Congress. Check out Slashdot's protocols, as always, before mailing Congress on an issue, though.
Hope this made sense. I'm all hopped up on fruit juice.
---
executive director of Washington-based
Intellectual Property Owners Association, [snip}... called for "a refresher course in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the
Constitution.
OK I'll bite. Article 1, section 8 generally outlines the powers of Congress. Clause 8 specifies Congress's powers to grant Copyrights and Patents. Here it is in all its glory:
The first thing to note is that Congress is under no constitutional obligation to protect every manner of novelty, and that power is granted with the express purpose of promoting progress. Congress may, of course use this power for other purposes, such as protecting what they believe to be a natural right to intellectual property.
Leaving aside the issue of what is a protectable Discovery (since the current state of the law says these things are protectable), what Bezos is raising is the question of what constitues "limited Times". In the context of the clause, I think that limited times must be understood as such a length of time that that "To promote Progress of Science and useful Arts". Congress, in my non-lawyer opinion, has no power to establish patents for periods of time that manifestly retard progress in the Useful Arts; at the very least it flies in the face of the reason the founders granted them this power. Bezos is suggesting that patent terms for software and business methods lasting twenty years damages progress.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.