Slashdot Mirror
Patents For Open Source Projects?
A nameless reader writes: "Salon has an interesting article on an organization and a company that are teaming up together to try to provide free software programmers with patents to protect free software in general from the corporate grip." The Salon article is about IP.com, a company (surprisingly, with the Patent office's promise to check their database) planning to put patentable ideas online as evidence of first creation, for a much smaller fee than filing a patent. If the idea appeals to you, check out openpatents.org as well -- the idea there being that the right to pool patents is a good incentive not to keep technologies locked up for more than a decade.
As such, anything put on this database would easily become an absolute minefield and not safe to use- because there's not enough space given for an exhaustive enumerating of applications, and patents would be cheerfully filed on all the best applications- and because they would be implementations, they'd be rubberstamped through like all patents, never challenging the underlying concept but making it impossible to _implement_ it in the real world without legal exposure.
What a bad idea. No thank you. This is so not the way to solve the problem. Frankly, it provides an avenue to worsen the problem... except in the abstract sense of 'joy! now they can't patent a gear!'. Riiiight- instead, smart people backed by corporate lawyers are put to work 24/7 patenting every conceivable application of the gear. You're better off not baiting them that way...
I totally concede that this is more like what patents _should_ be... IP claims on specific implementations of solutions to problems. I totally see that.
However, this hardly makes it sensible for ME to put ideas in a place where others can go forth and patent all the best implementations and then sue me to stop me using them! I'm sorry. This is well-meant but fatally flawed.
It also gathers together all the 'most valuable' ideas for cherry-picking so that unrelated people can go do just that, and will. Yes, it's good for companies to have to come up with specific implementations of ideas and patent only those- but implementations of YOUR ideas?
This isn't a patent reducer. It is the basis for a patent _explosion_. The resulting flood of patents will be much more like what patents were supposed to be. They'll also cover pretty much every implementation of common ideas that you could think of, making it more or less impossible to use the 'free' source ideas in the database without jumping through some serious hoops, or licensing your idea back from a company that patented the implementation you need when you gave it access to the underlying concept and said 'Ha-HA! Now you can't patent this underlying concept like some of you guys have been improperly doing!'
Just keep away from this one... the backlash of implementation patents is going to be horrible, if this catches on. And, ironically, if you discount the fact that the basic inventing was done by someone else, the implementation patents will hold up far better in court, being more specific and less over-reaching in their claims!
The only difference is- source code IS an implementation. That would require the parasite to make another implementation and then patent that. With what you're proposing, it is only possible to put up basically an abstract. The most obvious implementation then falls to the parasite, so it's actually a bit easier for them seeing as they would have to come up with an implementation that's not a direct copy of someone else's implementation anyhow.
Again- with published source code a person would have to re-implement something obvious (like a shopping cart, or 'one click' button) before patenting it and being allowed to use the patent. If we give this database any ideas it's a simple matter of the parasite just whipping off the _most_ obvious implementation and patenting that. There's no question that they'd get the patent, and it's quite likely that they'd be allowed to use it.
None of this is good but, respectfully, I would suggest that building up a database of idea abstracts is worse. Better to build up the 'database' of open source which is at least _implementations_ that can't reasonably be directly patented by third parties without possibly awkward re-implementing.
The GPL does nothing of the sort. The GPL is built on copyright protection, and relies heavily on those rights in order to exist. A world with no copyright protections would be very unfriendly to the GPL and the goals it was designed to promote.
Eliminating intellectual property protections would be equally (if not more) harmful to the FSF and the GPL license as it would be to commercial software publishers.
In the absence of copyright, source code would either be public domain or it would be concealed and resricted using other mechanisims. The GPL is quite a bit of text outlining all the various restrictions that apply to GPL'd code which differentiate it from public domain code. GPL doesn't even begin to resemble public domain code, and if GPL advocates were unable to copyright their code, they'd be unable to enforce their goals and views that they currently use the GPL to enforce.
In a world without copyright, there would be no protection from people taking code which is presently GPL'd and using it in proprietary, closed-source projects.
Copyright exists because the world believes that a person should have the ability to control the use of the value they create. At its heart, the GPL promotes the exact same philosophy. Just as copyright protections allow a company to earn a profit from the code it produces, copyright enables a coder to restrict the use of their code to only those people who agree to use the same license (the GPL). In both cases, copyright is being appropriately employed to empower the person who has created the code to make sure that it's used as they wish.
While you may view the goal of the GPL as more worthy than the goal of a commercial software publisher, they're both equal beneficiaries of copyright protections and use those rights similarly.
Without copyright protections, neither would have an easy time promoting their goals, although it would be more difficult to maintain the goals of the GPL than it would be to produce proprietary software with no copyright.
People should have the right to control how the value they create is used. Metallica believes this, I believe this, and Richard Stallman obviously believes this. Copyright and Patents are the tools we use to protect this right, and they need to exist in some form or we'll lose this basic right.
The Big Myth of the FSF is that end users care at all about the source code of the software they use. End users want to use software that does what they need and does it well. The way to convince users that free and open is better is to ensure that free and open software is superior to the alternatives. If you truly believe that "The War will be won by convincing the end users" then why bother with trying to destroy the capacity to create proprietary software? If free and open is inherently superior, why not just build good software and render the proprietary stuff meaningless by comparison?
Convincing the end users is not a social, educational, or political battle. It's plain darwinism. You'll convince the end user that your methods are better the day those methods produce software which is more useful and beneficial to the user than the alternatives.
And yes, this doesn't make patents any nicer. Just a little easier to fight.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I agree that software patents are bad, but this will help fight them.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
But I agree that I'd rather eliminate software patents. That's going to be a pretty big fight.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In other words, if the invention existed before the applicant conceived of it, a patent would not be granted. The one-year rule actually applies to what you publish before you apply, not what others publish before you conceive of an invention.
Of course, the applicant can lie about their date of conception, and thus these things go to court and the court has to find if there is sufficient proof regarding the date of invention. If you want to win in court, you make a confidential disclosure to a third party who would later testify about the disclosure, like a notary or an attorney. I have received one such disclosure for a possible future Open Patent, and gave the inventor a PGP-signed proof of disclosure that he can later use in court and verify against my public key. If that ever got to court, I'd probably be called upon to testify as well.
In most other nations, once an invention is published, including by the inventor, it can immediately no longer be patented.
Public disclosure by the inventor within a year before filing is also an option to establish priority under U.S. law, but prevents the grant of a patent under non-US law, and thus is not much used.
Bruce Perens.
What we do not have is any form that could be searched by a patent examiner. They do text searches of computer disclosure databases, which means that you have to (a) percieve that you have made an invention and (b) write the disclosure, to be of use to the patent examiner. What we have on those source CDs is more useful in court, but it would be better to block the patent from ever being issued.
Thanks
BrucE
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I agree that software patents are bad. As someone whose Open Source project appears as prior art in a patent, reducing its scope (search for "Perens" in the patent database), I do think this might help us a bit.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This is just another "screw the little guy" scam, only this one is "screw the little guy with high ideals" where ISC is "screw the little guy with high hopes".
You don't need some company to charge you to publish your ideas anymore. That's why setting up your own web page is so powerful, and why the World Wide Web is so empowering! For things JUST LIKE THIS! Set up a web page. Give it some relevant keywords. Get it included in the major search engines. That's all it really takes.
Sure it'd be nice to know you had your ideas somewhere that the USPTO is bound (or better yet, obligated!) to look. But we don't need to pay $20 a pop to do it.
But this DOES point out the need for a centralized database of ideas that shouldn't get patented. Sourceforge? Everything2? Anyone else interested in setting this up?
Not a bad idea, even if they do charge. I am just wondering about the cost overhead of doing the same thing for free.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If OpenIP is interested in doing this, it would not be that hard to add a similar database to the IP.Com database, and I am sure that the fellow in charge would welcome the assistance. (I will be emailing him offline with the suggestion, btw.)
The real work would probably be in convincing the USPTO that this new database would also be worth consulting.
What do you think? Would this be worth pursuing via this site?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
No, you cannot sue a company if they patent the idea. However, if you have prior art you can easily tell them to shove it when they sue you over violating their patent.
This is about protecting yourself against the lawsuits you risk facing for programming these days.
Copyright and IP doesn't mean restricting what you made from the people. It means doing what you want with it - be that giving it away or hiding your shame in a black box far away from prying eyes oh how you still hear the screams that wake you at night.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
This project is not about getting patents. It is about preventing and mitigating bad patents. How? By putting prior art where patent examiners will be able to find it easily, and publishing ideas in a way that we can prove when they were published.
The project is not about supporting the patent system. (The title of the Salon article may have caused some confusion on that point.) It is about trying to mitigate the damage caused by bad patents.
The original plan was that Foresight would provide a web site where people could go to publish their ideas in order to keep someone else from patenting them later. We soon realized that publishing ideas in a useful (legally significant) way is not as easy as it sounds, and we found that IP.com was doing almost exactly what we needed to do (for $107 per idea, and aimed at commercial interests). So we talked with them, and sold them on the idea of a much cheaper publication mechanism, for non-commercial ideas only, that could be useful to the Open Source community. Of course they can't give it away; they need to eat, after all. But...
There will be at least two websites. IP.com will offer this service as a product. In addition, the Foresight Institute is planning to get funding and offer this publication service for free for inventions in areas that we care about, including Open Source and nanotechnology.
As long as we have the patent system, we might as well try to deal with its problems. Here are two: Patent examiners have about eight hours to examine prior art. And patent fights tend to cost about US$1,000,000. If you put your idea on a web site or newsgroup somewhere, or use it publicly, chances are good that a patent examiner will not be able to find it in eight hours. So a later, abusive patent is likely to slip through the system. Then, you have to prove in court, years after the fact, that the idea was available to the public before the patent holder claimed to invent it.
The patent examiners actually look at IP.com's database. That's worth a lot. In addition, IP.com has a system set up for proving when the idea was published, and that it was available to the public continuously since that time. They add significant value that we felt would help this project. If you don't want to use it, then don't use it.
Chris Phoenix
Ask me about Nanotechnology, Dyslexia Correction. Tell me about A.I., robotics, infrastructure.
This concept makes a lot of sense. Everyday, developers (commercial and open source) run the risk of infringing upon somebody's patent. And, in many cases, software patents have been wrongfully issued with no checks against prior art databases.
A central, searchable repository of open source concepts will slowdown the rate at which software patents are issued and raise the bar on what actually does get patented. If a software patents are to exist, then make the patent seeker work for it and prove they did something worthwhile.
As I see it, a $20 publishing fee is not such a bad investment if:
1) The database is truly searched for prior art before issuing a patent.
2) Existing software patents are actually revoked if prior art can be established because of a submission to this database.
3) It makes it easier for someone to find prior art as it relates to their development efforts.
I have no problem with individuals making money from the development efforts (Hell, I do). But, software patents are ludicrous and put us all at risk simply because we didn't patent an obvious concept (like Amazon's one-click concept). Thus, I do not support software patents in any way shape or form and they should be abolished.
In its place, I would rather see a system for enforcing recognition on the use of "patented" material as an acknowledgement of having come up with a great idea (and publishing it). But, there should be no financial penalty for use of "patented" software UNLESS the recognition/accredidation is not offered. In such cases, a heavy "license" and royalty fee may be pursued with all legal costs incurred by the violator.
RD
Like there has been a lot of real inovation lately? Most of the inovation has been inprovements on existing ideas. This would open up the information allowing more people to hack away at it and somebody might come up with somethign truely inovative.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
How about something like a copyleft for patents, in which the holder of a patent states that they will give a no-cost license for its use in any application covered by, say, the GPL? The holder could also grant licenses to non-free software creators in the usual way.
This strikes me as a middle ground between the current situation (patent something and use it to beat everyone senseless) and no patents at all. A patent holder could use it as an advantage over non-free software, while leaving the free/open-source communities alone.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Better cut that out. CMGI has a patent on that.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Hello Open Source Advocates! I'm starting a service where, for a small fee, you can give me all your patentable ideas so that I can protect them. IPthieves.com will patent your idea, with no additional cost to you, and keep the information in our protected database. We assure you that we will NOT parent your ideas then use them to steal your software and sue you to your grave. All this for only $20 per patent. Submit 10 patentable ideas and get a free "IPthieves.com" T-SHIRT!
Hm, I thought one of the big tenets of Open Source was "expose the information so I can make an informed decision myself."
That's the same principle that gives us peer reviews, shallow bugs, security auditing, and frank discussion on how to improve things.
To say that the USPTO should keep the patents sealed is to return to the world of "users don't need to have access to the source code."
The USPTO has apparently promised to include a scan of such databases when it's aware of them. It's a two-way street and a mutual responsibility to avoid infringement. Just because Open Source projects are un/underfunded, doesn't mean they can scoff at their responsibilities to avoid infringements.
[
It is not logic[al?] why the USPTO protects only proprietary software developer's interests and not open source code software developer's interests.
The USPTO has no such discrepancy in its function. They don't care who files for patents, but it's clearly an advantage to be organized if you want the USPTO to pay attention.
Open Source people are able to file for patents as well. There's nothing about patent law that says you must (1) keep your method proprietary [it's exposed anyway], or even (2) vigorously defend your patent against every infringer [unlike trademarks]. File for the patent, even on an obvious thing, and then just sit on it. That keeps anyone else from filing the same stupid patent.
Microsoft holds thousands of patents. They don't use them to attack infringers. They use them as a defensive counter-attack only, when some other company does attack them on some other patent. (Find a headline that refutes this, I haven't found any.) Many other ethical companies do the same thing. Hold patents as a defensive posture.
There's no reason that Open Source writers cannot do that, or cannot post their concepts to communal patent groups or communal "prior art" databases like these. In fact, they may do one or both, and everyone benefits.
Unless it's very easily searchable, the USPTO cannot and will not keep abreast of the many "prior art" examples on its own. The task is just too large. It is up to people to organize, either by spending the pro-active effort required to review the USPTO's patents, or passively by offering a central searchable database for the USPTO to query. Both now are possible, whereas this was not true a year ago.
[
A press release on www.uspto.gov indicates that the USPTO now exposes patent applications before they finish the grant. This makes it possible for third parties to challenge the grants as obvious or covered by prior art.
This was one of my "stock rant" solutions. Since the USPTO is a source of revenue for Congress, it has incentive to grant patents for a fee, and it has incentive to minimize the work it does to consider or invalidate applications.
[
This is a cop-out. What we really need to do is unite and demand reforms from patent systems worldwide. This likely being unachievable, we should lobby the US patent office to drastcally lower the cost of patents for those who do not plan to profit from said patents.
Wouldn't the USPTO be the best registry for software?
A commercial venture, or even a non-profit rganization may collapse, and isn't controlled by regulation, and may or may not meet standards (current and future), and can't guarantee that their database hasn't been comprimised.
This is the job of the USPTO, and they should provide the registration service for free. It would help them get out of their software patent mess.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
The provisional patent is intended to allow you to sell your idea to a company withing twelve months, then let them go thru the expensive patent process.
It does have it's drawbacks (many):
For example, you loose your provisional patent filing date if you don't file for patent the within the 12 month period.
I don't think this is the proper solution. Letting it lapse gives you no claim to prior art.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
I don't think this is the proper solution. Letting it lapse gives you no claim to prior art.
I think you miss the point. Prior art doesn't have to have been patented - you just need evidence that the prior art exists, which exactly is what the website in question (ip.com) is trying to do. A provisional patent application will serve this purpose just as well - assuming that the application is in fact kept on file by the PTO even after it lapses.
Why not just submit a provisional patent application? Read a description here. The idea is that you submit a provisional application for a patent, and then follow up with an actual patent application within 12 months. For the purpose of establishing prior art, one can submit the provisional application, but then let it lapse.
It's dirt cheap ($75 for a small entity), and it's a pretty much bullet proof prior art evidence since I believe your application will be kept on file by the PTO (someone correct me if this is not the case).
Well anthing that stops abuses like this:-
http://www.ibm.com/Press/prnews.nsf/jan/33331B969B 56D7AD852569D00073EFD4
According to this press release IBM seem to have patented distibuted processing, which must come a news to distributed.net and seti@home.
I personally have no objections to patents, which when administered properly have served businisses, consumers and researchers well over the last century or so, but, it just doesn't work for software.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
All inventions are easier to copy than to develop in the first place and corporations will spend less on R&D if they can't expect to get a good return on their investment.
I think some software patents are legitimate. Ullman cited the best example--the RSA encryption method. There's nothing obvious about it and it was novel at the time. The people at RSA still had to put a lot of work into it in order to develop it into something useful, too. Look at the PKCS series of papers as well as the software written.
If you are going to LinuxWorld and want to be a community representative, write me.
I'm in Toronto, and I'm going to LWCE in August. What does the position entail?
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The point of this is the current Patent system does not work. And we've all seen this many times over (see Articles on Amazon, TechSearch, NCR, and Apple). They Parent insane things like One Click Shopping, Aqua Color Theme, and Compression between a Client and a Server.. These people didn't patent this because they were afraid their great new idea would be stolen by a huge corporation, or by another individual, they patented so competition legally couldn't compete and so that they could wait until the rest of the world had popular devices like theirs, with many companies producing them, and then sue/charge licensing fees for them. That is whats wrong. What this place does is allow us Open Source programmers to patent our ideas or at least record prior art so that we don't one day get a letter from Apple saying that we violate their patent on the creation of a text file containing specific code to be run through a preprocessor, compiler and linker to create a distributable executable binary. Sure GCC has prior art.. but thats not the case for all open source projects, it could be very hard to prove..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I would first like to quote Thomas Jefferson on his view of the patent system (which was controversial at its very creation as our founding fathers debated whether congress should execute its power to protect IP "for a limited time"). Please note that this was written some 200 years ago, long before extreme corporate abuse of patents began.
/.'s "patent pending" topic icon comes from.
"If the bringing together under the same roof various useful things before known.. entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either seperately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by a patent."
"If a new application of our old machines be a ground of monopoly, the patent law will take from us much more than it will give.. a man has the right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?"
The second quote is of course where
Now, are all patents entirely bad? For software patents I would say yes, because they are too similar to mathematical formulas and algorithms. In fact, technology patents in general are dubious because technology by its nature needs to change and evolves quickly to make any real progress. Perhaps the reason that the patent system has become so bloated in the last few decades is that our technology is becoming increasingly multi-faceted. We no longer seek simple devices that perform a single function, but complex devices that can do whatever we want them to--perhaps covering extremely broad fields of "innovation." As an example, a patent on a general technology application, such as... "an electronic book" (of which there are many patents) not only stops innovative people from building a business around this general idea, but henceforth prevents further innovation by manufacturers. Look around. I don't see many electronic books, do you? (Except for the copy control encumbered eBook which is hardly innovative.) As a technologist, I take a look at what tools are available to me and how I can put them together to improve the quality of life. But if all of the general technologies are patented, I am limited. Perhaps this is why so many electronic devices to date have been of such limited scope of use and design.
But I do think there are some cases in which patents are acceptable if not required assuming that we still want a market economy. Such cases would be those in which a *highly specific* device or substance is created. Pharmaceutical companies are the common example, but the idea can be extended to some cases of mechanical or electronic invention, such as machines designed for an ultra-specific task. I think the line here must be drawn based on who benefits. If a patent takes away from the general public, it must certainly be ruled out for this is not the purpose of patent law. As Open Source has demonstrated that software is the domain of the general public, all software patents must be eliminated because they limit individual freedoms (ex. codec related patents). On the other hand, a patent that is only between competing businesses (such as a new manufacturing process) is certainly acceptable because it provides incentive to improve quality and efficiency. A specific example would be some of Transmeta's radically new ideas on microprocessor design. Patenting these ideas does not hurt the general public because (at least right now), the general public does not have the means to fabricate integrated circuits. Even at this, however, I argue that the length of patents should be shortened due to the needs of fast technological evolution.
So now what? I think the only answer to this situation is to start pressing for patent law reform. Our legislators need to know that we the people are not happy with what the patent office has turned into and that change is necessary to keep the new economy strong.
ogerman
Have you ever made a cat run around using a laser pointer? If so, you are in violation of a patent. Not kidding! Go look it up! (-; US Patent Number: 5443036
I propose a compromise between 'president' and 'elected'. Let's just say he was "erected" (this would be good term for the current vice president as well wouldn't it?)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
i think the point is to publish the information, so a company cannot patent it, on account of prior art.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
You can use a patent to prevent another company from patenting your idea. Also if a company uses your idea in a commercial application you can sue them. You don't have to make them pay you if it's your patent. I think patenting Open Source software would be good in that you can force people to only make free software with your idea, or open source software. Just think of it as an extension to the GPL. Right now the GPL forces people that use your software to use it in a free Open Source project. A patent on your software will just enforce this idea even more.
For example you could patent say, the binary search algorithm. Then force everyone that uses it to either pay a huge exorbitant fee they can't afford, or open the source of the product for free.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Keep the copyright and leave the IP alone to be distributed amongst the people. What is the value of open source if you cannot use it?
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Suppose I go out and invent the next seatbelt?
Yeah, you can argue all you want that some company should be allowed to have exclusive rights to selling their product, but if a technology (such as my seatbelt example) exists that would be of great use to society, What's a financially challenged inventor supposed to do ?
I mean, what's the motivation for a Mechanical Engineer to shell out $10,000 for a panent that he has no plans to make any money on?
Is a patent even necessary? Can't we just publish this stuff as "prior art"?
Comments welcome.
The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.
You havn't actually read the article have you? It states...
Specifically the joint venture will give open-source and free-software developers the chance to "defensively publish." For a fee of $20 per document (a significant discount over IP.com's usual $100 fee), software inventors will be able to place their innovations in a searchable software database.
Inventors will be assured that patent examiners will see innovations that might otherwise be lost to unseen Web pages or college papers.
So, if IBM tries to patent something that's been published in the IP.com database, for example, the inventor will have a better chance of beating the company in court.
Any idea placed on IP.com's system will be protected from patenting. Or there will at least be a stronger legal basis to stop patents. And since the database is checked by POs, dodgy patents are less likely to get passed if prior art is registered in the IP.com system.
Essentially this is patenting in reverse. Instead of preventing other people from using your idea without licensing it first, it stops people from patenting it and keeping it to themselves. It forces the concept to be open to all.
Please read articles before commenting on their contents.
Paul Leader
I am not sure this would work. but the idea is that if someone had a patent for the hyperlink system that they discover they had owned since 1979, that if they sat on it and did not develop it or otherwise did not choose to enforce it early and often, that it was a donation to the public domain in fact, if not in practice.
Another angle on this is the idea of different time lengths for patents. The problem is that there is a conflict between individuals and large corporations. Since we are horrified by the prospect of the actions of Large Corporations.
What would happen if MS patented their .NET or their HailStorm technology? (see description here in a spicy article in the Register) - or a large segment of it in many smaller pieces?
One thought is to have patents held by corporations be far more limited in time than patents by individuals. 5 years for corporate p[atents from the time of original filing, not renewable, vs the traditional 15 -20 years for individuals.
This is something we need to think about because the current answers are not Good Enough (tm) to do the job.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
One solution to the problem of prior art is to require patent applicants to submit a prior art report signed by an independent prior art specialist that could be sued for not seeing the obvious. Such specialists could work in the same way as real estate appraisors work.
please note, the above idea has been patented ;-)
-- look, cheese ahoy!
The Slashdot title and original blurb are a little misleading - this isn't the patent equivilant of copyleft. Noone's patenting software with the intention of keeping the ideas free. They're simply publishing the ideas in a public forum to add weight to the claim of prior art. It's not a bad idea, but I don't know how econmically viable this company is going to be. When you come up with a creative idea for a free software program, are you going to want to pay $20 to get the idea logged, for future insurance against bad patent claims? I'd rather publish the program and have a few users testify that its existance predates the patent. And what happens if IP.com goes under? Where does their database go?
Actually, I did read the article and visit the IP.com web site, and you'll find a minor mea culpa below (which pretimes your message by 20 minutes), where I replied to an earlier correspondent on this matter.
Indeed, IP.com is creating a repository of information for the purposes of identifying prior art -- but they are doing so for a fee.
Not that making money is a problem -- I don't object to a fee per se, but rather to certain assumptions we must make if we are to consider IP.com a valuable resource. IP.com could be a "fishing expedition," attracting nifty new ideas for use by who knows whom. I don't see anything that limits what they can do with the "publications" that appear on their site.
Furthermore, IP.com's repository is based on the existence of IP.com. It will only contain "publications" from those willing to pay $109 for the privilege. I'm not certain this fits with the core beliefs of Open Source. Perhaps we would be better-served a grassroots repository managed by the community, as opposed to a private repository (IP.com) with unknown intent.
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Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
HOWEVER, using IP.com implies trust that they (and their database) will continue to exist, and that their intent will remain "noble." Perhaps a grassroots equivelent would be more in the spirit of Open Source.
The main points of my original article stand, however, even if they were somewhat misguided by reading the /. article before visiting IP.com.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
No.
In an ideal world, patents promote innovation by giving inventors an exclusive right to profit from their creations; in return for this financial benefit, the inventor must publish a detailed description of the invention, so others can build on it. It is a good system that has been perverted by modern corporate concepts.
Patenting Open source is -- well, patently stupid. By nature, Open Source is published, and it has no direct profit motive. A patent on Open Source does not promote innovation, because innovation exists in Open Source by default!
The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.
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Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
The example of one-click shopping is even more illustrative. Something that is obvious will have no prior art, for the very reason that it's not worth publishing. What am I going to do, publish a solution for a doubly-linked list just to prevent a patent from getting issued on it?
Until the USPTO begins to recognize what's obvious, there's not enough hard drive space in the world to publish such revolutionary ideas as appending '\0' to a string of characters to signify termination.
-- ShadyG
Nerd Rock In Progress
I think it would be foolish to expect that people would turn from being clueless to clueful overnight with the abolishment of copyright and licences. They WOULD NOT "come to expect to see the sources and datasheets on the things on which they depend." If such were the case, Ralph Nader would not have had to sue General Motors for the poor saftey designs of their automobiles in the late 1960s.
The goals of the FSF would be better served without copyright protections because the people they are fighting hide behind copyright law.
/is/ possible to reverse-engineer binaries; you /do/ have access to header files for libraries; you /can/ see the protocols on the wire. Reverse engineering is prohibited in the US by the DMCA.
Modulo the DMCA, I would be able to 'free' proprietary software and, conversely, all my software would be free and unable to be 'proprietised'.
The 'modulo' comes from the encoding of source code into binaries. It
Without the conventions of copyright and licences, people would come to expect to see the sources and datasheets on the things on which they depend.
The Big War of the FSF is served by a Small Battle that is the GPL. The War will be won by convincing the end users that free (and open) is better than closed and proprietary. That is a social, educational and political battle.
Which brings us back to what I was saying about patents. Let's get back on topic!!
Duncan Cragg
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Hi Bruce!
Thanks for your reply.
Fighting patents with prior art databases (especially ones that cost money to enter IP into) is, in my opinion, not as good as fighting patents with patents, or fighting patents with the destruction of the USPTO!!
The GPL fights copyright with copyright. The other battles are generally fought with technology (e.g Freenet, etc) and politics (e.g. - mmm, well..).
It just doesn't seem like IP.com is the right way to go about this.
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I'm not so sure that fighting fire (the perils of IP) with fire is in our best interests. In direct contradiction with free software, patents serve to protect and exclude knowledge from others in the pursuit of profits.
We should be careful not to blend the two worlds -- profit vs. passion.
Let's stick to our principles and keep beating' Tha Man(TM) where it hurts -- in his wallet and on the techie playground.
Now, I could easily imagine the Slashdot crowd whining over the patent if it was an IT patent, but the fact is, that nobody has yet has success in bringing smell-o-vision to the public.
I think this patent is definitely an example of a patent that has been granted in the spirit of a license, much like tax farmers or governorships in the republic of rome, or like the deal between the big two railroads that linked the US East to US West.
In the spirit of competition, patent owners should be forced to license out their patents at a predetermined fee(or less).
Why ? It is kind of pointless to pursue Microsoft for monopolism (and bad habits of course), while fostering monopolies with the patent system.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Unfortunately, invention J is the next logical step for invention I. But the open source project cannot work on it, since it will get sued. They might win in court, but they cannot be sure.
If open source had filed a patent for I, they would able to trade patent I with Company C to get access to patent J - ideally forcing company C to open or freesource J as well.
This shows the flaw - the way someone else formulated it, why can you acquire rights to an invention by patenting it, instead of earning the rights to the patent if you can prove in any way that you had the idea first ( - and that it wouldn't be an obvious idea, considering the timespan till the patent expires ).
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And just this morning, I read that our very kind President Bush wants to ensure we have enough arsenic and heavy metals in our drinking water.
God, the flag, Mom's apple pie, and barbarians at the gate, what could be more american?
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wow, there's a shocker. I mean, it's simply unfathomable that there may exist patent officers who aren't Shameless Corporate Bribemongers. In fact, I'd recommend you investigate your sources on that one--that is, if I didn't know that the suggestion would fall on deaf ears...
Honestly, folks. Yes, the USPTO has more than it's share of problems, and there are a number of bad apples in the bunch, but it's just snide to exhibit such shock at the thought that there may exist government employees who want to do their job right.
It'd be like me expressing surprise that there might exist a Salshdot editor that doesn't proselytize every time he or she posts a news article.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Stopping stupid patents is something that individuals can do. As an example, several years ago a company obtained a patent on a channel access method for digital radio systems. It turns out that Phil Karn, a ham radio operator/networking guru/author/coder extrordinaire had published an article about this same concept -- even using the same name and acronym for it -- several years earlier.
The patent office hadn't seen it because the article was published in the ARRL/TAPR Computer Networking Conference/Digital Communications Conference Proceedings, a journal fairly well known to hams who do digital radio, but not to the outside world.
Phil filed an objection to the patent based on his published prior art, and the patent was invalidated. Had the patent office known about the CNC/DCC Proceedings, the patent would never have issued in the first place.
The moral is that sometimes, the little guy can win!
I am rather worried about the effects of a the proposed filing system. We would provide a nice list of our best inventions to anyone who borrows to read them. So far so good. But we aren't lawyers and we don't think like them either. So the site might become a mining ground for treasure hunters with follow up patents. Suppose for instance someone publishes a real alternative for MPEG-4. Next some guy grabs that idea and patents the idea to use the protocol for television, surveyance camera's and whatever he can think of that the publisher forgot to mention. Is it really necessary to provide our best ideas in such a vulture friendly way???
If organizations like this are created whose purpose is to actively discourage corporations from making money from innovations, than what is the point of patents? Why even have them at all?
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Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void.
Personally, I rather don't care of "patents" on stupid ideas do become void. As far as I'm concerned, the idea is to keep businesses from patenting, profiting from, and then (most significantly) preventing others from using ideas which are obvious or which have existed in the free software community from a long time. If that is your goal, you don't care if your patent becomes void-- you just care that somebody else doesn't get a non-void patent on the idea which they are then going to attempt to use to profit, leech-like.
I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.
This should be in a FAQ, the memorization of which is required before one is allowed to post (even anonymously) on Slashdot. COPYRIGHT!=PATENT
-Rob
I would wait until I had a full 12 months of demonstrable prior art (e.g. a released open source program) before even considering using this system.
Why? Because publishing something does not prevent others from patenting it. If an applicant has up to a year to file the initial application for a patent (e.g. if their own notebooks or old source shows they had the major components of an idea, say, ten months before the publication, their application would be unimpeded). What is a "major component", according to this criterion? That is a little fuzzy. What is clear is that an applicant is guranteed a full year to 'develop' the idea before filing the patent.
I suspect that this database would instead be harvested by patent-hungry companies. At best, ublication of a "new" idea in this database would trigger the 'use it or lose' reflex (pushing the company to patent things they might otherwise let slide). At worst, one might see a flurry of "variant patents", since "prior art" does not enjoy the same rights of enforcement as an actual patent.
The Japanese patent system, for example, if a living demonstration of 'variant patents' run amok. This resonates with Japanese business practice, because it virtually forces quid-pro-quo "cooperation" among companies. If you patent a new type of bulb, Mitsubishi may later patent mounting it in a bayonet base, or using it for growing plants, etc. Net effect: you will have a tough time exploiting your patent, and Mitsubishi has strong leverage to force you to license to them on very favorable terms
This doesn't even begin to address the problem. Why have open source hackers submit ideas (at $20 a pop)? So we can sue IBM if they try to patent the same idea? As if I have the resources to sue IBM - even if I CAN prove them to be wrong! The real solution isn't an intellectual arms race... the best solution is to fix the patent system as a whole. - and who really believes the US Patent office is looking up anything before awarding patents?
They are anti-corp firewalls. IP.com gives programmers a way to keep big nasty corporations from exploiting their inventions for free, and keeps the software available to end-user consumers. This is possibly the ultimate combination for innovation: corporations can use open source software, but they'll have to pay for it, and we, the consumers, won't have to pay a cent for access to the ideas.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Yeah, sorry bout that, just checked my ref. Probably should have done that BEFORE I posted :-)
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
No shit a copyright!= patent. If you read the post, the copyleft works fine on it's own, meaning that it is not a patent, nor was such a thing even implied.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void. This means that open source programmers would have to start the same legal bs that big companies use to protect their patents. Bad idea. I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
The information on the IP.com web site referrring to $109 per publication is NOT for the open source product, but instead for the (already released) Disclosures Database. This is a similar product, but geared more toward traditional business IP protection.
The product mentioned in the Salon article is not yet listed on the IP.com website.
Salon.com quote:
"The Foresight Institute, a nonprofit nanotechnology think tank, will announce later this month that it is forming an alliance with IP.com, a Rochester, N.Y., start-up dedicated to protecting intellectual property through the publication of new ideas."
(i.e. the announcement is not formal yet)
- vin