Slashdot Mirror
Fair IP Laws?
epsalon asks: "Most of us are against the current status of Copyright and Patent law, and
are outraged from stuff like the DMCA, SSSCA, et al. We know that this system is wrong, and must be changed. However, nullifying all IP laws is IMHO a bit too strong, because there will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of
goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux). Assuming you could rewrite the entire world IP law, and even create a new
social system, my question is: What laws can be written that will be fair both to content creators and to users, while cutting the middleman?" Here's your chance to do something other than complain about the current state things. How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?
In the chemical industry (where I work) here's how patents have gotten out of control and have become an inhibator to innovation, rather than a protector/promoter of innovation.
It starts with patent examiners not being experts in the art. Therefore, what is "obvious to those skilled in the art" who wrote the patent is not obvious to the patent examiner. Therefore, you see patents where claims are made that have no basis in scientific proof because the patent examiner can't find a previous claim which would invalidate the patent claim. The reason for this is that the science behind the bullshit claim does not exist, and therefore, cannot be discovered as prior art.
Here's another abuse of the system. Very often a company will produce a patent with no intention of actually practicing the technology. Instead, they do it to prevent their competitor, (who can make the chemical cheaper with their unique process), from making the chemical for profit. Instead, the non-patent holding company now has to pay a royalty fee to sell the chemical for its original use. So, the company without the patent instead never makes the material, no matter how good it is, because the proposed royalty fees are outrageously expensive.
The patent system is not just broken in the area of software, its also broken in the scientific field. This is why you see corporations trying to patent DNA sequences, natural compounds, basic research, and everything they can to prevent others from using it. I imagine that the practices I listed above are probably also used in the software industry, where a company will issue a patent just to prevent someone else from using a similar piece of code.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
The main problem as I see it is that the discipline of Software Engineering is still in its infancy. It doesn't even have the advantage that, say, Mechanical Engineering had at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution where all the basic building blocks (wheels, gears, pistons, cams, flywheels, etc.) had already been devised centuries before for the most part, and no one had to hesitate to make use of them for fear of violating someone else's IP rights. Software engineers are still, by and large, inventing the wheel. Or maybe we've advanced as far as the cam. The point is that all the basic tools of the trade, which in other disciplines were developed long before IP law was even remotely contemplated, are still in the process of assuming their standardized forms. It can only benefit "the progress of science and useful arts" to allow these tools to develop unimpeded.
But there's another aspect that's a problem that you pointed up in your post when you said, "Or is it simply that because there are so many talented programmers out there who can write code that does the same thing as the patented code that they don't want any impediments whatsoever?" The task that the software is accomplishing ought not be patentable. Imagine if the inventor of the locomotive had been awarded a patent that covered any form of self-propelled conveyance. Had such a patent still been valid some 80 years later (and it wouldn't have been at the time, but bear with me -- we may be headed this way anyhow) then the inventor of the automobile would have had to license this patent to build the first car! Rather, it's the underlying method by which this task is performed (steam engine vs. internal combustion engine) that ought to be patentable, and as I understand it, traditionally has been in IP law.
I don't say even that without a qualm or two, since computational methods (algorithms) traditionally have been in the domain of the academy, and in many cases patenting of an algorithm is as absurd as patenting a mathematical theorem. That is to say, it's to an extent an implicit property of the formal system in which it exists. But one does have to draw the line somewhere, and truly clever and innovative algorithms ought to be rewarded with a temporary monopoly, IMO. (But if the same task can be accomplished with an algorithm that is not mathematically identical, that's another story.)
And the brethren went away edified.