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Perens on Patents
lewiz writes "An interesting interview with Bruce Perens over at the BBC. He's up discussing the role of HP, IBM, et al and the move towards Linux. However, his main point is about software patents and how they are much more of a problem than SCO: 'We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.'"
because you can't patent a book. What you have on a book is a copyright. Copyrights protect only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
RMS gave a rather nice talk on this in Cambridge. Not sure whether it counts as a legal source!
Here
Patents are also used to defend against OTHER patents. "You license my use of your's for free and I'll let you slid on mine"
IBM's way of using patents.
However, for those who might not know:
This serves 3 purposes: tax deduction, p.r., product lockin. Nothing more.
In my experience, IBM does attack medium-sized developers with frivolous patent threats. Fortunately, the company I worked for when I encountered this refused to back down. In one case, we spent two years explaining that our code was not infringing on their patent (scaling fonts for print-preview). When they finally accepted that, they hit us with a different one. It was arguably obvious and unoriginal (showing print-preview and the source document at the same time). Rather than fight it, though, we tweaked our product so that you couldn't see the other windows while doing a preview.
I suspect IBM tried this on lots of other companies as well, because I started seeing more and more programs doing the same thing we did, including ones that came from smaller labels. (I guess we should have patented our technique for avoiding IBM's patent.)
US:l
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.htm
Europe:
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
(This link is down right now, hope it gets back up fast).
Hopefully, if either the US or the EU see the light, the other and the rest of the world will follow suit.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The problem here is that patents are increasingly and increasingly not about ways to solve a problem and about problems themselves. The patent office is unable to tell anymore what is or is not a good patent, so it's just a huge land grab where each grab covers an infinite space of implementations. It's gone from patenting a specific implementation of plug-ins to a browser to patenting the idea of plug-ins to a browser itself.
It doesn't matter if you come up with a new way to do something. Very likely, your new way to do something is already covered by someone else's overbroad patent just by nature of what it does. Even more likely, someone else will independently come up with the same great new idea a year after you do, and patent it. And unless you are a very large company with the capacity to initiate and fight a protracted patent ownership battle in court, they will get to keep the patent, not you.
In the meanwhile, *maybe* you will be able to dance carefully around the huge holes created by the patents on what programming techniques techniques you can use. However this will mean careful knowledge of the patents out there, detailed lawyerlike scrutiny of every single line of code you write, and the preparedness to spend lots of money defending yourself against frivolous patent lawsuits whether you violate a patent or no. If you have to sanitize *everything* you do against umpteen million patents, that is a huge undertaking for a program of any size *ON TOP* of writing the program itself and it creates a major barrier to entry.
And all it would take to reach a point like that would be for the patents the patent office has *already granted* to be enforced.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The actual substance of the claim doesn't matter; an injunction against distributing Linux which held for even a year could destroy its adoption by vendors and end users.
In the jurisdiction where the injunction is valid.
If an injuction was granted in the US, it would definately hurt US companies, the rest of the would could pretty much continue.
The second issue is that if granting an injunction would do more harm then not, the court should either not grant the injunction, or take steps to minimize the effect.
One of things you have to remember about intellectual property is that it is all about property. When a company files an IP patent what they are doing is creating an asset. That asset can be assingned a value. The value may not be in anyway realistic, but it does show up on the plus side of the companys accounting.
As an example I file a patent for using computers to send notes to people (very much like say E-mail (and yes I know there is prior art)). But then I have some appraser say that the patent is worth $100 Million. Now on the plus side of my accounting I have a $100 million dollars asset. So I look better on the stock market and my shares go up.
JACEM
DOC Disinformation Obfuscation and Confusion
The carrot to FUD's stick
MOD PARENT DOWN!! IMPERSONATION!!
Look at his 'name' closely. It's spelled RAYRNOND.
See the FAQ
The USPTO states in their process manual that they _are_ the ones that should search for prior art before approving a patent.
You can find the exact section here on their website
The main page of their Manual of Patent Examining Procedure is at this link.
To quote the sections that apply here:
1.104 Nature of examination.
(a) Examiner's action.
(1) On taking up an application for examination or a patent in a reexamination proceeding, the examiner shall make a thorough study thereof and shall make a thorough investigation of the available prior art relating to the subject matter of the claimed invention. The examination shall be complete with respect both to compliance of the application or patent under reexamination with the applicable statutes and rules and to the patentability of the invention as claimed, as well as with respect to matters of form, unless otherwise indicated.
The Patent System is based on the old mechanical model, where every minor invention was patented (because your competitors would just disassemble your machine and copy your stuff anyway). You could argue that the computing industry relied far too heavily on the "trade secrets" of compiled binaries.
There was a time when many very basic machines were patented. What happened? People just waited 20 years until all 'easy' patents expired.
17 years might seem like forever in "Internet Time", but it probably seemed like forever on "Industrial Revolution Time" as well. Eventually, there will be a vast library of prior art in computing techinques documented in expired patents and all will be well. In fact, this is already happening (RSA, LZW).
No, the biggest problem is that software (or any mathematics for that matter) should not be patentable.
I think it's time to spend some karma here, as I'm most assuredly going to lose some for saying this, but...
The idea of a patent is to benefit those that invent things, on the notion that inventing things in general is a good idea.
A patent is never completely new. All ideas come from other ideas. Taking an existing idea and improving on it can easily result in a patentable item.
Patents are issued quite legitimately for all kinds of incremental ideas. For example, I have a patented Snap-on ratchet screwdriver. I looked up the patent one time, just for kicks. The actual latch mechanism inside the screwdriver is what's patented. If you are interested, you can look it up yourself.
Notice that it references some 20 other patents, one dating back to 1883! Ratchet screwdrivers are nothing new - but there's still plenty of patentable ideas around ratchet screwdrivers.
Now, with a patent, you have an idea that results in a machine that does something. How is software really any different?
You can't get a patent on software itself. You can only get a patent on the resulting combination of a computer and the software, which, as a unified piece, is an operating machine that is capable of performing a real activity or service.
You are not be able to patent a specific instance of software - that's protected by copyright law. (which IMHO is easily more messed up than patents are with their 100+ year extensions)
You can't patent an algorithm, unless that algorithm is part of a demonstrable machine that produces an identifiable result.
Granted, software can be represented as a set of numbers, but then, too, so can a design for the tractor hitch!
Where is the problem?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I think there was a litigation over who owns the patent over the laser. I don't remember the names of the 3 parties but there was an inventor who actually came up with the first working laser, the two scientists/researchers who applied for and received the patent and another fellow who as a student had his notebook detailing his ideas for the laser notarized prior to other existing claims. I don't know the ultimate resolution of the patent claim.
Although laser technology is ubiquitous today, it took many years before the technology became widely applied. In the case of laser technology, I don't think that patent protection arrested its development and adoption into everyday use. However, ideas, especially some of the bogus Internet-related patents applied for after the fact, do affect widespread acceptance of technology.
Can you give a single example?
One? (provide me a link) Sure. Without even leaving Slashdot
Let's see what that gets us. Hmm. Microsoft patenting XML for storing text, sombody sueing the DNS registrars for their (patented) use of URLs, Eolas sueing MS for using pluggins (which they claim to have patented), Intertrusts DRM patents, ...gosh I'm sorry, I forgot. You only asked for one. I won't bother citing the rest of the page.
-- MarkusQ
Well, as I write this, there are two responses, neither of which actually provide a link to an actual patent. In case you haven't followed the thread, I said the following:
/. postings are.
You can't get a patent on software itself. You can only get a patent on the resulting combination of a computer and the software, which, as a unified piece, is an operating machine that is capable of performing a real activity or service.
Instead, we either have a few lame, secondhand press articles, or worse, thirdhand slashdot postings, and we all know how amazingly accurate
If you've ever worked with press (I have, a little) you'd know how amazingly inaccurate any press actually is. Every reporter I ever saw didn't really care - they get a snippet or two, write a story, and they're done.
So, I asked for a patent on software, so show me one! I'd be perfectly happy with just a patent number!
The patent must be for software, and not for the resulting machine. Does even one single example exist?
(BTW, You can see my original post here)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.