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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.'"
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 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.
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.