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An Insider's View of Software Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Ross Gittins at the Sydney Morning Herald has published an interesting insider view of software patents. This kind of thing is starting to be a hot issue down here with the US-Australia Free Trade deal about to be ratified and bring our intellectual property laws in line with Micros^D^D^D^D^D^D^D America's."
I agree with the writer of the article, software patents do do a lot of harm to programmers. Saying that monopolies are the only way to make money and should be encouraged is just crazy...
Until we see the Patent Office being sued by someone/company that suffered financially or otherwise because of a bogus patent that the PTO granted, we won't see any significant changes to the way things work now. After a lawsuit or two they might finally get the hint to stop granting such bogus patents and maybe even (gasp!) start reviewing past ones once they realize those might become a liability.
And for those that say such lawsuits would be a burden on the taxpayers, well, I'd say these bogus patent infrigment cases are taking away needed resources to convict criminals.
And besides, the taxpayers might finally take action once they see the PTO's bogus-patent-granting actions is raising their taxes, instead of only bitching and whining all the time.
AC comments get piped to
It gets really confusing to try to figure out the different times at which copyright expires across different countries, or to know where your intellectual property is already protected and where you have to jump through additional hoops.
Settling on an international standard that is mutually agreed upon strengthens the companies within those nations because they don't have to cope with several sets of rules. Like the standardization on the Euro, it reduces complexity and ultimately is a good thing.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
This article brings up a point I have been thinking about for a long time: The OSS/FS community is losing sight of the trees for the forest with regard to software patentability.
We need to fight the patent war on two fronts - the first front: Lobby to make software patents more difficult to obtain.
And the second front, equally important: Until the rules change in our favor, we need to build up a portfolio of patents, to share and trade with our friends (which anyone in business will tell you is the true purpose of a patent).
Instead of screeching to the heavans, Software Patents Are EEEEEEEEEVIL, the movement would be better served by gaming the system. If a portfolio of patents is what is needed to keep Free Software Free, then so be it - put our minds to making the application and examination system as easy as possible, and assign patents to some organization (a role that would be well served by FSF if they could stop their jihad.
For the record, I do not think that software patents are intrinsically evil. I believe in my heart-of-hearts that algorithms are just as much an invention as a better mousetrap, and I disagree with the article author's assertion that the copyright protection granted to an implementation is sufficient protection for this inventive process.
Plus, you forget that one of the Principles of Free Software, transparency, is fundament in the patent process. The wisdom of the patent system is, In exchange for exclusive right-to-use on your invention, for a limited time, you must fully disclose that same invention.
I am seriously concerned that the patent process may suffer the same slow creep in the meaning of limited time that has happened surrounding copyright, but that is a separate problem for another posting.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
It seems (on a very high level) the Lawyer has just found a new market. Look at the small effort he puts forth and all the income it generates for his firm. And he admits, the patents can be fought over later in the courts...more legal fees for him!! If I were your CEO I would feel a lot like the "SUCKER" in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. I'm sure there is *some* truth to his position, but I find it bad business to go for the "monopoly" brass ring. Its sad when our CEOs go for these get rich quick schemes. just shows you Lawyers and CEOs are greedy SOBs.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
...want an alternative? Anything you can physically hold in your hand or touch = OK to patent. Some theoretical concept, process, algorithym, arrangement, etc commonly referred to as an "intellectual property" = *not* OK to patent, but OK to copyright if the creator chooses to.
simple easy solution
This article doesn't say anything we don't already know. Yes the American software patent system is fucked, and they are in the process of exporting it.
... sigh ...
It is all very absurd, small companies won't be able to write code, hobbyist coders will need legal insurance.
What do we do? I am frothing at the mouth after reading the article (yayyyy slashdot) but really, is it worth thinking about without a realistic response?
Personally as a Canadian working for a Canadian software company that is being sued with a FUCKING STUPID US software patent, I would be happy to invade the USA and blow up the patent office.
Would any of you Americans mind? Could someone provide GPS coordinates and photos with targets circled in red? Call it "compassionate terrorism."
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
... how 'bout we require patent holders to very obviously be seeking to do something useful with their patents, immediately? you don't get to sit on it, you don't get to hold it and wait for someone else to get the idea ... and you absolutely don't get to claim patent rights if someone else invents the same thing without your help (though it'd be hard to prove they didn't see your patent application, even if you don't document elsewhere.) regardless, patent holders should be required to obviously be trying to find buyers from day 1, or be building their own solution (not vaporware) based on the patent. the whole point is to give you a little extra time (advantage) to get your shit together before the competition comes in, -not- to give you a nice legal monopoly to sit on. besides, if companies are already innovating ... do we need patents? the point was incentives -- if they're going to create new algorithms and machines because there's a market for them (if there's no market within a few years of an invention, the patent is just an expense to you) ... then we don't need patents at all. (reminder: incentives of this sort are created out of the clear blue sky, and should be just as easy to repeal.)
But as the article also points out, it's not the developed, final product that is patented, it's the very idea of doing something. It doesn't take long to come up with a random idea, even if the implementation time is quite long. It's also worth noting that it wouldn't take more than a day for most programmers to implement a working test of the sort of small idea that gets patented. We're not talking about a full-fledged accounting system or operating system or something like that.
Since we receive a bonus of $8000 per patent, if all goes well we'll share well over $150,000. And there seems no reason we can't keep this game up indefinitely. We should be able to manage around 50 a year, and this nice little earner will see the mortgage paid off in no time.
Now I think that's interesting... This comes from a software engineer, not from the lawyer. Most developers (and presumably the one from the article too) despise this whole mess, yet this guy is being "gently persuaded" by his employer to play the game.
I'd rather not find myself in such a situation, for it's easy to say what I am going to say without having to actually face it. But I'd like to believe that I can be part of the solution and not of the problem; that I can be brave enough to stand by my beliefs and refuse to be part of something like this and still manage to pay my bills.
The revolution will not be televised.
The real difference between software and hardware patents is the time taken to bring it to market. If you invent a mechanical device, if you want to market it, you need to find some way to mass produce it. Unless you are independantly wealthy, that means finding someone who owns a manufactuting plant or two, and getting them to make the device for you. This means that you have to let somebody into your confidence. After you've gone around having meetings with ten or twenty manufacturers, there's ten or twenty people who know a good deal about your invention. You need a patent to ensure that they can't just start ripping off your invention without cutting you in.
Software, on the other hand, as intangible data, is dead easy to replicate and distribute. Put up a website, buy a bit of bandwidth - and nowadays, setup a torrent, and bingo - the equivelant of mechanical "manufacture and distribution". You don't need a patent to protect you while you struggle to manufacture your software and bring it to market.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
So, I'd suggest that "discriminatory" is a lot more accurate than "inconvenient".
And yes, hardware is software these days. Which means that all would better be protected with copyright. Applying both patent and copyright to the same material is too much.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Patents may not be good for the open source community, they are on the other hand hugely important in terms of private rights. If you make it, you should own it.
Don't blame M$, Bill Clinton or anybody else... the real problem is deeply routed in the definition of a corporation.
You see, some coporate lawyers in the late 19thC realized that they could make a lot more money if a corporation had the rights of a person, and the supreme court agreed they were, with all the rights and privileges there-of.
Now a coporation is a 'legal' person whose sole purpose is to make money for the shareholders. The CEO and board are legally bound to do so. Unfortunately, since corporations aren't real people, they don't have real morals... other than what will make $$$ for shareholders. Because shareholders aren't liable for the actions of corportions, they don't CARE how the corporation makes money on their investment.
That's the root of the problem.
Every corporation is in a free-fall race to the bottom to out-compete it's rivals and make 7% growth in profits. While that level of competition has many obvious good points, it has also created some terrible problems.
Once one corporation 'buys' a law (such as software patents), then everyone in the industry has to start using them or die. You don't even have to buy a law... if breaking the law and paying the fine (and paying a nice PR firm to make you look shiny) is cost effective, then that's what you HAVE to do if you're going to raise your stock higher than your rivals.
CEOs and lawyers are not all trolls, they are just cogs in a machine. Corporations have bought off politions all over the world, PR firms, marketers... all so that they can bend and create rules to make more $$$. As soon as one nasty little troll does it... they all have to. If they don't, well, only the fittest survive.
The solution?
We have to unravel the legal framework that has come to define what corporations are. Exactly how to do this???? Well, you tell me =)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Stop posting stories from sites requiring registration. If the site has a policy to not allow casual browsing then do as they wish and ignore them. Find an alternative site carrying the same story, for free.
Ok, now I really have to ask.
At the risk of seeming frightfully out of touch and un-733t over the last few month's I've been seeing more and more of this "One wor^H^H^H^H^H^H Another word I should really have used" kind of stuff.
I know how it's used and roughly what it means and how to read it... but does anyone know it's origins or it's precise meaning?
Thanks for enlightening me... I just finally had to ask.
This sig has been deprecated.
Well, the question isn't "is doing away with the patent system a good idea?",
it's "is doing away with the patent better than any other alternative that's available?"
I've seen very little evidence that patents are good, and a lot of evidence that they are bad.
Doing away with them might be better than living with them.
However, taking it as a given that eliminating the patent office is not an option, what then would be better?
IMO the real problem with the current system is one of risk.
It's almost impossible to do real work without facing the possibility of being sued (successfully) for patent infringement and losing 100% of your efforts.
I.e. you're constantly at risk of total ruin.
And there doesn't seem to be any way to protect against this catastrophic failure.
One solution might be a compulsory licensing fee.
If any patent filed could be released to the public domain by paying the holder
100 times the filing fee, then we could at least make a reasonable risk estimate,
and patent insurance would be a realistic possibility.
Another possibility is a set of guidelines which if followed guarantee that you will not be infringing on a patent.
For example, declare that software which runs on an unmodified computer built before a patent was filed does not infringe that patent.
-- less is better.
Unfortunately you'd have to get rid of the old 'I have no recollection with that' excuse.
For example, a corp will hire someone to find something out, and say they have no knowledge of how that person does business. That person is actually a spy, and everyone knows that he's going to break the law to get that information. But the CEO's aren't responsible unless you can prove that they knew that the spy was going to break the law when they hired them. Convenient that this situation has arisen.
It goes deeper than holding CEOs accountable... if you held shareholders accountable, then things certainly _would_ change, but everyone would cry unfair, and it would defeat the point of a corporation.
Greed is no more basic in shareholders than everyone else, so the definition of a corporation has to change to limit what it _can_ do, because anything it _can_ do it will, including extending the extension of itself, and what it can do.
For example, corporations fought do be able to patent living organizism back in the 80s. People didn't believe that you could own real life. Well a single firm argued in court that they had invented nothing more mundane then a standard chemical when they modified a bacteria.... and the supreme court (curse them!) agreed with the copr!
Now companies are patenting the DNA sequences of all the living creatures on earth. The USPTO said you couldn't patent the human genome (thankfully!), however, corps are patenting discoverings on human DNA - such as what the genes do (?!?)
The limitations I'm thinking of are more along the lines of:
"corporations have a limited lifespan", and
"this corporation is created to refine steel"
This would give a corporation a specific charter that they can't deviate from once it's created.
Obviously I don't believe that these specific examples would be practicle in the current world!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right