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Report Says Patents Threaten Software Innovation
GORby_ writes "According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, software patents are 'a particular threat to the European ICT Industry.' Quote from the report: 'There are particular threats to the European ICT industry such as the current discussion on the patent on software. The mild regime of IP protection in the past has led to a very innovative and competitive software industry with low entry barriers. A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.' The full report (pdf) discusses Europe's ICT strategy."
There's too much economic inefficiency associated with the existence of software patents to allow them to exist.
May we never see th
It really is sad for IP and science in general when we have to go to court for a while to find out if we can make a garage door opener remote. The DMCA is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to science in general. It lets companies be anti-competitive legally under a shroud of "protecting their intellectual property".
We all(I already have) should be going to the EFF's DMCA Action Page.
Contact your senators and representatives.(USA).
Chris
They may go away after a while, but not before the industry leaders have used them to their advantage. If you still hope for Europe to stay software patent free, you're deluding yourself.
Funny.. the preface is written by Brinkhorst, Who voted FOR software patents.(Against the will of the Netherlands Parlement)
Most interesting is the fact that the Dutch parlement is trying to force Minister Brinkhorst to change his vote and that he continues to refuse to do so. The only reason he seems to be able to get away with this is that it is not a political issue, because the Dutch media not understanding software patents is not giving it any attention. The infection in the feet of our prime minister is far more interesting. (The latest rumours are that it was a rather serious infection, which might have killed him.)
I don't think anyone here is surprised. And I'm glad to see a report that supports what has been a rather undereported debate.
/.ers seen or thought of a solution to this problem? I'm all for making software as "free" as possible, but I'm also of the mind that there would have to be some kind of IP structure in place.
What concerns me though is: if we do away with patents what will replace them? Have any
My thinking has always been that too much control of too much information has been in the hands of too few individuals. Software patents, as they're presently implimented, worsen this problem by allowing exclusivity and ownership of ideas that are otherwise easy to disribute. What concerns me is that those ideas don't come from nowhere; creativity is required at some stage. Even if the originator of an idea doesn't own it, (s)he was still presumably paid for it. Do we, the geeks, beleive that total freedom of information will leave an incentive to actually invent anything new? I've seen the argument that the benefit will come from somewhere else, like geeks supporting the software, bands getting paid by touring, etc. Ultimately you can't get something for nothing, though, and unless I'm mistaken the above shift would have us bitching about ludicrous ticket prices and support charges.
Has anyone run into an IP scheme that would balance the creator/user relationship? Our present system is skewed and prone to monopolism, and a total absence of ownership would entail its own set of problems. We have to pay for something, somewhere (not that I'm a free market capitalist, but when the flow of money stops people starve).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
duh? Well, how about CUSTOMS TARIFFS designed to bring the price of low wages countries products more in line with those in the high wages coutries??? If a country pays jack shit to it's workers, the tarrifs go back in the importing country's government's pockets who can then use it to help increase that country's competitivity. But if it pays it's workers better, in turn, THEY BECOME MORE COMPETITIVE, because the receiving countries' tarrifs drop, and the extra price they are able to get for their products stays in the exporting country as profits, instead of tariffs in the importing country!!!
Geee whizz, in the last century, Henry Ford generated quite a commotion when he raised his worker's pay; that enabled them to BUY automobiles, which propelled Ford at the forefront of the industry!
But nowadays, bourgeois have no more foresight, and the swarms of MBAs they fatly pay have no more common-sense than a brain-dead sponge (with or without square pants), so they keep doing everything in the name of ultra-myopic short-sight. Free-trade only benefits the company owners, for the rest of the population, it means a steady decrease in the standard of living!Should check out the "Best Deals: Patents" link under "Related Links". Clicking on it allows you to Comparison shop for patents. Thank God the slashdot devs decided to implement this fantastic functionality rather than making Slashdot W3C compliant!
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So please explain to me, as a software engineer, innovator with several patents and a small business owner, how are software patents hurting innovations?
* If I was unable to patent my idea, then there would be NO use in my pursuing it because a large company like MS could throw money to make their own solution after seeing my development. So how does THAT encourage me to take risk, go out and start a company, thus employing other people?
If I could not patent my ideas, then as soon as I came to market, some larger company could throw lots of cash at it, overwhelm my little company, my work, my personal investment and literally crush my out of the market.
If I did not have protection within the patent system, I would have no desire to innovate.
As to fighting the problem in court? That is pretty rare, more often then not, you set up a meeting with the company in question, fly out, meet with them alone (they will have like ten lawyers in the room), and simply explain to them the idea and that you are interesting in licensing the concept at a rate that is fair to all. This can end up with the larger company either purchasing the rights outright to a simple licensing model that benefits all.
So, back to my original question, how is it that the software patent is hurting innovation? From my perspective and the inventor of multiple patents, it helps and protects me.
Yes, there are some abuses, as with ANY system, but for the most part it greatly works to increase innovation.
Maybe those who are so dead set apposed to the idea should try and actually come up with an idea, try writing a patent, researching it, and then developing the idea in their own small company. I will tell you what, its lots of work, but nothing is more rewarding.
Capitalism vs Socialism, Innovation vs Stagnation. Its a pretty simple choice once you actually have seen and lived how it works.
Now that governments admit they can do nothing terribly helpful about outsourcing and the equalization of international labor wages and globalization is a thing taught in history books to 6th graders international economics and domestic policy certainly do not support the Infant Industry Argument any longer. Thus, the US Patent Office is nothing more than a vestige of the past in need of dying out, to the sick and twisted people who believe that research and development brooks complete entitlement to cut a CD or set up a web and database server you are definitely not protecting anything - you are society's worst enemy and the singular cause for the largest most devastating deadweight loss our global economy and technological progression will ever know. These days will be known as the second dark ages, once we get rid of the idea of entitlement to something which by definition may be accomplished an infinite number of ways (software is the topic).
Someone with sufficient understanding of economics has done the math and calculated the effect of patents in different scenarios:
Industries where innovation comes largely independent of each other, like medicine and
industries where inovation builds upon prior art.
Interestingly, it can be shown, that in the latter scenario (software!), patents harm not only the public, but even the paent-holder. A very interesting read (at least for the economics-geeks out there...). Here's the link.
From the beginning of the TFPDF:
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on several points.
I think we do have a reasonable standard here in the US (nonobvious to a skilled practitioner in the field), it's just not being applied. In nearly all cases, patent examiners are not skilled practitioners in the field.
I'm a firm believer that the patent system continues to have an overall positive effect.
Anecdotally, my brother worked for a small medical-device startup company. He is co-inventor on several patents for devices that can non-invasively measure pulserate and oxygen saturation levels in blood. After several years and tens of millions of dollars of research and development, they succeeded in making devices that are more reliable and accurate than the devices then on the market (meaning the difference between life and death for some patients). The invention is a method of extracting data from the sensor waveforms. In practice, it's implemented primarily in software. This company licensed their technology to the big players in this industry, but soon one of the customers simply copied it, canceled the contract, and began selling it as their own. The startup prevailed in the patent lawsuit and is once-again collecting royalties.
Now, without a patent system, I suspect this startup never would have existed (nobody would have funded it), and therefore the state-of-the-art in this field would have stagnated. Or worse--except for regulatory disclosure for medical devices and the potential for reverse engineering--they could have kept their inventions secret and maintained a monopoly on them indefinitely, denying others the inspiration to find even better solutions and preventing the commoditization of the technology at the end of what would have been the patent protection term.
Furthermore, this example illustrates that patents can help protect the small guys when they go up against the big guys. I've never understood why so many people think of patents (and copyrights) solely as weapons of the megacorps. (Maybe because of the cost of securing and defending a patent? That seems to be a general problem with the legal system here, not the patent system.) Sure, patents are often wielded by the big guys, but could little guys go against megacorps without such tools?
Many people think patents prevent innovation because they stop people (for a limited time) from using certain methods. In actuality, it forces inventors to look for new solutions (to get around the known one that has patent protection), and often they come up with better solutions. Would we have PNG today without the LZW patent encumberance of GIF?
We always hear about the silly patents, and the lawerly harrassment related to patents. I don't think we get a balanced picture.
Yes, there are problems. But I think they can be fixed. Raise the bar for inventiveness. Adjust the protection term depending on the field, much shorter for rapidly-changing fields, a tad longer for high-risk and large-investment creations. And eliminate "submarining" with a defend-it-or-lose-it doctrine. Remove the incentive of the patent office to approve everything by basing fees solely on applications. and evaluate examiner performance on something other than the volume applications reviewed.
We've ventured off-topic by discussing the patent system in general. In terms of software patents, I'm still unclear on the definitions. (Given that I'm uncertain after reading and rereading most of the PDF and all of your comments, I suspect that many people are still working with different definitions of software patents.) I still don't know why the term "non-technical" was applied.
Some consider my brother's