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Groklaw Rants On Software Patents
LMCBoy writes "Groklaw has the story of Kodak v. Sun (mentioned on Slashdot already), which PJ calls 'Exhibit A' in the case against software patents. Her analysis of Kodak v. Sun, and the larger issue of software patents, is excellent. Bottom line: the software patent 'cold war' provides no benefits to anyone, and will inevitably make the game of software development impossible for anyone to play."
Personally I don't think there is anything special about software... Patents are just wrong.
The patent system assumes that ideas are something unique and that it is something special to come up with new ideas. It is only with software that the mistake becomes really obvious.
If it were really neccessary for us to advance how the hell did the monkey ever come out of the tree without a working patent system?
Jeroen
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I agree with you that rants are for blogs, but I think the blurb does it a disservice by calling it a "rant". It's certainly an impassioned and angry diatribe by someone who feels very strongly on the subject, and maybe that's what rant means to you. But the article is also well layed out, structured, and an interesting read. I don't think we should label every piece of writing which contains a strong opinion as a "rant" - it's good to know that people care about these patent issues.
apterous.org
for the record, I didn't use the word "rant" in the original article submission, and nor does PJ use it in the linked article.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Traditionally, the university was used to progress and disseminate knowledge. Now, due to increased administration, budget cuts, etc., all the knowledge is being locked away just in case it might be worth something.
I'm not sure what can be done about it, but it is unfortunate and wrong IMO.
Software is the only thing in the world that can be patented, copyrighted, and be a trade secret at the same time (because source code in usually not revealed). That definitely makes it different, and that sort of multi-level IP protection is excessive.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
"Kodak praised the verdict and said it was part of an aggressive push to convert innovations ? both homegrown and purchased ? into real money. The company over the past several years has been issuing licenses, filing lawsuits, forming spinoff companies and finding other uses for its technologies."
It seems that today, companies don't produce products, they produce lawsuits, and that's how they get their money. How long can this continue?
Furthermore, since 1.06B is about 1/3 of Sun's cash on hand (here [yahoo.com]), what will that mean for Sun? It's 7% of their total value, so this can't be good for them.
In the end, it's only the lawyers who win.
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First the Eolas lawsuit, now this. What is going to take for Bill Gates to wake up and say that suing OpenOffice developers isn't worth being able to lose $1.06B to a company that actually has the legal resources to wage a protracted war with Microsoft? If Sun loses this, the Microsoft had better be willing to settle in a very generous was or Kodak will go after them. $1.06B for Sun, since Microsoft has much, much more money it could just as easily be $5B from Microsoft.
This is all starting to become like nuclear weapons in and after the cold war. First it seemed like no big deal, hell it was even a requirement to be a big player to have nukes. Now all these little players are getting them, and Eolas and Kodak IMO are no different or better than the rogue states getting their own arsenals of nukes. Now the big boys are getting attacked so, what do they do? Disarm by pushing for the elimination of all software and business method patents, to keep these guys from having legal nukes to use against them, or do they just pray that not enough ankle biters will get enough patents to bankrupt them in independent and coordinated lawsuits?
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Although I know its offical /. policy that everyone should run around in circles yelling its the end of the world everytime a software patent is infringed, this particular dispute is far from over and probably faces 5+ years of appeals before any money changes hands or any technology is changed or restricted.
First, after damages are decided, Sun will move with JNOV (asking the judge to set aside the verdict because there was insufficent evidence to support to verdict). There is probably a 10% probability of this happening in any given case, even more when there is alot of money at risk.
Second, Sun will appeal to the Federal Circuit, which usually overturnes 60% of district court decisions because district courts usually dont know anything about technology and know even less about patent law.
So, IMHO, its too early to start running around in circles over this decision, at least until the Federal Circuit affirms.
Please check the other identical story onAs many have mentioned, the idea behind patents is to encourage innovation. So for example, if inventor A decides to create a specific implementation of an idea, then all the effort to create that implementation does not go to waste.
One thing that I never see pointed out as a key difference between software patents and traditional real-world patents is the time it takes to make an implementation.
For example, in the past, it could have taken years and thousands to millions of dollars of development and testing to create a patentable idea. Because of this, you need a way to protect that hard work and investment or, yes, nobody would spend the time to invent things because they could get stolen by big companies (patents were originally designed to protect small inventors ironically). The problem with software patents is that it hardly takes any R&D whatsoever to create most of the patentable ideas. All it takes is an idea, something that patents were originally designed NOT to protect. They were designed to protect the implementation of an idea.
All the BS patents seem to fall into the space of no R&D for implementation, especially the "business processes" patents like 1-click. It's like "Oh, I have an idea," let's patent it. The patent office is making the erroneous assumption that not being able to patent an idea as soon as you thought of it would somehow have discourage you thinking of the idea. If software patents are allowed at all, they need to be tempered by the amount of research it requires to go from idea to implementation.
You should NOT be able to patent a "Hey, I just thought of something idea" that takes 10 minutes to implement. Practically all web-based patents fall into this category. I think there is still room for patents on ideas that take a lot of R&D work, investment and time.
Sunny
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