Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Attack

canuck57 sent us a story about Linus Torvalds has joined the chorus of voices speaking out against software patents. Talks briefly about the recent patent releases by IBM & Sun, and notes that there are 'an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 registered software patents in the U.S. alone.'

Comments

any software patent is bad

[CAIMLAS]

I'd say any software patent is bad, simply because they're so ambiguous. It doesn't matter if the company in question is supposedly benevolent, or that they're not actively enforcing them: all it takes is a single lawyer with no scruples to cause a lot of pain. In any organization of significant size, you can rest assured they've got at least one bastardly lawyer.

Not only that, but there couldn't possibly be that many new, patentable techniques or technologies being discovered. Is it actually good practice to patent everything? While it might be "good" for open source with IBM supporting us and all, what's it do to the smaller companies that get (potentially) shafted by such absurdity? At the very least, it increases their cost of development due to necessary research.

Re:any software patent is bad

[cpt kangarooski]

Patents were created to protect inventors from having their ideas ripped off and used to profit another.

No, in fact that's what patents are intended to do: to get inventions that are reduced to practice into the public domain so that everyone can use them without paying inventors. And as implemented, we further make it difficult to get patents by requiring novelty, nonobviousness, filing before the statutory bar, etc.

Patents are intended to promote the progress of the useful arts, for the public benefit. Not to benefit inventors, though that may incidentally occur.

A good analogy is this: Imagine the public is a farmer who has a cart of vegetables he wants to take to market. He has a donkey (the inventors) but it is unwilling to do very much without some special incentive. If the farmer is willing to spend one of his carrots by dangling it in front of the donkey, getting it to move and therefore act productively, he can achieve his greater goal of getting all his stuff to market.

The farmer doesn't want to give the carrot to the donkey, however. Then he's out one carrot. But it's an okay cost if it profits him more in the end by getting to market.

Likewise, it is a bad thing to grant patents for their own sake, or for the sake of inventors. But if they are not a significant burden on the public, and the public benefits much more than we lose by virtue of encouraging inventors to do useful work for us, then it's okay.

So the problem with software patents is that the software industry seems to have been doing somewhere between good to awesome without them. There is no indication that there will be more invention in this sector by adding them, and there is a very real problem with software patents slowing down the pace of innovation in software and in getting those inventions in useful products.

So software patents don't seem to be worth it: they produce no benefit and incur great cost. We're better off without them.

Re:Ironic

[MustardMan]

Yeah, it's almost like the slashdot editors are allowed to voice their own views and not follow a company line set out by the people who own the site. Imagine that, editorial freedom in a news site! What a novel idea!

Re:Something I've never understood...

[Kwil]

I don't think we should be able to patent processes at all.

A process is the ultimate business advantage. If you can come up with it, you deserve to reap the rewards from using it. Not from selling it to or litigating against some other group.

This is where the system breaks down. Some things are not meant to be non-freely shared around society.

Patents should return to whence they came. Physical objects.

Copyrights should return to whence they came. Expression of ideas.

Processes are neither, and therefore shouldn't be covered by either.

Re:So, how many patents has he registered?

[MyLongNickName]

I am not against software patents. I think they are a good thing. However, we seriously need to reconsider what is considered patentable. Some of the approved patents are blatantly absurd, and actually hurt commerce.

Patents are desiged to encourage innovation (as ou rightly point out). But big business has twisted gov't's arm so much that they no longer serve the interests of the people as a whole. For a ridiculous example of COPYRIGHT protection: The 'Happy Birthday' song is still protected... found this out when I wanted to add it to an app I wrote... Patents are similarly absurd.

So, like most other things I fall squarely in the middle of the two camps, and get shot at from both sides.

It's simple...

[Corson]

Back in 80s there wasn't so much patenting going on in Silicon Valley. In those times you needed to innovate and bring the product to the market so fast that you couldn't afford to apply for patents; even two weeks counted on the learning curve. And people became instant milionaires.

Twenty years later, after a recent bumpy ride in the IT sector, investors (who generally understand little in terms of technoloy) would not invest unless they see there is some IP protection -- a.k.a. patents. Hence, the pressure for software patent legislation comming from companies that want to positively attract investor's attention. Big sharks such as M$ shouldn't really need software patents unless everybody else moves in that direction. They also probably learned a lot from big Pharma that patent everything they "discover" and then license those "discoveries" out to smaller companies. It's a different game these days, a different kind of race that, I'm afraid, the small fish (read: open-source developers) will unfortunately lose.

Re:So, how many patents has he registered?

[Ironsides]

If software can't be copyrighted or trademarked (note I do not include patented), here is what would be legal:

I could take a companies software the day it was released, make copies of it and sell it for whatever I wanted. Think Game companies have problems now? Just wait until they can't do anything.

I could make a game called HALF LIFE 2, and sell it online and people would have to worry about buying my game vs. the original game. And the Makers of Half Life couldn't fo jack.

The GPL would become worthless as it relies on copyrights in ordeer to work. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.

I'll agree with you on the Patenting of software (although there might be an option for using it to a limited extent, say 3 years). But copyrights and trademarks of software are necessary.