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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.'
Unfortunately, Linus was immediately sacked for infringing on my patent: Patent 1,234,567: Speaking against software patents in a public forum.
Considering the nature of Microsoft's ongoing assault on Linux, I'm surprised they haven't tried to patent Linus yet.
Most of their patents are hardware, but they do have some software patents.
They do have a strong reliance on the open source community (Mac OS X contains a ton of open source code, as does Safari).
I'm guessing they will in the next year follow IBM's lead an open up a bit.
As to what they will make available, and what they will not, I really don't have a clue. Any guesses welcome.
PLEASE let that term just disappear and never be used again...
The two will likely merge, with today's spam list sellers producing software that is guaranteed to generate 100,000 software patents a day.
And don't dare to delete that spam. You will see a message in it that says "The methodology of pressing a delete screen button or similar control on a web form in order to ignore email advertising is covered under US Patent 4,005,544,202,499,003-A. If you attempt this, you will be charged with a patent violation."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I really dont see what teh problem is: Patents server a purpose, to encourage innovation and to enable you ot I to profit from it. What's wrong with that?
I find it ironic that Slashdot is always slamming software patents, when at the same time, in their company's 10Q and 10K statements, they're discussing how they are going to profit from creating and defending software patents. Beautiful.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
That's the question: when do you say it's too trivial? When do you say it's complex enough to be granted patent protection? It can be determined by the courts, but the patent office makes the initial decision, and if unchallenged, sets a precedent.
A blog like any other.
If this isn't the first time he's spoken out against them, then why is it news?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
It looks like the article picked a few lines out where Linus said that many of the software patents that have been issued shouldn't have, and added a lot of filler to make it look like he's saying that software patents are inherently bad.
I don't see anything in what he said that says that software patents shouldn't ever be issued, only that in a lot of cases, they were issued in violation of the USPTO's own rules.
"Joins the attack" is a bit overzealous, to say the least.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I'm really happy to see this article. I've had programming classes in college and you can be caught for cheating the same way software patents work, if you use the same method or logic to do something. People need to understand that when there's a better way of doing things, everyone should not be strangled for finding and using that method.
Ubuntu, the way linux should be.
Try Ubuntu FREE! --
Surely in some (though obviously not all) cases it would be possible to make the part of the code which would use a patented procedure instead use a plug in, so that the software vendor can supply a non-patented routine, but people who were only interested in the efficiency of the code, or who lived somewhere where the patent didn't apply, could use whatever code they desired?
Hmm.....now I know why my kernel patch submission to him was rejected!
... his reputation allows him to speak with a louder voice than we mortals do. After all, how many people can claim their hobby project morphed into something that makes the übercorpies fear for their market share? I would have expected him of all people to have spoken out sooner though?!?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The Green Party argues that the former patent criteria, which has been abandoned, is adequate in protecting innovation. For example, there's a clause that states that an idea can't be patented if the idea is obvious to a typical practitioner in the field. I recall this from a Green Party interview in a magazine, pardon me for not providing a direct quote.
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.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
"We have hereby launched an invasion of Syria in order to complete an investigation of whether it violated an American citizen's patent on WMD's".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
where do we draw the line between complex and common
The test is that the invention (at the time it was invented) was not obvious to someone skilled in the area/field of the invention. If it was commonly known at the time then it won't qualify. There are other conditions, too, described on the USPTO website. Actually, they say it better than I did: "it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention".
EricSome Vioxx spam humor
Patents would be ok, if they were inventive as required by the law. Unfortunately, there is no way on Earth to measure or judge inventiveness, so all a patent examiner can do is to judge whether the application is novel. Something which any patent application can do as long as it mixes in some new technology, like computers or the internet.
To make things worse, many software patents usually don't come with a useful description of how to actually do stuff, which is sad, since software can be documented by the sourcecode and printed.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Pretty easy, if it does not exist in the patent office, try to push it through and see what happens. About all these companies do anymore. Prior art does not mean squat.
If this trend does not stop there are going to be two groups of software developed. Those corporations of large massive power who have either bought up or squashed with patent lawsuits (and then bought up) and those developers of freeware. What will that mean for consumers? Higher prices or go running for a free alternative.
Who knows, in 20 years, if all the middle competition is destroyed, companies like IBM, Solaris, etc, could go after Linux and GNU because they are cutting into their bottom line.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
From the article (it's one of the fwe lines that's actually about Linus' stance): 'I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions.' That's an interesting remark from someone who is widely seen by others as a 'visionary'. The open source movement is filled with so many self-proclaimed visionaries (RMS, anyone?) that it's quite refreshing to see someone succinctly state he's _not_.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I mean, this is a political problem and I am not sure how Linus is perceived by politicians (outside Finland where he appears to be well-known).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I got the patent #1,234,566: "Stating a public complaint in a public forum about speaking against software patents in a public forum".
You owe me $234,230.95. Pay now, or I'll call my lawyers.
Hey! We don't say "copying".
The nice word is "re-implementing".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Well, thats the whole problem in a nutshell. If only the answer was as simple and short as the question. The whole area is something I didn't take an interest in until I started to realise the consequences.
Now, I take a big interest in it. The fact that law and particularly US law is often so vague and varying from state to state makes it more of a nightmare. One little philosophy I have: If its powered directly by nature, then get your greasy patenting hands off it because it belongs to us all. i.e. windfarms, solar power, quantum mechanics ...
Anyway, anything I ever created, I have included the GPL with it and I always will include either the GPL or something similar and at the very least, compatible.
I have to disagree somewhat.
I don't think we should be able to patent business processes or software processes at all. However manufacturing processes should be patentable.
I'll clarify that a little bit too. The process that should be patentable would be the process for say creating a specific alloy or chemical where it is not simple. Along the lines of non-obvious to someone in the field.
What shouldn't be patentable is the how do I assemble product X
Twenty years later, after a recent bumpy ride in the IT sector, investors (who generally understand little in terms of technoloy) would not invest unless they see there is some IP protection -- a.k.a. patents. Hence, the pressure for software patent legislation comming from companies that want to positively attract investor's attention. Big sharks such as M$ 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.
The headline seems a bit misleading to me since there's only a few quotes from Linus in there:
"Software patents are clearly a problem, and I think it's a problem that the open source community has been pretty aware of for the last five years," said Torvalds. "The good news is that a lot of proprietary vendors are starting to see it as a problem as well."
The last one is pretty good though:
Torvalds was reluctant to make predictions though. "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions," he said. "You don't see what's right in front of your face and you don't see the technical issues that face everyday users."
--
It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free Mini Macs
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
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!
It's downright unamerican!
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
now class don't copy linus's code line for line, read the code and then paraphrase it in your own words.
So then in other words, like the metal which built the John Galt Line?
$
The point is that you should be allowed to benefit from it without your competitors being able to co-opt your idea and benefit from it also. Considering that, unless a market is in a phase of significant growth, a businesses success usually means there are other businesses failing, a new business process that gives you a competitive advantage can make the difference between sink or swim.
Torvalds was reluctant to make predictions though. "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions," he said. "You don't see what's right in front of your face and you don't see the technical issues that face everyday users."
While I don't think he'll ever say it directly, this is as clear as he ever needs to be when it comes to his opinion of RMS.
I think the problem isn't with software patents, it's more with the quite obvious things that we allow to be patented.
Free software is an awesome cause, but for those brilliant minds out there who put in months of work to come up with some new idea, there should be other options than to have to let someone else steal the idea or to keep it completely secret.
I think ideally we'd have a patent system that protected such inventions as RSA and MPEG compression, but recognized that one click billing is not patentable.
What makes spending years coming up with an algorithm that solves the problem of key distribution in encryption unpatentable, but somehow makes it okay to patent the plastic packaging for a razor blade?
I think a process is called 'complex' when it's got a huge 'wow!' factor for a certain group of people, or maybe something that can be used in many different concepts but hasn't been used at all in history...
In software there as idea that problem for which is pattent solution should be presented to groups of skilled programers who have week to find solution. If one of concepts they come up with is close to patent concept, its is dismissed, otherwise it should be granted as non trivial and inovative. (Example: someone tries to patent classical fulltext search as "way to retrieve all data based on simple keyword". programers/engineers get task to find way how to "way to retrieve all data based on simple keyword" - one of them comes out with idea that you can preprocess all data ,extract possible keywords and pair then with data, then make search on them and not data. Which is exactly how patent proposed it to do. Other will simply dig on goole and will find working implementation. RESULT: no patent)
+ they will sometimes generate obscure and new ideas woth of further exploration. this could be werry challenging job and good way to get renome.
- human factor is too high - should someone sponzor whole team to make them lazy about ideas, there is no way it could work.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
a new business process that gives you a competitive advantage can make the difference between sink or swim.
For almost 20 years? Maybe when we're talking car engines here the "mindspace" in inventions is wearing thin enough that someone coming up with a better way of doing it should be rewarded by killing off all the other car makers, but lets take a look at Microsoft, our favorite bogeyman. How many thousands of patents do they have? When was the last time they were driven to innovate in the OS field? Win 3.11 -> Win 95? NT 3.5->4? Everything since then has just been a prettier 95, and 2000 was 95's offspring crossed with NT4's. Meanwhile, they're failing to innovate the features they've promised for Longhorn, and we're watching as Longhorn gets farther and farther away even as it sheds features like a mangy dog. Fat lot of good those thousands of patents are doing them in developing the next generation OS, maybe we should increase the patent length to 30 years so that while Microsoft does jack, they can at least stop other programmers from innovating faster than they can.
No Further patents should be granted until the patent issues and problems are fully worked out and brought to acceptable terms to the entire American Public. This has gotten bad real bad...and it needs to be fixed.
Companies can still submit them for review they just need to realize that it might take 10 years beofre they are approved or rejected while the system gets properly reworked.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
nt
What?
Yeah, now it's called editorial freedom. When it's elsewhere then it's (random insult of the day).
/. bastards... It was time for them to take taste of their own medicine.
The grandparent post is truly hilariuos and a great discovery!
Poor
This is like Red Hat preaching freedom and at the same time boasting to the analysts about the lock-up effect of their Enterprise Linux...
Hah, hah, that's really outstanding!
SCO claimed ownership of Linus Torvalds and is threatening to sue anybody who quotes him.
Just limit their lifespan to, say, 3 years, and don't give out patents for ridiculous shit (one-click shopping anyone?) and there you go - problem solved. Innovators can profit from their innovations, everybody wins.
They will all trip over themselves at some point, and any code you write can always infringe on some software patent.
Here's a proof that any code can infringe on other code (which could be patented).
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I'm talking about unique, hard to produce alloys. Not just mix element A with element B
It used to be that patents were granted because of the originality of an idea, and making sure that the inventor gets some return on their amazing ingenuity. A patent like "virtual shopping cart" issued, for example, in the year 2000, would've been completely pointless as there were countless prior art examples. I think patents are bad because of that one type of patent, not that patents are intrinsically a bad idea.
stuff |
"Anti Patent Attack" were one of my favorite DC straight-edge bands from the 80s. I saw them warm up for Fugazi and they ROCKED! Does anyone know what instrument Torvalds even plays?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Linus joined Transmeta too, and wow, look where they're at now.
If someone develops something new, technology-wise (like a new compression scheme or something), I don't see what the problem is with them patenting it if they so choose. The whole problem is with the over-generalization of some of the existing software/business "process" patents that are such bullshit.
Part of the problem is that the US Patent Office has been lax in granting patents, said Mitchell Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development and a prominent backer of the Mozilla browser. "There have been tens of thousands of bad software patents issued which never would have been issued if the Patent Office had actually been following its own rules," he said.
...
The patent laws make some degree of sense. The patent office does not. The stuff they let through is totally unbelievable.
You can either wait to be hit with an infringement case (not a lot of fun) or you can submit a reexamination request to the PTO.
The worse thing you can do is to read the patents of your competition. Once you do that, you had better react quickly. Willful infringement in the US gets you treble damages.
What a wonderful world we live in
If you can, please show me where I said to throw the whole system out...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Former? Isn't that what the criteria are (supposed to be)?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Where do you draw the line between hardware and software? Hypothetically, if software patents did not exist, could you implement in software a hardware patent to drive a custom built patent-free robot to create a piece of patented hardware?
Are there any ideas as to what is the theoretical difference between hardware and software?
If the difference is that hardware is or creates something physical and software is/does not, then couldn't I just easily port software algorithms into a mechanical device essentially allowing for a hardware patent?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Then again, if it's taken this long for someone to think of mixing A and B, maybe it is novel, albeit in "forehead-slap" fashion.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Last Nov., Linus co-authored an appeal to the EU opposing software parents. Read it at nosoftwarepatents.com. That's about as clear as you can get, I think.
(By the way, don't forget to thank Poland.)
I've been watching out for people with lower UIDs. I'm afraid I may be one of the last double-digits left. I've never fiddled around to see if you could access user pages by id somehow... so you could just step through users or something.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
The only thing protected is the lyrics. The tune is the same as "Good Morning to All" which was written in the 1800's i.e. public domain. There should be no problem including the tune in your app, except to be extra safe you should make the first note split ("Hap-py") into a single note ("Good"). See this discussion.
(1) Software is speech. It enjoys the same copyright protections as an article you see published in a magazine, or a novel you wrote yourself. How would you like it if someone patented the plot line "detective discovers the killer and confronts him, and defeats him in a fistfight"? And 300,000 other various plot lines? Wouldn't that make it hard to write novels without a risk of getting sued?
(2) Software is math. Mathematical algorithms are *discovered*, not invented. Even data structures, communication protocols etc. are governed by specific limitations of the technology involved. Many times there is one clear way (or a few clear ways) which are the "best" way to implement something (usually fails the "non-obvious" test too). Why should one company be able to patent that and lock out the entire industry from using the best technology for 17 years?
(3) The term of patents is too long for software. Patents are a tradeoff: society gives inventor a limited right to prevent other people from profiting from their invention (for 17 years), in exchange society gets the free release of the idea after that time.
(4) No large research costs to recoup. The reasons that patents make sense for the drug industry and other industries, don't apply to software. The effort is all in writing the code, not in trade-secret-producing research. So there's no need for patent incentives to get those secrets out in the open (as businesses are discovering, having the software be open-source in the first place is often more economical anyway).
(5) Software is just different. Writing software involves building on the work and ideas of others--its practically impossible to write software without building on the work of others. It makes no sense to give someone a monopoly on a *necessary building block* that goes into *all sorts of technology* across the industry (such as a compression algorithm). They will just use it as an anti-competitive weapon, a roadblock for their competitors. Society does not benefit from this (and is usually actively harmed).
And last but not least:
(6) A large part of the purpose of the patent system is to "encourage innovation" and the release of the innovations to society. Well guess what? Innovation in software/technology is already occurring at a breakneck pace, and has been for decades. Society can barely keep up. This is *in spite of*, not because of, the software patents. But software patents are posing an increasing threat and if something isn't done about them SOON, the resulting chill in the U.S. will cause all the best hackers to move overseas. (I myself was planning to move to the U.S. but abandoned those plans about a year ago because the changing technology climate there--and your decreasing civil freedoms--are no longer to my taste).
These are just some of the reasons software patents are a problem. I'm sure there's people here who can list many others.
As I have said before: since the Open Source community is not only bigger and probably as innovative as the software developers of any company, it should fully take advantage of the current system.
Open Source should find investors and patent every single patentable software solutions, developed by Open Source projects.
Open Source would be the patent holder and there is a potential market here to charge big corporations for using Open Source owned patents.
The key here, is that Open Source has a huge, very innovative, highly motivated "workforce" - that can be competitive with any corporation.
Once Open Source manage to secure patents on key new technologies, which cost a lot to corporations, we may actually see the corporations to lobby for anti-patent legislation.
While those corporations finally get the lawmakers to scrap software patent laws, Open Source could have a healthy cash-flow from patent licencing to fund even more projects.
++just an other open.random idea++
When they will grant a patent for getting a cat to chase a laserpointer
I think it should be obvious that USPTO doesn't really have the ability to judge whether or not a patent is merited. How can granting patents willy-nilly help things?
For software of all things?
As mentioned above.. you can own it on your own all you like. Don't share it.
Patents on an invention make sense because in order to realize a profit on it you have to distribute it, which allows for copying.
Patents on processes make no sense, because you do not have to distribute the process in order to realize a profit from it. If the process is so simple that any customer can see it and apply it, then by its very nature it does not pass the "non-obvious" test you mention.
As such, there is no justification to patent processes. Those the consumer can't ascertain you realize profit from by utilization, those that the consumer can ascertain are not worthy of patent protection.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I find it hard to believe that there are even 150,000 to 300,000 software applications in the US.
Half of those are patents for each menu item in Microsoft Office.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I believe that the criterion for non-obviousness is that a team of experts in the subject area working on the specific problem for which the patent provides a solution, needs more than one day to come up with the solution.
Of course, the problem is that the patent office employees are not experts in the subject area, and still need to judge non-obviousness. That's patently impossible.
Although it seems to me that even a patent office employee should recognise that to the problem of having to click multiple times to make a web purchase, the solution of letting the user make a purchase with only one click is quite obvious.
Amazon: "Ya see, if you want to purchase this book, normally you'd have to click at least five buttons. Now, we do this with just ONE click!"
Certain group of people: "WOW!"
Just copied my post from below:
As mentioned above.. you can own it on your own all you like. Don't share it.
Patents on an invention make sense because in order to realize a profit on it you have to distribute it, which allows for copying.
Patents on processes make no sense, because you do not have to distribute the process in order to realize a profit from it. If the process is so simple that any customer can see it and apply it, then by its very nature it does not pass the "non-obvious" test.
As such, there is no justification to patent processes. Those the consumer can't ascertain you realize profit from by utilization (ala Coke), those that the consumer can ascertain are not worthy of patent protection (ala 1-Click).
As an aside, you do realize that by equating business methods with "expressions of ideas" you are agreeing with me that they should not be patentable?
That aside though, I disagree that business processes are an expression of an idea. They are the idea itself. Copyright does not (and should not) protect the idea. The idea of a monster sucking blood is not protected because Anne Rice has the copyright to "The Vampire Lestat", her specific expression of it is.
If you can show me a business process where the only protection required is on the specific expression (such as the specific code for a 1-click shopping system), and not the idea itself, you may have a point.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The co-called competitive advantages you speak of are what drive innovation. Being first in the market place with an idea or a process that nets a specific result carries a lot of weight as it is. A second (or third, or fourth runner) is already facing an uphill battle. That being the case, they can't just do what you're doing, they have to make it even better- that's where the innovation comes from.
If you think that it's just a matter of paying a licensing fee to the one who allegedly originated a specific method, that, along with the patent itself, will make it pretty difficult for competitors from the start. I'd argue that companies that aren't interested in competition, don't belong in a competitive marketplace.
Me, I'm mostly in the hate 'em camp. Nevertheless, right now I'm in the middle of writing a software patent application for a new startup company. A "patent pending" bullet point on the funding presentation will, I've been told, greatly increase the chances that venture capitalists will be willing to pony up some money. That's true even though the success or failure of this company (like most others) will have far more to do with execution, both on the technical side and the business side, than the originality of the idea.
I'd rather not see any software patents at all, but there seems very little point in refusing to patent this idea on principle and risking getting sued down the road by someone else who doesn't share that principle. Even if you can prove prior art, you still have to sit in a courtroom to do it, not a productive use of time.
You just don't trust egotistical megalomaniacs. Remember, you are a visionary in your own anti-megalomaniac way. ;)
I note the comment that there are 'an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 registered software patents in the US alone'.
The reason for the range is that no one knows what a software patent is. If you look at research on this subject, you'll find all kinds of different definitions. Some use key words, some look at patent classifications. The large patent numbers may just reflect the fact that many devices built today are digital and have a software component. They might be patented regardless of any patent software restrictions.
The large numbers in the U.S. may also simply reflect the fact that the U.S. doesn't require the patent writer to hide the fact that the patent relates to software. Where software patents are not allowed, the patent writer may just hide the fact that it's got a software aspect by calling it a "method" or "system" and include some nominal hardware.
Also, patents aren't "registered" - the correct word is "granted." "Registration" is for copyrights and trademarks, not patents. The word "registered" implies a process of recording preexisting rights.
An author has inherent copyright rights in any work he authors. A business has trademark rights when it uses a trademark to idnetify goods and distinguish those goods from goods sold by others. They have the option, but not the obligation to register their copyright or trademark (and such registration typically affords them even more rights.)
In contrast, an inventor does not have inherent patent rights that can be simply "registered." Patent rights must be "granted" and they are only granted after an examination.
A lot of us. His kernel didn't just "morph" into a full-featured OS with lots of applications. What we now know as Linux or GNU/Linux was the project of a lot of people.
Releasing all these patents might be a good thing, if only in that it serves to illustrate the absurdity of the current software patent system.
Like many of you, I've thought for years that we need to do something. Unfortunately, I feel powerless.
I develop software. I'm not a lawyer. I don't think like a lawyer. Nor do I have the time to think like a lawyer --I'd rather be writing software. But it's become so frustrating sitting back and watching the US patent office hand out patents for the things programmers use day-to-day.
If we don't put an end to this soon, I predict we'll one day reach a point where we'll have to pay royalties to perform 99% of the operations our software will perform. Wouldn't that be fun?
My lame blog.
My thought is that preventing software patenting while allowing copyrighting ensures that a second party does not steal code from the first party and market it as their own; or, at least, has a remedy available if that happens. It does allow two entities to compete to produce a similar product based upon the same technology which is of benefit to the consumer. (At least, I heard that once in an class on capitalism.)
What about the company who invented the technology and their investment? IANAP(rogrammer) but I expect that good code takes time to write. (If it doesn't, then how innovative is it?) If a second party cannot use the copywrited code, which they already cannot, then they will have to write their own. This gives the developing company time to establish its product in the market, giving them an advantage but not a consumer lock that, considering how patents are used, may as well be until the end of time. At the same time, a second company will not be precluded or sued out of existence for developing a better product and perhaps developing further innovations in the technology in the process.
As a final question, does anyone know if EFF or anyone else has brought legal action demonstrating that software patents stifle rather than encourage innovation?
"I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions. You don't see what's right in front of your face and you don't see the technical issues that face everyday users."
Linus is starting to rival Larry Wall in the clever-quote department.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I agree with you. In a few years, the independent developer will likely either have to approach an established company that might be interested in commercializing his/her product under the umbrella of their legal department, or risk losing everything once the product hits the market without any kind of IP protection.
Patenting a business method allows the inventor to profit by licensing the method to other businesses. Clearly methods will be less likely to be shared if patenting is not allowed, and if good methods are not shared, the economy is less efficient.
Distributing a business method may actually be the inventor's ONLY way to profit from the invention; you don't have to own a profitable business to invent a business method. You may own an unprofitable business, or you may own no business at all.
Business methods are as much an expression of ideas as manufacturing processes or other patentable intellectual properties. Don't get confused here; a patent requires reducing an idea to practice-- a combination of components, a sequence of steps, whatever-- but it's still an expression of an idea.
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Congratulations. That's the best troll I've seen in weeks.
Of the 150,000 - 300,000 software patents
45,000 - 90,000 are estimated to be duplicates of other patents
30,000 - 60,000 consist of a commonly-used manual technique implemented "using a device consisting of a CPU, a monitor, and an operating system"
20,000 - 40,000 of those include an additional claim of "The device in claim 1, where the operating system is a version of Microsoft Windows"
25,000 - 50,000 consist of a common technique now done "on the Internet".
25,000 - 50,000 consist of techniques invented and published decades ago by E.W. Dijkstra, Donald Knuth, or Claude Shannon.
10,000 - 20,000 are written in such obscure and/or nonstandard language that it's impossible to figure out exactly what they cover
14,999 - 29,999 are "submarine" patents not made public until long after the invention was in wide use.
The last one is the RSA patent, and it's expired.
for the time being EU will remain free of software patents
:)
more info on groklaw
happy to live in EU
Uh, what about, um, whatchamacallit, Taligant and the Pink operating system?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is interesting coming from a person who is a co-inventor on three patents held by Transmeta, listed below. All of these patents claim a software component or algorithm that could hamper the process of writing binary translation software. Some of the claims are not even novel (or non-obvious IMHO). This could easily affect open source software like qemu, valgrind and various JIT virtual machines.
Linus' patents:
6,714,904 "System for using rate of exception event generation during execution of translated instructions to control optimization of the translated instructions"
6,615,300 "Fast look-up of indirect branch destination in a dynamic translation system"
6,594,821
"Translation consistency checking for modified target instructions by comparing to original copy"
I don't think these people are generally against patents, I think they're against prohibiting competition. If a person were to take someone else's novel and rewrite it in their own language, that would be called plagiarism. I don't see why we call the same thing involving software "theft". It takes a hell of a long time to write programs and novels, so why can't we protect them?
examination, and payment of a 'tax'. No patent unless you keep up the 'tax' payments.
I say patents should last a specific amount of time, and once patented, it cannot be so again.
For example, Ford obtains patent for round lights. Patent expires on one year. Round lights may never be patented again.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Hardware? So what? That didn't stop IBM, did it? I mean, seriously, how more "hardware" can you get than donating a patent for Tamper proof set screw, "A device for preventing unauthorized access to a rotating shaft," for use by open source software? Wait a second, I've just read the list of those 500 IBM's patents, and there is also one for Methods and apparatus for exploiting virtual buffers! Don't use it! It's a trap!!!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Without software patents, the large established companies will tell the small startups with valid new inventions to go fuck themselves rather than meeting them at the bargaining table. "Thanks for the idea, now go fuckoff while we create copycat products and use our sales force to crush you out of existence."
And this is opposed to current practice, where a small startup with a valid invention is granted a software patent. They go to market with their product, only to find Microsoft (say) decides to clone their product and enter the market. They sue Microsoft. Microsoft then says, "oh, maybe we do violate your patent. Trouble is, you violate 70 of our software patents. You will now give us a license to your patent, or we will shut down your product." Small inventors and small startup companies do not get protection from patents unless they produce nothing that can be attacked on patent grounds. That leaves small companies to register for patents, get the patent, and then sue to license the patents to the big boys. Should it be the case that only the big companies can write software? I think not. But that's what we're looking at today.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
...Why Software Patents are not patentable
But you really already know this... Don'tcha?!
okay I have patented microsoft bashing on slashdot so anybody that bashes microsoft has to pay me. buaaaaagghhhhhhh!!!
When people talk about patents it WOULD actually be best for the world if there were no patents.
Think about this, there would be companies spying on eachother and just FLYING at the speed of thought into progress. EACH idea about a new process would get spread as fast as the spys could preach this new idea. Then MORE people involved in the industry could invent upon this invention even FASTER.
--This breaks down in the real world because of resources. It takes time and money to set up a factory. LOTS. Then people needed to recoup their losses for BUILDING the plant and still invent more. This is where patenting comes in, 20 years is an ok time frame for recouping and some profit.
As a previous poster mentioned in software development the ONLY THING NEEDED is time. Well, time and a compiler. And some 1337 skillz. I have no doubt in my mind that if 50 people decided to code full time for 20 years on any project, shit would fly. ALL the shitty projects would go up in smoke, and the best projects would get improved and improved. It's funny how as an INDUSTRY everything slows down.
Before industry there is innovation. (my quote.)
Peace out and relax. Take your stand against patents and have fun.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Former?
"Former" being a refference to patents on physical objects and physical processes. That, as opposed to the "new" notion of patents on math and sequences of mental steps, or often even on physical media carrying a written description of that math / description of that sequence of mental steps.
Former = traditional patents on inventions.
New = patents on inventions + patents on logic. Also known as software patents.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Here's a proof that any code can infringe on other code (which could be patented).
Um, yeah. Thanks for clearing that up.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
no, I'm not trollin
Ok, I'll assume you weren't trolling. However when you open a post with something flagrantly wrong it can easily look like trolling. In particular your original post started with:
Patents and copyrights aren't some kind of privilege granted by the government or the people. They're an inherent right.
Flagrantly wrong.
First let me appologize if you are not American, as I am going to cite US law. I can only competently discuss and cite US law.
The Supreme Court explicitly ruled that there is no inherent right to copy rights. I am not familiar with of any explict similar comment on patents, but copyrights and patents have the exact same origin in US law and by implication the same is true of patents.
Legally the natural state of information (including the subject matter of copyrights and patents) is in the public domain. To the extent that it is "property" it is naturally public property. The constitution then grants congress the power - if they choose to do so - to create copyright and patent law. Specifically to seize certain limited rights from the public, for a limited time, and to turn those rights over to the creator. Patents and copyrights. It only includes the specific rights we choose to include and may only be for a limited time. And it may only be done for the purpose of promoting progress and benefiting the public. The Supreme Court has REPEATED ruled that profits or other benefit to the creator are an invalid purpose for such law. To the extent they do tend to focus on profits and benefits for creators it is only a means to an end, it may NOT be an end in itself. Profits to creators is merely an incentive to get people to create and publish that creation to the public domain.
Your view of copyrights and patents is backwards. Do you need me to dig up links to explict court rulings? I have some around here somewhere. I have read quite a few court rulings on quite a few subjects.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You can copyright your code.
Apparenlty a lot of people are under the delusion that if anybody can see their code then it is in the public domain or it is GPL. Actually you can let people see it but not use it. The GPL is in fact a grant of an exception to the normal state where you cannot reuse the code.
They could reimplement it, but most real inventions and work would be quite intricate algorithims and tables of data (for instance a program to speak natural language) and nobody could reuse anything really valuable without violating copyright.
You said, "The Supreme Court explicitly ruled that there is no inherent right to copy rights."
This proves nothing, as the Supreme Court has made many other silly rulings.
The right to control the distribution of your intellectual property is the SAME right as the right to control your physical property, whether the government-- or you-- recognizes the equivalence or not.
Once again, patents and copyrights are society's way to encourage, reward, and protect the rights of creators in exchange for making their creations public. We could accomplish the same goal with confidentiality agreements signed and witnessed before a person is allowed to learn a patentable method or receive a copy of a book. We DO this, in fact, with some kinds of creations that are felt to be too important to publish. But that solution would be impractical for most kinds of intellectual property, so we have the simpler mechanisms of patent and copyright.
Copyrights, software patents, and business-method patents serve a useful purpose. They are not always an alternative to open source or public-domain distribution; sometimes they're an alternative to complete secrecy, which would prevent all of us from building on the accomplishments of others.
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The putz who modded my post as a troll will get his reward eventually, but in the meantime, I'd appreciate a couple of positive mod points so more people will see this important series of comments. Thanks in advance.
Actually, only the lyrics are protected.
You can freely use the music (Good Morning to All) with no lyrics (or your own).
Check Exposing the Happy Birthday story.
Happy adding to your app
Enrique
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
IBM makes the PowerPC chips Apple uses. I don't know what happened but when the PowerPC was first developed there was originally was a third company working on it as well, Motorola.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The point is that you should be allowed to benefit from it without your competitors being able to co-opt your idea and benefit from it also. Considering that, unless a market is in a phase of significant growth, a businesses success usually means there are other businesses failing, a new business process that gives you a competitive advantage can make the difference between sink or swim.
This us usually called trade secrets and are normally covered under some form of contract law between the company and the employee or company and another company. You don't need to patent a trade secret- someone else mentioned Coke's secret recipe, I'll throw KFC's secret recipe and other similar items into the mix- trade secret, not patentable. But if someone sold it to a competitor it would be detrimental to Coke/KFC and they could sue for business damages.
Okay, my stance on software patents is that they are impossible to enforce uniformly. Windows XP has billions and billions of lines of code. Each line of code is a completely uniquely designed manufactured object. What mechanical device could be compared to that? The preposterousness of using $35 million dollars to analyze the work of billions of dollars of software coding should be obvious to all--legal analysis of a body of code is more difficult and expensive than actual analysis. The problem is that too many of things that get patented are things that could have been invented by undergrad interns like one-click shopping--or like probably all computer-human interface design patents ever issued--but require years of man-hours of highly educated labor to actually prove the uniqueness of.
Indeed, even if you are correct that slashdotters know nothing about patents, doesn't this once again prove my point with your words? Because many of these slashdotters are the ones writing the code covered by these patents to begin with.
The USPTO and legal sytem may work hard, but they've been assigned an impossible task. Rather than own up to that, they instead, by necessity, become completely arbitrary. They rationally satisfice by giving incomplete analysis to their work, because there is no possible way we could afford to pay them enough to TRULY analyze all code fairly and equitably without doubling our GDP.
In any event, "prior art means already patented" IS true in the real world 99.9% of the time, whatever the law says, whatever token motions various legal and executive entities go through occasionally. Not to mention that the ambiguities of prior art are nothing compared to the ambiguities of obviousness.
If you want to argue that USPTO isn't to blame for this, I guess I might agree. The system as it exists is arbitrary because it cannot be any other way. If the system was NOT arbitrary and unfair, there wouldn't be any reason to oppose software patents. The only reason I DON'T have to call a lawyer everytime I right a line of code is because all corporations now consider patent violation an unpredictable cost of doing business--software firms cannot also afford to become legal firms. Even Microsoft, no friend of slashdot, is learning that with many of the lawsuits against them.
This is precisely the type of argument that's so popular on Slashdot whenever someone expresses religious faith, and it is precisely the argument I offer in response to your unwillingness to consider that the documented statues and established practice of the USPTO are not what you have somehow come to believe.
Speaking of religious faith, your post reminds me of a theologian telling us that we must believe in God because we haven't spent anywhere near as many years studying the Bible that he did. Theologians and lawyers alike cannot stand when someone dares to cut their Gordian knot and note that the whole thing is based on premises of doubtful soundness. In the case of the legal system, the whole concept of rational satisficing is an immense threat to their future job security--many applications of legal analysis will cost more than the resulting benefits to society of said analysis.
Once upon a time, medieval theologians were also Master and Commander of society. Beware the wheel of fortune.
Perhaps, but ENFORCING patents is not the job of the USPTO.
Windows XP has billions and billions of lines of code. Each line of code is a completely uniquely designed manufactured object.
You can say so, but this is completely false under 35 USC 101 and related case law.
The preposterousness of using $35 million dollars to analyze the work of billions of dollars of software coding should be obvious to all--legal analysis of a body of code is more difficult and expensive than actual analysis.
Probably true. Notice that I said $35 million to hire new examiners. I'm not sure what the total budget for the USPTO is, but rest assured it's at least several hundred million. Further, your observation is correct but the conclusion is incorrect. It is unreasonable to expect the USPTO to perform a perfect, flawlessly exhaustive search of the prior art on every application - during infringement lawsuits, it is common for the defense to spend over $100,000 and a man-year of work in this very endeavor, whereas the USPTO collects $1000-2000 and allows the examiners to take about 15-20 hours. This is because the USPTO was never intended to produce a perfect, flawlessly exhaustive search. The examination process, as it regards prior art, has always been and always will be (for the forseeable future) a coarse sieve. In general, the examination process is supposed to prevent ludicrously weak patents from being issued, not to ensure that every patent is completely perfect.
Of course, everybody makes mistakes sometimes, and when mistakes happen, the USPTO has an established practice and procedure to reopen examination of patents if the situation warrants it.
Additionally, a little understood fact about a patent is that an issued patent is completely and literally worthless unless it can withstand a validity challenge in an infringement suit. The USPTO can conduct their $1000, 20 hour search and issue a patent that YOU and I both know is not novel. NO BIG DEAL.++ If the assignee tries to ENFORCE that patent, it will immediately be invalidated. This is how the system has worked for over a hundred years - to "fix" this would mean filing for a patent would cost in the neighborhood of $100,000 regardless of whether or not it eventually issues - and that's a solution I would rather not have.
The problem is that too many of things that get patented are things that could have been invented by undergrad interns like one-click shopping--or like probably all computer-human interface design patents ever issued--but require years of man-hours of highly educated labor to actually prove the uniqueness of.
Hm, but there's nothing anywhere that says something that an undergrad intern came up with shouldn't be patentable. Additionally, the problem with rejecting such applications with prior art is often not because the examiner must prove the uniqueness, but rather because he only has so much time to find adequate disclosure of the invention with a solid date. Simply KNOWING that the one-click shopping technique was well known in the past is meaningless - if the examiner cannot find a clearly dated reference that discloses the claimed invention, in as much detail as the applicant chooses (defined by his original application), then the patent must issue.
Also, just for the record, "obvious" under 35 USC 103 has basically nothing to do with the word "obvious" in the dictionary. I wish it weren't so, but wishing isn't worth much. "Obvious" under 35 USC 103 basically means you have two (or more, but hopefully only two) references that can be combined to teach the claimed invention, plus documented evidence (in either reference, or less preferably, a third reference) that suggests they should be combined for some advantage, plus all the references come from related arts. You won't find that in a dictionary...
I
You can say so, but this is completely false under 35 USC 101 and related case law.
I wasn't making a legal statement at all. It was simple fact--Windows XP has billions of lines of code, or so Microsoft tells us. Each line of code represents distinct intellectual labor on the part of Microsoft employees. You can deny this, but you're basically passing a law declaring pi to be 3, as the urban legend goes. Or like the fabled king who declared that the tides should stop.
If more people at Slashdot understood that, and spoke from that perspective, it would be a HUGE step toward forming some constructive criticism of the system and putting pressure to fix it where it belongs - on judges and congressmen.
Well, it's not the average slashdotter's job (and it's DEFINITELY not a job for a curmudgeon like me) to actually lobby judges and congressmen personally. We kinda smell funny. There are tech activist lawyers who actually know how things work, and they go and do it, sometimes with stinky donations from us. But here's the thing. The core problem is not a legal one, but an economic one.
I don't question the internal legal consistency of patent law, I'm saying it is unworkable in the real world. The whole problem can be boiled down to one economic reality--legal analysis of code is 90% of the time harder than actually writing it. Surely lawyers would agree--that's why they make more money than computer programmers.
Sadly, this contradicts the primary fixations of both legal and economics communities. In fact, the latter is far worse than the former. Too many of them refuse to accept that a commons can be more efficient than a regulated market if costs of compliance outweigh benefits.
It's just a bunch of turf wars. Lawyers, judges, congressmen, and economists can't simply retreat and admit that their presence in a market may actually be more expensive than their worth. It's all about sphere of influence. Some folks in the USPTO may realize the problem, but do they dare go before Congress and admit they should be doing less rather than more in one narrow field?
It might be better world if slashdotters and people in general participated more in our governing process, but as to whether that would actual help this issue, I do not have much faith there. To get bogged down in the actual letter of the law seems counter-productive--our sentiment is generally fueled by utilitarianism, not legal interpretation.
What DOES give me hope is the rising anti-patent and anti-big business (and sadly anti-American) tide of opinion in some other countries. Europe and Australia, to my understanding, still haven't adopted software patents (and probably not gene patents either), and if it eventually turns out that a great number of software products are available in other countries but not in America, (perhaps Linux itself one day?) that's really the only hope we have of changing the law here.
Anyway, like I say, I always act like a jerk on the internet for no reason other than it's the internet and that's what you're supposed to do (though I think whoever invented road rage has prior art on that), but it has been cool talking with you, so if you're still reading this (I'll check back), best of luck with your readings!
Oh, one other thing
This is how the system has worked for over a hundred years - to "fix" this would mean filing for a patent would cost in the neighborhood of $100,000 regardless of whether or not it eventually issues - and that's a solution I would rather not have.
I don't feel as strongly about this as I do about software patents, but I think that's actually the ideal solution. The person applying for a patent, the person who actually benefits from the patent, should pay the full costs of that patent. If the benefits of the patent don't outweigh the complete costs of enforcement throughout the legal system, then issuing that patent is just a drain on our economy. That alone would probably solve a great deal (not all) of the problems with patents.
The problem is that patents, and especially sw-patents do NOT encourage innovation and just enable you (?) and especially megacorps with huge portfolios to profit from it. That's wrong with it.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Yes, ok so that is how it is described in the US law, but in other countries the words "height of invention" are being used to describe much the same thing. So I keep up my argument.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.