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IBM Calls for Patent Reform
daria42 writes "IBM has called for tighter regulation of patents and a review of intellectual property ownership issues in collaborative software development. The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States. IBM executive Jim Stallings said examining patents for prior art should not only be the job of the patent office but that the wider community should be involved. Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents."
It seems IBM's argument is that there are way too many patent applications being submitted to accurate evaluate them. Their solution:
IBM's antidote to the problem is to increase the scope of the investigation into 'prior art' associated with software patents. Stallings believes that sort of undertaking is something the academic community, volunteers and others are willing to help in.
Something obviously must be done to fix this problem but I'm not sure how the proposed system would work. As soon as "volunteers" have the ability to submit prior art challenges to patent applications, you'll likely see as many or more prior art challenges than patent applications. Who's going to evaluate the prior art challenges AND the patent applications then?
I'm a big tall mofo.
And what about going back to the good ol' days when you had to provide a basic working implementation of your potentially patented thingie, instead of just having an idea of what may work in the future?
"There are others who believe that no software patents are valid," he added. We certainly don't believe in that, because we have many thousands of software patents and customers trust us to be the true owners of those, so we believe it is somewhere in the middle that is appropriate for laws to govern behaviour around patents."
It's nice to see a large company choosing the middle path. Patents aren't entirely a bad thing (although I would rather do away with them altogether than keep the current system) and as with most arguments there are certainly two or more legitimate sides to this. One thing is for sure, we definitely need better review of patents and it certainly seems to me that they are right about the community being willing to help find prior art.
Largest patent owner in the world thinks there should be reform...
This is EXACTLY what we need to happen. These are the types of companies that actually have the ability to change things. The fact that they happen to hold a lot of patents themselves and still want reform just adds more weight to the argument that the current system is fscked.
Dear Patent Lawyers,
Could you please justify by reply in moderate detail the supposed net benefit to society (rather than just to corporations) of software patents explaining why you think that extending the patent system to cover software is not harmful both to society and to freedom of expression given the case of an open-source software developer who, as a result of
is threatened with a patent lawsuit by a corporation demanding he/she removes the allegedly infringing software from the project's website, leaving the impoverished developer with no real choice but to comply with the demand and close the project?
One recent unresolved case, which is not unique, is that of the German mathematician and open-source software developer Helmut Dersch who had no financial choice but to remove his software from his project website. He had no money to pay for a patent application at the time of his own inventions, which pre-date the patent application of the IPX company , to to pay for a lawyer to challenge the company which threatened him with the prospect of a lawsuit.
Here is a summary of the case history.
I hope you will take the time to reply at moderate length for the sake of explaining to the open-source developer community why software patents are not a threat to completely unfunded open-source projects.
Thank you for reading this. If you are a patent lawyer, please mention that fact in your reply here.
Last posted here without a reply from any patent lawyers reading slashdot.
Please copy and re-post this message in all available forums until at least one patent lawyer has the courtesy to write a thorough reply.
IBM is really doing the industry a good job by actually sticking their own neck in regards to leadership, checks and ballances.
So, when can we expect an IBM flavor of Linux? IBM knows how to market software and has had experience with OS2 Warp. Now they just need their own destro to go along with their support of open source software.
Life is not for the lazy.
The company that patented "first come first serve" wants to reform the patent system?! What, did they finally run out of blatantly obvious ideas? Or is Microsoft gaining ground in patenting such ideas, which scares IBM somehow? Or is it the Japanese who are catching up?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The very fact that IBM does indeed have a ton of patents, yet still wants tighter reviews over patenting procedures and improvements over the current guidelines means that they are even looking towards their own current patents.
It would be one thing for a company without patents to scream "The patent system is screwed!!! fix it!", leaving everyone calling that company a whiner.
But it another thing when a company with tons of patents says the exact same thing, even if the reformation change can hurt them. This means they are willing to take losses of their own for the benefit of the patent process.
Here's the problem. In order to patent something, it must be either something completely new, or a novel enhancement on something that already exists. The problem that exists, is that companies can simply take something that already exists, and add "On The Internet" to it. We as tech savvy people see this as a big copp out, and think these patents of bogus. Well, it becomes really hard to figure out when doing X on the internet really is novel, while doing Y on the internet is not. If taking one thing and adding "On The Internet" is a valid patent, then taking any thing and adding "On The Internet" should work.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Whereas the patent portfolio for Amazon is filled with things like "one click shopping" or whatever, IBM has always done *EXTENSIVE* research. They make chips, and have a gambit of patents associated with them. They even work on things like teleportation for crying out loud. Yes - like "beam me up, Scott" type teleportation.
No - IBM isn't Dell, a company that has never come up with anything new and does little else other than figure out the cheapest way to produce something. IBM isn't even a Microsoft, a company based entirely off taking someone else's ideas and implimenting them in proprietary ways (a compnay whose only real contribution is getting platforms and applications to work together well). Instead, IBM is very very heavily research-based. IMO, it's perfectly valid for IBM to have a vast # of patents, considering how much research it does. Dollar per research dollar, I'm willing to be it doesn't have all that many more per year than anyone else - they just put more dollars into it.
With that in mind - suggesting they're the pot calling the kettle black is a bit of a stretch. They've got a lot of patent experience sure (there's a nice soft word for it, eh?) but back to that dollar per research dollar thing...
If Cornell and Harvard got together and tried to get higher education to be more affordable for all Americans, would their intent be questioned simply because they're a couple of the more expensive schools? I pay $30k a year for my wife to go to vet school at Cornell. It's very painful. Cornell knows it, and is sympathetic to a degree...I know they would have loved to have seen Clinton's promised education costs reforms.
Same bit. IBM does a lot of research, gets a lot of patents. Simply because they have a lot of patents doesn't invalidate their opinion that there is abuse of the patent system.
The company that patented "first come first serve" wants to reform the patent system?! What, did they finally run out of blatantly obvious ideas?
...and maybe they realized "Gee, this is a really fucked up system when we have to run around patenting every variation of the obvious so noone else will and sue us over it? IBM hss countless patents, but they have been using them to protect their own innovations. IBM isn't afraid of other big companies since they can probably find a bunch of patents they mutually infringe on. I rhink they're seeing a system which is so out of hand, that all companies that work with innovation are suffering. Including, but not limited to themselves.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah, there really needs to be a public comment period for patents before they are granted, but I think that the patent office is more interested in collecting fees than being correct.
Also (AFAIK), IBM tends not to file patents if they dont think they will hold up in court. And they dont do nasty tricks (like submarine patents). Plus, they did just give a whole bunch of patents (microprocessor and chipset related I think) to the Open Source community. And remember that IBM is not just a software company (they do make computers, microprocessors and other stuff too) and that IBMs patents cover those areas as well as their software development.
On the other hand, some (like Microsoft) patent anything and everything just because the patent system is so screwed up that they can.
By far the biggest supporters of the current stuffed system would have to be Microsoft (who are tyring to find something they can use to bring down Open Source Software like the Linux kernel, Apache, GCC etc that wont get them in anti-trust hot-water) and Sun (who want too let people mess with Solaris so that sun can get a better operating system out of it but who dont want all the "good bits" or "patented bits" ending up in projects like the Linux Kernel)
Now, I agree with IBM, patent-hoarders that don't have products and just rape people who need patent licensing suck. But I think that's not evidence of the badness of patent-hoarders; it's evidence of the badness of patents. IBM can rape you just as bad if you don't have any patents to license back to them. Patents are a profit center, though, so you won't hear IBM advocating toasting them entirely. Instead, IBM is going to a crazy space where their intellectual property isn't even exactly property anymore--you presumably can't sell it to just anybody (e.g. a hoarder, or at least, you won't sell it to them since it's worthless to them).
IMO, the biggest problem, as always, is the focus on prior art instead of insisting on a fairly high obviousness barrier (or a low barrier for accepting re-invention as not being covered by a patent).
Makes you wonder, doesn't it? I speculate that IBM -- long used to being the patent holder of record -- is finding out that the very patent sytem that it took advantage of by "patent app bombing" is coming back upon them. They may be doing too much cross- or outright-licensing with other patent holders. (I'm sure IBM expects people to license patents from TEHM, not the other way around.) And I also speculate that IBM is finding out the overhead costs of patent investigation are rising, since the approval system is a rubber-stamp machine that doesn't adequately evaluate patent validity.
I have few illusions that IBM is doing this latest protest out of the goodness of their tiny, shriveled, black hearts.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
IBM's position on patents is not arbitrary.
They do a lot of research, so hold many patents, in software and other domains. I'd say that most of these patents are well-researched and original, and even if we don't like software patents, IBM's are generally the least obnoxious.
They sponsor a fair amount of open source, through the Apache Foundation. Sure, this could stop tomorrow.
But, they have started to rely on open source as the basis for many of their lucrative services. IBM has really aimed at ending their own software development and replacing much of the expensive and risky software research by much cheaper and more efficient open source.
And who is most threatened by all this open source? It's Microsoft, who has also been the only significant competitor to IBM in the last two decades.
Microsoft is desperately collecting patents because it can see no other weapon or strategy to stop the open source revolution. IBM sees what Microsoft is doing - trying to collect patents that will harm open source projects.
So IBM is (a) protecting its own investment in patents, by preparing arguments why the entire software patent scheme should not be scrapped, and (b) aiming a warning shot at Microsoft and other patent freaks to behave, or they will be the target of non-trivial lawsuits.
IBM wants, finally, to make its patents open for open source, which it feels creates significant value for its own branded services, while preventing commercial competitors from using them.
This is not a random strategy, and it's unlikely to change over the next 20 years. If anything, expect IBM to defend open source use of patents, while trying to keep software patents "clean" so that it has the most weaponry against competitors like Microsoft.
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Exactly.
1) Open Source programmers don't give much thought to patents. They even actively avoid them, so any violations are purely accidental, not from "contamination" or some shit.
Now, since embracing Open Source, IBM is now in a bit of a pickle, since they're in a prime position to get sued over these patents. A tighter patent system means IBM is free(r) to engage in open source without the same level of risk.
2) IBM is a big research organisation; they're into real patents. The kinds that other companies want to licence, not the kinds those lesser companies get sued for after accidentally reinventing the same thing.
IBM's business is all Signal, and filtering out the Noise is just good business for them.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
IBM spends billions on R&D every year. They are one of the companies that actually invents the things it patents. Gerstner finished what Akers started - heavy investment in R&D. Only Gerstner was able to turn that into a royalties payoff. Now just about every chip manufactured today employs IBM-invented technologies. So, they're in a much better position to follow Gerstner's mantra - "it doesn't matter who's box the customer uses, as long as IBM gets paid."
Patent abuse tends to dilute IBM's position as a R&D-to-royalties focused technology company. They are simply protecting their position. I suspect other R&D-heavies (HP, GE, etc.) will back this, if they're smart.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Why? IBM plays by the current rules of the game BUT IBM also wants the rules to change. There is nothing two-faced there. In fact I believe this is the only way they can really go here: If some IBM big shots decided to one-sidedly start 'playing fair', they'd probably be sued by their stock holders.
If you've read patents, you know how vague and dry they usually are. If you think you're going to get volunteers and the academic community to do prior art research for you in a structured way, on all patent applications, you're nuts.
I can understand IBM's interest in patent reform. Maintaining a patent portfolio like theirs is not cheap, and they're a giant litigation target. Given their R&D, they're likely going to remain the 800-pound gorilla in patents no matter what the rules are.
A much better solution would be to place more of the burden of the patent process on the applicant, in a way that's easily verifiable. If an applicant was forced to more thoroughly justify why their work is exceptional, with a bias towards granting a patent as specific to the reference implementation as possible, we'd see fewer applications, which would give more review time to the examiners, and less patent collision, where multiple vague patents cover the same thing.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
People are responding to this with examples of IBM's own patentorial misdemeanors, pointing to the fact that they themselves hold numerous trivial patents. I feel that even though this may be the case, it doesn't necessarily invalidate their position on software patents as proclaimed here. To survive under the current patent system IBM has ofcourse seen it necessary to play dirty themselves, and there is a possibility that they do not like it, even though they are a part of it. Yielding the market to companies of possibly lower moral fiber would i no circumstances help on the matter. Cax
"Could you please justify by reply in moderate detail the supposed net benefit to society..."
That's far enough - there's no need to even mention open source or free software projects: the onus is on those who are proponents of software patents (or any other kind of patent) to show that they promote progress in the sciences and useful arts. It must be demonstrated by them that the overall effect is beneficial in each area of technology and in each industry to which the patent system is applied.
Patent attorneys and others will always try to hoodwink us into believing all kinds of nonsense about the patent system. They use words and expressions like "protection", "intellectual property" and "theft" to mislead people into believing that a patent represents some kind of tangible entity over which people have natural rights. But we should never forget what a patent really is: a government granted 20 year monopoly right to exclude everyone else other than the patentee from freely using some idea, whether they came up with it independently or not. Unlike a copyright, it is a kind of officially sanctioned and enforced removal of rights from everyone else and in the case of software patents it is a serious infringement of the tangible property rights of millions of computer owners.
Extraordinary interventions in the free market, that even entail curtailment of natural rights and liberties, demand extraordinary justification.
Monkeys didn't need a patent system to come out of the trees.
The idea of patents was developed in a simpler time when the rate of progress was slower and new ideas only expanded upon, at most, a handful of existing patents that were still in effect.
Today, the rate of change is so fast and most products are so complex that any new idea builds upon dozens or hundreds of active patents. That is why you see chains of patent violation claims like Tivo suing Echostar at the same time that Forgent is suing Tivo. Almost no product is standalone any more. Patents have mutated from protecting a single idea into being part of a company's "nuclear arsenal". You sue us for violating patents a,b, and c and we'll sue you for violating x,y, and z. IBM may have a lot of patents and derive a good amount of income from them, but I think they are fairly restrained compared to many other companies. If IBM was really nasty about enforcing all their patents aggressively, they could make life miserable for a large percentage of all companies in existance.
Smaller companies that actually try to produce a product are at the biggest disadvantage under this system. Chances are they're violating one or more patents by larger companies or they come close enough that they could be forced to prove they're not. It's the little companies that have patented some idea and don't actually produce products based on it that are profiting. They can just sit back and sue anybody who comes close to violating their unused patent.
From an admittedly lay perspective, it appears to me that 1) the duration of patents needs to be shortened, 2) that the owner of a patent should be required to actively attempt to implement or profit from it from the beginning. This crap where companies nobody ever heard of decide 10 years later to shake down everybody using JPEG or GIF for royalties must stop!, 3) full disclosure of patents must be legally required if a company is going to participate in any standards setting group. Example for this is Rambus participating in developing the SDRAM standard and then, after it became a huge success, announcing they owned a patent that covered part of the standard., and 4) like everyone else is saying - patents for ideas that are either obvious or prior art should be harder to get and easier to invalidate.