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Ex-Microsoft CTO Checks In On Patent Reform
theodp writes "Defending his controversial Intellectual Ventures in a less-than-hard-hitting CNET interview, ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold finds it peculiar that some people get really wound up over patents. 'People generally don't have any problem with the patent system,' quipped Myhrvold, the inventor of Microsoft's patented Television scheduling system for displaying a grid representing scheduled layout and selecting a programming parameter for display or recording, which allows you to more efficiently select shows like Elimidate for viewing."
Not all patents are a problem i don't think, certainly nobody seems to object, it's just when very vauge ideas are patented and stockpiled by big companies that everyone starts questioning if the system needs sorting. Gotta love the idea of having to have a working implementation of the idea, that would at least weed out a fair amount of dodgy patents.
The first time I read that as "Myhrvold has pursued patentology.."
What you mean is that YOU do not have a problem with the patent system. However you do not speak for all "people", and in fact you are markedly different from most people.
To wit: When you get slapped with a multimillion frivolous patent lawsuit from a tiny scumbag parasite company like Eolas which threatens your very livelihood and business that you have worked so hard to build, you can afford to have uncle bill toss gobs of money at litigating it, then gobs more money at settling or buying off the company if it starts to look like their chances of exploiting a legal loophole to win are nonzero. And in the end you don't feel a thing. Most people can't do this. As a result "people"-- i.e. not you, real people who live outside the ivory tower where half-decade lawsuits are a negligable cost-- do tend to have problems with the patent system.
What do they say when you call to tell them that you've patented their DNA?
Most people aren't developing new IP that's going to be poached by some overzealous patent seeker either.
If he doesn't understand why people don't like software patents, then maybe he should have paid more attention to his (ex-)boss.
... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." b gates91)
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
-- Bill Gates in a 1991 internal memo (Source: http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html#
A perspective I see commonly expressed around here is that patents are by and large not a bad thing but that software patents are in fact a very bad thing. Or sometimes, that patents are a good thing or at least a necessary evil but that software, "process", and "business strategy" patents are a very, very bad thing.
In the case of "process" and "business plan" patents, this is somewhat similar to what you are saying, because such patents are, by their very nature, vague.
In the case of software patents though the reason this perspective (i.e. software patents are bad in a way patents in general are not) is that with most "real" patents, the patent is a specification and in order to be subject to the patent you must actually implement that specification, must actually craft something real. In the case of the computer program though, the thing crafted is a specification-- that is exactly what a computer program is. The patent is not sufficient to implement the specification (since it isn't a real specification like a program would be, just the idea of one), and there is nothing tangible about the implementation; worse, the implementation may be in some cases human-readable text, something some people may by its very nature consider to be speech. The idea you can violate a patent simply by writing something seems absurd.
Just when corporations try, and succeede in patenting things like clicking a mouse inside a window, patents are meant to protect creative intellectual property, not to divvy the basic workings of the world up to corporations.
Most people don't look into the patent system. As far as they are concerned they will never run a company or invent anything which needs to get involved in it.
It's more "I don't care because no one ever told me to" rather than "I'm well informed and I think it's fine".
I like muppets.
It's not so much that patents are bad, but what people are being allowed to patent.
With software patents, people are patenting the most simple of ideas, and they're doing it in a frenzy.
Microsoft's 'IsNot' patent is just one of the pathetic reasons why so many people have become anti-patent.
Software patents seem to be used mainly as an anti-competitive action, rather than used for protection of clever and innovative ideas.
Anybody who can't understand what the fuss is about is either completely ignorant of this situation, a moron, or plans to use his own patents in an anti-competitive way.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold has made many reports to the police about a strange balding man running after him shouting "DEVELOPER DEVELOPER DEVELOPER DEVELOPER"
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
What do you think of the complaints of how patent litigation is hurting companies? Some days it sounds like the trumped-up malpractice crisis of the '80s.
Myhrvold: Well, this is even stranger. We actually did a study on this. The overall number of lawsuits for patents is growing, but so is the overall number of patents. So explain that to me.
- this guy doesn't need anything to be explained to him, he is a crook. He did a 'study'? Let him point to the study. Let him show us that study. I bet it was nothing like a study. I bet he sit down with a couple of guys over a beer and talked about how much money they could make from litigation and that was his study.
If you then look at it and ask, what fraction of those lawsuits are due to companies that have no products, the IP-only companies--it's about 2 percent. If you look at it and say what fraction of lawsuits are due to large technology companies, it's about 2 percent.
-Look at that, he's got some numbers! I bet he just pulled those numbers out of thin air. I don't know how many companies are out there suing each other over stupid patents but I am sure it is not 2 percent. It is either something very very small like 0.0001 percent or something very large, like over 60 percent but saying it's 2 percent doesn't make any sense. It's not a real number.
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This guy hopes to make money on litigation that much is clear. He calls himself an inventor. Inventor my ass! I 'invented' things. Plenty of things. One of them is in my russkey extension - selecting text in a browser and transforming it into a different type of text right on the page. There. An invention. I bet anyone can come up with that. And I bet it would stiffle innovation if I started suing other people for doing the same.
You can't handle the truth.
They generally think outsourcing is good because they can buy things for half the cost, and drive to Canada to pick up prescription medication because it's more than they can afford here. If they were fully informed about how much the current patent system was costing them fewer would be on the fence about it.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
crap like this stifles invention because there's always gonna be a patent in the way of making a buck after making an idea work...
here is how it goes...
you've got a bunch of bucks so you group a bunch of clever guys. you look carefully at the state and direction of technology and you predict points of accreation, or 'invention'.
because it is not necessary to provide a working example you file both broad and bottle neck patents on these 'inventions'. that is you file broad ones covering the accreation and bottlenecks on the paths to the accreation.
someone else comes along and actually implements something new, funds development, brings it to market, and WHAMMO, it's raining money.
yep, i'm wound up over this crap.
i have a solution too...
there is nothing to prevent cooperative exploration of these sorts of 'inventions' with full disclosure to the public domain. in this case, when a company like M's comes along the inventor who actually made the damn thing work can make the prior art argument. This puts the advantage back in the hands of the guys who can actually implement an idea. Sure, they lose the advantage of a patent, but patents are, by far, not the only impediment to competition.
an online inventors thinktank wiki or blog or forum or whatever might scare inventors in the same way open source scares some programmers. but at the end of the day, it's the only way to break this 'patent without working example' crap.
My view is that because of the strength of the judicial system, the US Patent Office is effectively the world's Patent Office. The patent office must be beleagured by hundreds of thousands of applications every year.
Given that patent officers are bureaucrats and not technical experts, and that companies and individuals file patents for almost anything, it's not surprising that so many bullshit patents are granted.
The US IP system definitely need restructuring. But it is important to remember that patents are useful in and of themselves. Often they can be very empowering.
In India, Dr Mashelkar is leading a patent revolution . I saw him speak a few years ago, and he had some very cool things to say. In Indian labs, nobody ever bothered to patent anything, so all our R&D was poached by people abroad. Since Mashelkar's crusade, our labs have since reformed themselves, and everybody has benefited.
shooting is not too good for my enemies
N E one else find it ironic that the ex-CTO of M$ funds the discovery of things that didnt work? Next thing you know Bill Gates will fund the discovery of new Mes-o-potamia(n) civilizations, but only those that were despotic.
"this is the gloaming"
radiohead
I find the patent system to have strange parallels with mass religion, or more specifically, evangelical Christian beliefs.
One loose theory of why religion is originally formed is that it is a mutation of the set of rules the tribal elders set down in order to protect ones tribe. The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions. Rules on sexual interaction were originally intended to prevent the spread of STD's in ancient times. These very rules were later warped by the church (which had turned the "rules" into its own organization) in order to force a population increase in their followers. By promoting a warped version of this rule the church now contributes to the spread of STD's, one of the very things its founders most likely hoped to prevent.
How dose this relate to software patents you ask?
Well patents were not intended to strangle progress of smaller companies, they were intended to prevent big companies with huge R&D budgets from stealing smaller companies ideas, and either beat them to market with their own idea, or buy off the researchers from the smaller companies with huge bribes.
But in order to prevent the smaller companies from becoming the very entities that threatened innovation by hoarding their ideas, patents had a time limit on them that was reasonable.
5-10 years was the norm for most countries I think, but I'd have to look it up.
Then a funny thing happened. As the means of production became more efficient, i.e. companies needed LESS protection from the competition, patents started to get Longer and Longer. So companies started to buy up patents, or lobby for longer patent lengths.
The very system that was meant to help innovation is now the main reason that innovation is suffering.
I'm willing to bet that a great deal of patents are willingly violated.
Either the violators don't care (or more likely) don't know because the patent is something completely obvious.
Then there are the patent holders who either don't know about the violation because they're lazy and incompetent, don't know simply because it's impossible for them to check all other products / private nonreleased infringements - or they know about it but have chosen not to do anything about it.. yet.. in the hopes of suing a competitor when the competitor is large enough to be worth suing.
Then there is the patent office itself, who makes money from granting patents. It also allows stupid and frivolous patents.
The extent of the stupidity of the patent system would be very plainly reveiled if:
(1) Patent holders were *forced* to either enforce their patents or let them slip into the public domain.
(2) Patent abusers were *forced* to ensure their produts did not infringe and obtain the necessary licences if they infringed on any patents.
In an "ideal" world (from the perspective of the patent office) the above would happen. But if it did, the patent system would have to be demolished, all patents declared invalid and nothing ever patented again. Because nobody would be able to do anything - ever - and the system would collapse under the weight of millions of patents and billions of violations.
People generally don't have any problem with the patent system.
That's not a very convincing argument when you consider that most people don't have a problem with the patent system because they don't know there's a problem in the first place. Once in a while some patent will go through that will garner some attention (patent on the swing, Smucker PB&J patent, etc) but in general the patent issue flies under the radar. No doubt that's the way they like it though.
Use the GP's argument against him. LOL
This company is a company of crooks. They don't want to implement their 'ideas'. What they will do is patent various general ideas and then will wait until someone implements them.
I think it is very important to make the following change to the patent office rules:
Whoever it is that comes up with the idea must implement it. If there is no implementation, than the idea cannot be patented at all. Period.
What this means is that noone can patent their 'idea' without implementation so that they do not disclose information on the idea. So that when someone else comes up with idea AND implementation the first guys can't argue that their 'idea' was stolen. It must have been rediscovered at least for the other people to come up with an implementation.
Of-course there are problems with this approach as well. I am completely against patents but for very very long copyrights.
You can't handle the truth.
that the problem with the patent system, in the USA or anywhere else, is that it represents the bleeding edge of technological evolution and creation. The speed at which technology is advancing is so fast that it is nearly impossible to keep up with advancements in your own chosen field, never mind those in 1000s of other fields of technology.
For the patent offices and patent laws to make sense, it requires that those working in the patent offices and patent law professions to be kept abreast of all developments as they are happening. This is not a likely probability.
It also requires that the sum of all patents and their prospective resultant effects be analyzed and weighed against the prospective effect and byproducts of any new patent application.
Most people that I've heard or read seem only to talk of patents in terms of one aspect of this problem. The problem being that technology is advancing so fast that it is becomming inpossible to assess the good or damage that might come from granting patents.
In terms of this problem, it is easy to see that certain companies must not own too many related industries because this would become a danger to the economy and free enterprise. Likewise, it must also be viewed and assessed as to whether any one company or group of companies could do damage to the advance of technology and creation of advancements if they were to own too many patents or too many of a given kind of patent.
That is to say that is should be viewed as dangerous for a company that has the size and impact on global computing technology as M$ to have too many patents on things like the way the Internet works, or how information is exchanged between disparate organizations.
Sure, patent law is there to protect and encourage innovation, but when too much of that protection is in the hands of one person or one company, it is no longer protection, it is oppression of any one that might be in opposition to that person or company.
The length of a patent, or the depth of a patent is not so important as how many patents and what type are granted to an individual or company. When more than a few percent of related patents are issued to a single entity or person, the patent protection held in those grants becomes technological oppression.
This is what the problem is, and until patent law is judged in this way by all people, it will never been revised in a way that will advance innovation.
Just my tuppence worth... YMMV
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It is analagous to the romans selling their right to vote for bread and circuses.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert..."
Bacon flavoured ice-cream is actually quite tasty.
since when has democracy had anything to do with fairness? It is the imposing of the will of a majority on a minority, even if the minority is only a few people less than the majority. democracy is intrinsically unfair
He rants about people wanting to "abolish the patent system". Yeah, right. Damn straw man arguments. The controversy is over software patents.
The European Patent Convention says that software is not an invention and cannot be patented.
That the US Supreme Court has said in various rulings in software cases that:
Transformation and reduction of an article to a different state or thing is the clue to the patentability of a process claim
Whether the algorithm was in fact known or unknown at the time of the claimed invention, as one of the "basic tools of scientific and technological work," it is treated as though it were a familiar part of the prior art.
insignificant post-solution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process
If you invent something like a new and nonobvious physical rubber manufacturing process it is certainly a patentable physical process whether it mentions software or not. Software does not prevent a an otherwise patentable invention from being patentable.
Software is not a "process". Any possible software is to be treated as a "familiar part of prior art". You cannot turn unpatentable software into a patentable process without some signifigant post solution physical activity. All from the Supreme Court.
Lower US courts have violated those Supreme Court rulings, particularly in the State Street Bank case which esentially ushered in software patents. Software patents which were previously and properly rejected. These lower court rulings upholding software patents only remain standing because the US Supreme Court has entirely neglected patent law for far too long.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today"
So let's make sure the industry grinds to a complete stanstill and patent everything under the sun
yeah, thanks billy boy!
... has anyone else seen that moving the 's' to the second position in that "word", and make it a 'b', makes it much more descriptive of what they really are?
Much like it seemed many didn't even see that for the voting-machines disaster you had in the USA, diebold is "Die Bold". Die Bold? Do something bold, like screwing the entire population, and then die, having made loads of money like e.g. Enron?
This is probably the first link to Elimidate
on Slashdot.
The unasked question here is "what benefits have software patents given us?"
If you patent someone's DNA, *your* parents can get hit with a patent suit where they either pay up or destroy all patent infringing copies (i.e. you). It happens all the time in industry.
Nice point.
When I was taking electronics engineering courses there were examples given of what was obvious and therefore could not be patented. After the invention of the bipolar transistor, the common circuit configurations (common collector, common emitter, and common base) could not be patented because that had already been done with tubes (common anode, common cathode, and common gate). In the same way, the configurations for FETs (common source, common drain, and common gate) could not be patented either. Replacing one triode (three terminal device) with another was not novel.
So either something has changed since then or software and business patents are following a different set of inadequate rules. Replacing something already done without computer automation with software is not in itself novel.
Myhrvold: Well, this is even stranger. We actually did a study on this. The overall number of lawsuits for patents is growing, but so is the overall number of patents. So explain that to me.
Ok, I will. You see, when something is so deplorable that it practically mandates a "screw or get screwed" m.o., guess what people will do? DUH. Does he really believe his audience is that stupid?
And this ham gum is all bone!
This poo is cold.
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general?/i?
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are;
Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have.
Social - Is this what everyone else is using?
Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor.
Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Shortening the patent duration to five years would basically destroy the pharmaceutical companies, especially the biotech companies. It takes more than five years to get any return on investment, plus if the patent is granted before FDA approval, you're losing time. The problem here isn't the patent duration. Twenty years is actually pretty reasonable. The problem is the granting of the patents.
Interesting quote from Bill...the implication is even more interesting. He acknowledges that if patents had been available before, the market would be at a complete standstill. He goes on to suggest that they patent all they can...and if one logically extrapolates, it's presumably so that they can help bring the market to a standstill. I guess market stagnation is fine, as long as you're an entrenched player.
The more I think about this, the more I wonder what in HELL they where thinking when they decided to approve software patents.
I'm a grad student studying computer security. Recently, I made some discoveries which have the potential to significant increase the security of Web transactions. (With luck, I'll be presenting at Black Hat 2005, so please forgive me not saying more than that until my submission gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.) After hearing from several Ph.Ds in the field that this idea was fairly novel, I decided it'd be good to talk to a patent lawyer. After all, I came up with it on my own time, without using any university resources, in private research unconnected to my university activities, and under my contract my discovery belongs to me.
.1 = $2,000). What I'm left with is how much it'd cost me to get a patent, or $18,000.
...
So I did my research and found one of the better IP lawyers in the state. I walked into his office with a preprint of my academic paper, copies of existing academic articles which may be considered prior art, everything I thought he'd need.
His first question was whether I was willing to go bankrupt for this idea. "Uh... what?" I asked. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear.
The average cost for a successful patent, he explained to me, runs around $7,000. That news floored me; isn't the patent system supposed to be accessible to private citizens?
Oh, no, he told me, that's not the price. That's the price for a successful application. Right now, only about 35% of all software patents are granted. So the amortized cost of a software patent is about $20,000.
Then it starts getting even worse.
About one patent in ten will ever make their original investment back from licensing fees. The overwhelming majority of patents issued fail to recoup their initial outlay. Most patents are not used to get licensing fees; most patents are used to deny other people entry into your market. If a patent can keep other people out from your business, then it might make financial sense; but as it currently stands, since I have no business in this area of the security field... I'd be looking at one chance in ten of recouping my patent cost.
So, in other words, take the amortized cost of a patent ($20,000) and subtract from it the speculative revenues I'd be receiving ($20,000 *
That's considerably more than I make in a year as a graduate student. I could possibly, if I sold all my worldly possessions, get that much money together, but I'd probably have to declare bankruptcy as soon as it came time to pay my student loans. Hence, his question: is this idea worth going bankrupt over? Especially given the unavoidable fact that, if I did manage to beat the odds and get good licensing, all the major players would simply threaten to sue me for infringing on patents of theirs I didn't even know I'd infringed, and would offer just a no-cost cross-licensing deal that would let them have access to my patent for free, and all I'd really get out of it would be the mercy of them not suing me?
I'm not opposed to the existence of software patents. I think they're wildly overused, and overused in unethical ways, but there are some algorithms which are so breathtakingly new and innovative that they deserve patent protection. (RSA comes to mind as an example.)
I am opposed to a patent system which is priced far outside the capabilities of private citizens.
I am opposed to a patent system which is structured in such a way that large companies can get unlimited access to the small guy's patent portfolio just by threatening a lawsuit.
I guess you could say I'm opposed to practically every dimension of how patents are currently practiced.
Okay, I should have previewed my post before, but it gets confusing if I don't have the correct italics.
Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general??
I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.
There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)
The types of temperment are;
Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have.
Social - Is this what everyone else is using?
Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor.
Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.
Many people are a mix of more than one type.
Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.
I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.
Anyone else got a theory?
(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.
--
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Software (and concept) patents have created quite a bit of controversy lately. Companies war with one another over infringements, and Open Source developers are barred from developing new code because they cannot license the technologies. I think these patents are a monumentally bad idea, and this opinion has nothing to do with barring them entirely, but rather, in restricting cases where they're granted.
The original reason for the patent system was to give an innovator time to market and profit from his or her work. The idea was to prevent competitors from creating generic look-alikes, sticking the inventor with the development costs, and undercutting the price. Note that development costs are the key issue here. Patents prevent the inventor from having its competition, which had no development costs, undercut its prices. Patents thus encourage innovation by protection innovators.
What happens when an "innovation" is nothing more than a concept, something that could have been created in a few minutes, with no development costs? Some examples include clicking document links to be taken elsewhere, double-clicking a mouse, and embedding "plugins" within documents. Patents on these concepts stifle innovation. The patent holders incurred little to no development costs, and have used the patents only to sue infringers, making their profits entirely in court.
I believe patent law should be rewritten. Patent holders should be forced to show some claim of development costs that would be protected by the patent, as well as a reasonable expectation that the patent holder will find some way to market the concept. Innovators who can't figure out how to market their concept can be protected if they can show that the concept represents a significant contribution to society, such as a scientific advancement.
Protecting "false" innovators (those who do little or no work to create a concept, or patent an existing concept) makes a mockery of the patent system. All it does is further continue a litigious approach to business - quickly patent things everybody is already using (or is about to use), then sue them. There are many companies today whose sole business model is based on this concept, and it stifles innovation - exactly the opposite of what the patent system was created to do.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert as pork very hard to keep in such harsh conditions.
Also, consider that pigs are very immunologically similar to humans. Influenza in the past was massivly lethal, and often moved into the human population from the avian population (particularly ducks) through a pig intermediary.
In addition to STDs, I'd imagine various sexual laws were also intended to confine pregnancy to marriage.
in order to force a population increase in their followers
Of course, Judiasm put a huge emphasis on large families, just as the Catholic Church did. Prior to WWI or so, most cultures, with the exception of hunter gatherers like the native Americans or Tibetan Buddists put a lot of value on increasing their populations.
Before WWI and widespread industrialization, increases in population were critical to increasing the power of one's organization.
Nowadays, access to resources and technology seems more critical to maintaining power than manpower or individual ability. Which, perhaps, is the conenction you were making between patents and the modern world?
Or maybe I've mischaracterized your argument by attempting to see it in my own terms.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Patents in general always sucked, because they were simply a small improvement over the royal grant of a monopoly.
There may be good reasons for granting a monopoly to someone, but none of these can expressed in the rules for patents and even the rules on what constitutes a valid patent are vague. Such that the only rule a patent has to follow today to be granted is that it is new(and sometimes not even that).
Clearly the requirement of originality(sometimes called height of invention or inventiveness), while never being able to be actually verified in the past, i.e. being vague, is completely pointless today when let's say 25% of the populace are educated enough to come up with pretty good ideas by themselves. With computer programs, this is just more obvious.
Admittedly, some patents did come pretty close to be inventive as well as benefitting from a monopoly, but if you worked through the details of many patents with a contemporary, you could find lots of ideas in the patents that were state-of-the-art at the time, or that were kind of "in the air".
However, there is no "working implementation of the patent system", and even if there was, it would require someone to pay the tremendous costs for reviewing all those crappy patents, even if you could toss out many by just forbidding software patents. You can imagine that the costs for reviewing patents will not somehow magically be carried by the government or even corporations, but will be carried eventually by the consumer or small inventor.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Whats resonable evidently depend on what industry we are looking at.
In the computer industry an idea might get obsolete in the time it takes to take a bogus patent to court and get it invalidated. (Given you have the money needed).
In the pharmaceutical industry it is easy to search for prior art in computer industry it is not. This makes it very hard for software companies to know if they are violating somebody elses patent.
To a software company patents mean an unknown business risk. To pharmaceutical company they mean protection of valuable research.
If software patents lasted for a more resonable time, and most of the patents filed wasn't obvios to people in the trade (i.e. bogus) there wouldn't be a problem.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Your situation is pretty indicative of the entire patent system today. The system is currently stifling innovation, working against small inventors like yourself, stopping you from benefiting from your innovation and helping everyone as a result.
If everyone simply followed the old system your idea will essentially go to waste, unused.
You don't have the money to set up a business to take advantage of your idea. You can't use the patent system to try and licence your idea to companies. You cannot benefit from your innovation at all, so why should you bother telling anyone. You gain nothing by revealing what you know, so right now your almost better holding onto your idea without telling anyone. Essentially your ideas are currently going to waste, not doing anything.
This is where free/open source software comes in. If your put your ideas into practice, creating a new app, protocol or integrating your ideas into an existing FOSS application, your ideas are given life, put to use. Because the app is open source, a company cannot take your idea and lock it away for themselves.(I mean GPL here more so than BSD style licences.) Your idea will benefit from community support and feedback, and eventually, if it became popular enough, you as the system expert could set up a company to promote and support your idea. the beauty of this is that while you do not have the initial capital to promote or develop your idea, nonetheless you can get people using it, reducing the risk for when you eventually may decide to take the leap and start on the road of self-employment.
It's good to hear that your not sitting on your idea and will be sharing it at Black Hat. Hopefully we'll see your 0.1 version on Sourceforge soon after! I'd say developing your idea in an open source enviornment will be more rewarding than if you simply got that patent and licenced your idea. You'll have less hassle, will get more out of it, your idea will blossom bigger and faster, and you might make just as much if not more money than if you licenced. You'll certainly make more friends, which I think, (forgive me for being sappy) is more important than hard cash overall!
May the Maths Be with you!
I could have thought of that while taking a crap at my ex-girl friends houses baby shower party ! freekin morons. btw I patent taking a crap at my ex-girl friends house babyer shower party, notice i didn't say girlfriends... i said ex- girlfriends!! no ones thought of that!!
If someone else comes up with the same idea then the invention may not have been obvious and therefore may not be enforcible in court.
I'm not saying all is fine and dandy. The patent system is not perfect. But I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath water.
This has the potential to be a very good or very evil company depending on what percentage they spend on innovators or lawyers. We'll have to see...
...if you want to disband their shiny new Reich.
BTW, next time you hear "but nobody's complaining," point out that (1) Adolph was elected by popular vote; and (2) very few people complained about him and his crew<*> until it was waaaay too late.
<*> whom I have deliberately invoked to terminate the thread.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...when the revolution comes. (ObHHGttGRef)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I had to repost this, why has the patent office done a 180 on patent system reform? Now we can expect it by Christmas, I don't think this present is going to help the elves.
Folks this proposed change has nothing to do with "fixing" the patent system, this would be a whole sale intelectual property land grab.
"The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has endorsed some key reforms that Congress is scheduled to consider this year."
"Patent Office chief Jon Dudas said Monday that federal law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim and to permit review of a patent after it is granted. Currently patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove."
I love how the "rightfull inventor" has been recast to "first person who concocted the invention", so much for patents being about "protecting inventors", now it seems it will be about protecting "Software Publishers".
No more pesky prior art to slow down the corporate patent factories. It's now going to be about how fast can you file.
These folks won't be satisfied untill independent coders are as bottled up and stripped clean as artists in the music industry. Watch, with MS enthusiasticly onboard patent reform, this will be a pretext to further tilt the process toward large entities, all the while claiming this *is* the much needed reform everyone has been calling for.
"Monday's hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee kicked off a process that's expected to end in new legislation being drafted by the end of the year."
And it's gonna be another bullet-train
"Other legislative possibilities include lengthening the duration of a patent, currently 20 years. "I've begun to wonder whether the time for the patent is an adequate time," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif."
Yea, it *can* get worse.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5683954.html
Coming from a guy who works at a patent-focused company.
A Violent Protest Against Patents
Patents are directly responsible for the death of millions. They are
NOT "property" and especially not free market or capitalistic (contrary
to popular belief). In addition, the notion that patents help the "little
guy" is a fraud, people don't invent for patents, and patents financially
help lawyers far more than inventors or businesses. When it comes to R&D
patents have the effect of growing a few extra big trees at the
expense of killing the orchard. Patents drive up prices for consumers,
and encourage practices that are harmful for the environment. Most
patents are trivial and for things that are going to be invented anyhow.
All patents build off of prior knowledge and invention given to people
freely, yet assert the "right" to lock out everybody else. The patent
system doesn't need to be "fixed" or "tweaked", it is inherently
murderous and needs to be destroyed.
Patents don't help MOST small time inventors, most small companies, or even
promote innovation. Most companies get patents for two purposes only,
that is to protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits, and to have something
to get into cross-licensing agreements so they don't get sued. Companies
almost never use patents for "protection", unless they were going bankrupt
anyhow - in which case they lash out and sue everybody. At very best they
help finance lawyers, and contrary to popular belief patents are the
anti-thesis of a free market society. Patents have nothing to do with
"property" or "incentive", and everything to do with using the leverage
of heavy handed government "regulation" and monopoly to coercively
control how people use innovations.
Patents are directly responsible for the murder and poor quality of life,
of millions of the poor, sick, elderly, and children around the world.
This is because the rat-race to lock in and monopolize a key innovation also
discourages researchers around the world from collaborating, and because
simple or eloquent solutions that can not be patented are often shunned
for complicated ones with lots of side effects that can be. And because
patent monopolies tend to drive up the price of things like AIDS medicine
to the point that it is way out of reach for most 3rd world countries.
Patents also tend to re-shift the industry so that all R&D is focused in
the confines of a few super-funded companies rather than throughout society
as a whole. Contrary to the myth that only patents allow for the massive
R&D costs that are required to develop new technologies, patents devastate
1000s of small research efforts for the sake of a few large ones.
Patents are not pro technology at all, in the tech industry I know, the
entire industry is defined by people who defied patents. For example,
the IBM compatible PC was a drastic success for the computer industry,
because it was a drastic patent failure where anybody could make an IBM
compatible PC even if they weren't IBM. Silicon valley, wouldn't exist
without the engineers who routinely revolted against companies who wanted
to patent off their innovations, and created new startups in defiance.
In the tech industry I know, the overwhelming majority of patents were issued
for innovations that were incremental, and were going to happen anyhow with
or without patents. The patents didn't help anything, they just got in the
way time and time again. Even worse are the thousands of patents issued for
things that were obvious and could be made by any competent high school
programming student, like a cursor that blinks!
One time I worked for an innovative chip maker that got bought out by a
huge global multinational corporation - whose only motive was grab
some key patents and lock out competition in an important area of the
market. This didn't benefit the consumer who got gouged, it didn't benefit
the employees who mostly got lai
The problem is not that "Software" or "process" is patented. The problem is in the criteria that can be used to determine what is "obvious" or not. Criteria that were good for 19th cebtury industrial revolution or are good for biotech or pharmaceutical products are not necessarilly applicable to fields that involve routine solution of nontrivial math problems as the main process of creating new products.
Some patents are issued for straightforward solutions to problems. I say "straightforward" and not "obvious". Creating a process that works means solving mathematical problems. They are not always easy, and they might involve a lot of effort in their solutions, and even creative thinking. But then someone else who would approach the same problem would arrive at the same solution, perhaps after a lot of work, and it would be the same solution, simply because that is the correct solution, or that is the most suitable solution to the problem investigated. Now, why should the first one to solve it (or the first one to think about registering the solution with the patent office, as is suggested now) be allowed to have a monopoly on the solution. If students work their asses out on a problem, then all hand in their assignments with the same solution, should only one of them get credit, and the rest sent back to work because "their solution is not original"? That's about what's happenning with software patents. Their being awarded for things that are no more than undergrad cs homework. The only "innovation" in them is that they were given the assignment before other "students" have. That is: patents are being awarded to corporations not for solution of problems that many have tackled and were unable to solve. They are being awarded to companies who happen to consider a problem a few months before others have.
At the end of each working day, a retailer goes to the bank and deposits the profits. What the current patent system means is that the end of each working day a software writer would have to go and register all the solutions to all the problems solved, because each problem may be solved only once, and as it is suggested nowadays, the first one to register the solution would be awaeded a monopoly on the solution ("first one to regiter" just means doing away with "prior art").
So what makes somethink "unobvious". In math requiring more than just a bit of thinking is not a criterion for "nonobviousness". At least it shoudn't be for awarding a monopoly on the use of a solution to a problem. It can be a criterion for awarding credit (i.e., for reputation). The patent system is not equipped to handle this distiction. Most people practicing law are not equipped to handle this. Their world is the world of "citing cases". For many of them having flunked math in high school is something to brag about, and many of them have managed to survive math in high schools not by learning how math works, but by learning by heart the textbook solutions to many similar problems that we solve by learning one principle and applying it in different ways. Now I don't say that all lawyers/judges/legislators are like that. But you'll find many people in any area that does not involve solving math problems routinely that consider any sliht vatiation on a problem something entirely different. No go and try to prove in court that storing a bookstore's customer data is not different from storing a mainframe computer's user data.
In creating software, using creative thinking to solve problems is a routine process, and so shouldn't be used as a criterion to deternmine non-obviousness.
Solaia Loses, Rockwell Wins...What Does It Mean?
http://www.livejournal.com/~waltboyes/2032.html
GE Fanuc Automation agrees to Solaia patent license
http://www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA510015
Rockwell sues Schneider, Solaia, law firm over patent lawsuits
http://www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA269801
The shameful Solaia affair
http://www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA336749
US Patent Office
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=5,038,318.WKU.&OS=PN /5,038,318&RS=PN/5,038,318
I find the duality of his words a bit misdirecting. But I seem to remember a young upstart doing legal battle with the guy who held the patent for horseless carriages; I believe this upstarts name was Henry Ford.
To this day I've held that patents can be defeated, all one has to do is "Show the Difference".
What kind of idiot are you ? I think that at least some Slashdotters could use some education (including some basic familiarity with the Patent Law) to stop them from posting such idiotic statements. Although it might be too late for this particular case...
Well, you are not quite right in describing the situation. The BIG guys will simply copy your idea (assuming it's a good idea) and implement it in their commercial products, once your paper or patent application is published (18 months after filing) They will not even bother to talk to you about licensing. It will be up to you what to do next. Patent requires a commitment, both financial and phychological. You will probably not see any money for 5-10-15 years until you are able to find a law firm which will litigate on a contigency basis. And then be prepared to hear all of them screaming "AH, what a bad guy! He is trying to stifle innovation !" The Slashdot public, in particular, will be very angry at you for claming your constitutional right to "exclude others from manufacturing your invention for a limited period of time" And the last thing you want to do is actually manufacturing and selling something, because the BIG guys will immediately gang together and sue you for violation of their patents, so they can have your patent for free. Better stay a paper company, they will have no ground for suing you.
Bacon flavoured ice-cream is actually quite tasty.
i tishfood-e.html . var.655783.index.weird_and_wonderful.html@
Were you joking?
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0504/050422-br
http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/leisure/food/display
[The Fat Duck, voted the world's best restaurant, is well known for its bacon & egg ice cream]
It's worse than that. In some cases patents are being awarded to companies who consider a problem even 10 or 20 years after it has been solved in the research literature. Patent offices make no serious attempt to find non-patent prior art.
Finding prior art in a field that deal with abstract constructs is difficult. There is no way you can find it by searching for keywords. There's no reason that the same thing would be dexcribed using the same terms. Or that it would be described at all. It might have been implemented and that's it, if the implementor didn't think there's a need to describe it.
One thing that might help here is a sort of "open source" registry for "prior art". An open database were people can document whatever they know about processes etc. It can be used by someone who doesn't want to get the monopoly benefit of a patent (and pay for the patent) but that wants the protection of publication so that others would not be able to get a monopoly (patent) on the same thing. Of course there are many available ways to publicise inventions if one does not seek a patent. The point is that a reputable central repository would be more accessible, would then be used by patent eximiners before a patent is granted, resulting in less patents when prior art exists, and would also make it more cost effctive to find the information needed to prove that a patent shouldn't have been granted when a patent was already granted despite prior art. In addition, such a repository would have to provide the tools for anyone who has info about past prior art to record it with pointers (references) to evidnce supporting the info. Something in the line of Wikipedia, but with specialized tools to aid in locating technical info would do the job.
And now to a story: I said it is difficult to find "prior art" when dealing with abstract notions.
I once attended a mathmatical seminar were a well known mathmatician suggested a "new" proof of a well known theorem that had several independent proofs already published. The proof seemed very familiar but the speaker didn't quote anyone or mention any refernces. I wasn't sure about it, and the speaker ws very reputable, so I didn't ask about it, but later I went to the library to check it, and it was exactly the same proof published about 15 years earlier by someone else. Only the terminology used in the "new" proof was newer and perhaps didn't exist when the proof was published for the same time. Now I'm sure the speaker didn't try to hide the fact that it was the same proof published by someone else. I'm quite sure he was simply not aware of the earlier proof. The person that published the first proof happened to be another professor on the same university as the speaker, and their offices are almost next to each other. The speaker was a leading figure in mathematics. If he can fail to find his nextdoor colleague's identical proof that can be found by searching for the theorem's well known name, than what should we expect from undertrained and underpaid patent examiners?
Yes, but not about the tastiness of bacon in ice cream.