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Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents
theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
With so many small boring companies sueing them, they need to get more patents for self-defense. By the way Microsoft has never sued anyone on patents till date.
Identifying when baseball is exciting is not a trivial task, even for human cognitition. Trying to explain to a non-baseball-fan what's important about a given moment in baseball, is like trying to explain to a non-deadhead what was so great about one particular concert.
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Here we have Microsoft, which has led to an enormous creation of
wealth and jobs, and has been *good* for the US economy and some of
the billions generated are being channeled to some worthy charitable
causes as well. Clearly, 'more Microsofts' are needed and it would
have an immense impact on the US economy, among other things. If there
were software patents in the 60s and 70s, there would not have been a
Microsoft, and the associated billions and the PC revolution. Some
research intensive company would have held on to some critical patents
and could have just sat on them and produced no meaningful products.
However, the present Microsoft is doing almost everything it can to
prevent another Microsoft from ever occurring, thereby causing a
"future loss" of billions of dollars and harming the US economy. One
company cannot be allowed to dictate the future of America. Microsoft
is hurting America in a significant way since by being very aggressive
and seeking a huge patent arsenal, it wants to almost ensure that the
next tech revolution doesn't happen. It will happen, surely, but is
more likely to happen in countries with nascent patent laws, such as
in India and China.
After Microsoft was found to be an 'abusive monopolist', it should
have been barred from obtaining any patents. Infact, maybe that is
what is needed, to target a big software company like Microsoft which,
if barred from obtaining patents, would itself lobby very hard to ban
software patents for all ! And a strong case can be made aginst why
Microsoft in particular should not get the protection of patents.
All it will take is a determined senator to recognize that America
needs more Microsofts, and the current Microsoft should be reined in
appropriately. It can barred from obtaining any more patents and/or
it's current patent portfolio could be dissolved. Then let Microsoft
spend some of its billions and unleash it's army of lawyers and
publicists to try and convince the rest of America why software
patents are bad and no one should have them. That would be
interesting.
Someone needs to tell Microsoft: "Abusive monopolist. No patents for you !"
The reason why is that they can use this against the small developers who can't afford to fight the valid or invalid patent. Getting a bunch of patents and then you can make sure that you won't be left behind if someone does come up with a new innovation.
If you have a patent filing you can sick the lawyers on the small developers and squelsh them while you develop the product. A small software company would likely give in to the patent filing and the lawyers. The patents won't hold up against IBM or someone else in this class, but it certainly is an advantage against the small guys.
This is why the patent system is not fully functional at this time.
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Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!
Could we pretend to be somewhat non-biased?
Yeah, but back then the patent examiners actually did their jobs, they didn't just approve everything with little regard for prior art, excessive breadth, or blinding obviousness.
~Philly
Input indicating a first position or designation of content on a page of an electronic document and an amount of white space to be inserted in the page is received. Responsive to the received input, at least some of the content of the page of the electronic document is moved to insert white space. The moving starts from a point based on the first position. The portion of the content being moved is moved a distance based on the amount of white space indicated in the received input. The page is grown by an amount based on the amount of the white space indicated in the received input.
Did the Koreans have electronically-processed user input that affected an electronic document?
No?
Look, I worked for Microsoft for a year and disliked it enough that I quit to go back to academia, so I'm not some huge fanboy. But you guys get entirely too carried away with the "Micro$oft is teh evil patent hax0r!!" bullshit. I filed a few patents when I was there. Do I feel ashamed? No. And why should I? It's not a business's responsibility to audit patent policy.
And let's try comparing the number of patent lawsuits filed against Microsoft to the number of patent lawsuits filed by Microsoft. How does this translate to Microsoft abusing the system?
"This patent game has gone far beyond normality and now it's just very funny and sad."
Typical for the USA as I (as an european) perceive them. It's the same as with sueing for damages. Not just allowing something, but taking it to an extreme that is just ridiculous. I just hope M$ and friends do continue with this bizarre business in such an obvious way, that they will always cripple efforts to introduce software patents in the EU.
Microsoft have the money to sit on the courtcase for years and years. Most people (and companies) can't aford to have a decade long legal battle without going bankrupt, so they stay out of Microsoft's yard. It's like saying "Tresspassers will be shot", it's very unlikely they will be shot, but do you risk your neck for it?
I like muppets.
With not only the accelerated rate at which patents are being accumulated, but the changing nature of the things being patented, the barrier for entry for any inventor that cannot afford an entire legal team to check for possible infringement is getting far, far too high.
In the past, if you wanted to make a better faucet, all you had to do was make sure your idea was so unique that it was unlikely that anyone had put something of that nature together before. Now, with the new attitude of the Patent Office, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that the very idea that water comes out of a pipe is possibly claimed by someone out there. The amount of squatting on basic concepts is going to doom innovation, as a great deal of truly innovative and world-changing inventions have come from a man or woman working in their basement or garage in their spare time.
Just thinking to yourself, "Has the underlying concept been demonstrated before and left in the public domain?" means nothing, absolutely nothing. Prior art has grown increasingly meaningless. Hell, millions of year of prior art in each and every person that reads this has been patented.
Company A discovers that gene X causes disease Y and patents this gene that has existed since the dawn of humankind
Company B develops a test to establish wether gene X is present using nothing but their own methods except for the basic presumption that gene X will cause disease Y.
Company A sues Company B for patent infringement because they violated their patent on the gene.
This scenario has occurred before and Company A is the winner.
While I respect the fact a market economy is a neccesity for the human race at the present time (I say that in the hope that replicators are invented at some point) I don't see the neccesity to blindly approve of the persuit of profit at all costs simply because people want to and "That's just the way things have been done". There is a cost associated with such activity, a cost for which we have no means to compensate. The free flow and generation of capital should never undermine or be put ahead of the greater free flow of ideas in society as a whole , or the freedom of individuals, or you inevitably end up with a "snake eating his own tail" situation.
Locking down entire realms of study because of a overreaching patent does far, far more harm for us as a people than the good it does for the patent holder. It forces innovators to be reluctant or unwilling to pursue their ideas. The long term effects of this kind of stagnation should be self-evident.
The desire to make a buck - which should be encouraged - does not validate the methods employed to do so. Right now, the laws are structured to permit and encourage the lack of any focus other than short-term gains for the investors. Short-term gains which will likely pan out to be massive losses financially and otherwise for many in the end.
And let's try comparing the number of patent lawsuits filed against Microsoft to the number of patent lawsuits filed by Microsoft. How does this translate to Microsoft abusing the system?
This is exactly why I want Microsoft to lose one of these patent suits and lose BIG. I mean to the tune of billions of dollars. My opinion is that the only thing that will make the government stop the maddness will be when one of the big companies gets taken out behind the woodshed for a frivilous patent.
I don't myself understand how anyone could even believe that software is really patentable. All modern computer languages are context free grammars, which is a subset of all grammars, and hence all language. Patenting the written software program for what is does it exactly like patenting the plot of a book, or a certain type of story. And while the written word is copyrightable of course, I've yet to see a patent on fantasy stories set in alternate versions of Earth, or stories involving wizards, or aliend.
Software patents are absolutely wrong and the customer and market hostile american company today absolutely loves them because they eliminate the requirement to offer a quality product (or any product at all!).
Don't forget gratuitous hungarian notation and Unicode support. Oh, and SoundVolume is deprecated; use SoundVolume2 which requires a pointer (reserved for future use):
tchar* _IsBaseballExciting()
{
tchar strzTemp[3];
double dblSndVol;
dblSndVol = (double) SoundVolume2(NULL);
if(dblSndVol / (double)100.0 > 0.8)
_stprintf(strzTemp, _T("YES"));
else
_stprintf(strzTemp, _T("NO!"));
return (tchar *)strzTemp;
}
It will take a company with a lot of money and a lot of lawyers to finally push the whole broken software patent system over the redline. When it becomes obvious to *EVERYONE* that the software patent system in the US is completely broken, Congress will be forced to finally address the issue. (Perhaps patenting the space " " character will do the trick.)
I can only hope that all software patents are abolished. IMHO, software patents are bad, software copyrights are good.
On the other hand, as long as the software patent process continues in its current form it is only smart defensive business to patent everything under the sun. In this situation the only intelligent strategy is, "If I don't patent it, my competitor will." Microsoft itself has been stung to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by stupid patents filed by others. Don't blame corporations for filing stupid patent applications, blame the Patent Office for granting them.I don't myself understand how anyone could even believe that software is really patentable. All modern computer languages are context free grammars ...
We've got to stop thinking of the law in these sort of terms. The law isn't written in stone so that interpretations may be debated forever (e.g. patents only apply to X. let's argue about the definition of X). The law changes. If we decide we want patents to apply to language, then patents apply to language. If ambiguity exists in the law, we can argue over how it does or does not apply to new situations, but at some point we need decide how we want it to apply to new situations and make it so.
Patent law was designed to to promote progress (which I define as "encourage more invention") by rewarding the work put into invention with exclusive rights. Is work put into computer programs? Yes. Will some sort of protection promote the invention of more computer programs? I think so. Does the patent system do this? Of course not; it's a complete mess. But my point is that arguing about things in terms of "well, technically it's just language" or "technically, it's the same as a mathbook" is not useful. We are free to make laws allowing the patenting of math; the above argument then boils down to "we can't patent math because it's math". We need to make the argument that these laws need to promote progress, nothing more. They are not currently doing so and are in serious need of reform. And we need to be very clear why the law should promote progess and what damage can and is being caused by the current state of things.
Sorry, can't agree with you. I find the very notion that anyone could ever "own a thought," much less own it and control others' uses of it, collect royalties on it, demand others never to have it, clean it out of the public consciousness and place it firmly in the realm of the profit-secured, to be beyond ridiculous, beyond tyrannical, and firmly in the realm of evil. And I don't say that lightly--I am an atheist.
is there anything we can do to stop this from going on? Does anyone know of any political groups that are actively seeking to end software patents and genome patents? Where do I sign up?...I could sit here and say how stupid software patents are over and over again but it isn't going to do much good in the long run. What can I do besides being one small voice to my reps in congress to help change the patent system? Links, phone numbers, e-mail lists...anything you guys got I want to know about....and hell Slashdot should provide a link to such political groups on both sides of such issues when they are brought up in articles.
It could be that EU software companies have no incentive to innovate in the software field without some patents.
Why does software need the protection of patents when they already have the protection of copyrights?
FalconShould there be a Law?
from back when Microsoft bought a license from SCO:
"Asked to comment on the news of the licensing deal at a news conference today, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison seemed to have no compunction about drawing a link between the agreement and SCO's litigation. "Bill [Gates] is innovating. Microsoft has always had incredible innovation. You've had advanced bundling, and what you see now is extreme litigation. They have a lot of experience with extreme litigation, actually," he said."
What's the connection between this and TFA?
I'll tell you.
First of all, PJ at Groklaw wants the discovery in the Novell vrs SCO suit to take a deep long look at exactly WHAT "patents and IP" that Microsoft allegedly licensed from SCO for "millions of dollars."
Secondly, this is likely to prove that Microsoft doesn't need to litigate open source based on their patents - up until now, anyway. They'd been able to pay other people to litigate FOR THEM.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I'm a holder of several software patents, both issued and pending. I vehemently disagree with the whole concept of software patents, but in today's broken environment, you have to apply for these patents as a defensive measure. Otherwise you may find that someone else can prevent you from commercializing your own ideas.
And having been through the process, I can tell you that most examiners at the USPTO are simple, unimpressive bureaucrats with nowhere near the capability and insight needed to evaluate software innovations. They are not operating in bad faith, they just aren't equipped to do the job that the big shots in our industry are asking of them. (Further proof of this point is that they usually retire as soon as they are eligibile, and ever-increasing numbers of them leave the service early. It's a crummy job.)
The path of least resistance for the PTO is to just grant about 60% of the applications put before them and hope that the courts will sort out the conflicts. That's a great solution for the small technology shops and individuals that produce the real innovations, isn't it? Especially since you're now relying on an equally ignorant judge and jury, who will be favorably impressed by those nice, polished, well-dressed attorneys from IBM/Microsoft/Oracle/Toshiba/whoever.
LEGISLATION is needed to solve this problem. The community needs to draft a revision of the patent laws and lobby its passage through Congress. Anybody interested in taking up the challenge?
That would be true, except for the explosion of free trade agreements between the US and the rest of the world. Essentially, the agreement states that US law (specifically targeting patent and copyright law I believe) is applicable beyond it's borders, and "I'll pwn you if you don't sign it".
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