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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!"
I'd patent first posting, but it's been patented. that's why I waited before posting this so it wouldn't be an infringing first post. Thank you.
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.
That he could see patents physically stacked into pyramid form.
Oh, and he'd be upset that he's in another place named Washington while there's no state name Jefferson.
Doesn't the entire typography community have prior art by o I don't know a few hundred years? "starting on February 23, 1455."--wikipedia Or even sadder the koreans by atleast a thousand years? as seen here
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.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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 !"
Patents are government-certified monopolies. Of course Gates, commander of the greates monopoly empire ever, wants a fleet of targeted monopolies. The PTO Monopoly Department is Gates' bitch, working overtime on the public dime to keep Gates the only guy who gets to do those businesses. The rest of us have to figure out for ourselves how to earn the money for the licenses to use our own computers, listen to our own CDs, watch our own DVDs, play our own games, pay our own taxes...
--
make install -not war
I wonder what would happen if Microsoft tried to enforce a mearly questionable patent against a defendant, and the defendant were to use Microsoft's own patent arsenal as evidence? Just picture it, they take someone to court over a patent that to a non technical person might seem reasonable, and the defendant shows that it is an obvious idea and then shows for further evidance Microsoft's more ridiculous patents like the note related to a phone call thing to demonstrate that Microsoft has made patenting obvious concepts standard operating procedure?
Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!
The article submitter says this like it's some newfangled scheme freshly dreampt up by big bad Bill. It isn't. Around 100 years ago when Thomas Edison ran his lab it was a patent mill; hired inventors had to submit a weekly quota of patent applications.
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.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Unknown host pong.
Well, you could do it...
Yeah, but could you do it with two weeks, and a $100 budget?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
I think I will patent Bill Gates' hair style....
Software patents are tame and fairly meaningless in the out-of-control state that Patent Law is in; when GE won a patent in Appeals to the ownership of a bacteria that they "engineered" to eat oil, the Patent Office stated, "Everything save a full term human being is patentable." Since then almost 5% of the human genome has been patented by various biotech firms, under the basis of medical trade secrets and pharmaceuticals treatment. I'm not making this stuff up, The Corporation is a good non-technical learning start.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
It's pretty trivial to identify when baseball is exciting:
bool is_baseball_exciting ()
{
return false;
}
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.
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. "
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. "
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. "
"Any cute black slaves around? My wife is out of town."
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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."The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of fourteen years; but the benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
... It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.
"Inventions... cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:334
"The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me:... Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding __ years, but for no longer term and for no other purpose." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:451, Papers 15:368
"In the arts, and especially in the mechanical arts, many ingenious improvements are made in consequence of the patent-right giving exclusive use of them for fourteen years." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356
"Certainly an inventor ought to be allowed a right to the benefit of his invention for some certain time. It is equally certain it ought not to be perpetual; for to embarrass society with monopolies for every utensil existing, and in all the details of life, would be more injurious to them than had the supposed inventors never existed; because the natural understanding of its members would have suggested the same things or others as good. How long the term should be is the difficult question. Our legislators have copied the English estimate of the term, perhaps without sufficiently considering how much longer, in a country so much more sparsely settled, it takes for an invention to become known and used to an extent profitable to the inventor. Nobody wishes more than I do that ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement." --Thomas Jefferson to Oliver Evans, 1807. ME 11:201
"No sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of Agriculturists than that the few who can afford it should incur the risk and expense of all new improvements, and give the benefit freely to the many of more restricted circumstances." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1810. ME 12:389
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jef f1320.htm
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the pos
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Ah, the emergence of a troll to toss accusations of "Communist" my way.
I was expecting it in the first reply, actually. You've left me dissapointed. I doubt Communists would be terribly appreciative of me explicitly advocating a market economy as I did, so you've made a bigger fool out of yourself than your intellect can probably comprehend.
My claim that business practices should not defeat the march of innovation, nor should they infringe on the rights of an individual are rather basic principles that you will find held by a great number of people from vastly different ideological perspectives from left to right.
That funky monkey...
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I wonder if Microsoft will try to patent a method for stating the obvious?
You put too much trust into Big Blue. Unfortunately, their only incentive right now is "anything but fall prey to Microsoft." If Big Blue could be MS themselves, they'd be, in an instant This open source support seems just a defense for them. The motto: Better work for free and give the stuff away, then work for free and be hung out to dry at MS's whim.
A difference I see between IBM and Microsoft, is that Big Blue seems to have at least done some truly innovative cutting edge stuff, I've yet to see something from Microsoft that makes me go "yeah that's realy impressive they came up with that". Some IBM researchers have actually received Nobel prizes, I've yet to see a Microsoft employee do that.
From http://www.research.ibm.com/know/top.html
- Copper Chip Technology
- Giant Magnetoresistive Head (GMR)
- Speech recognition technology
- Scalable parallel systems
- Token-ring networking
- High-temperature superconductivity (1987 Nobel prize)
- Fractals (Mandelbrot)
- Thin-film magnetic recording heads
- Scanning Tunneling Microscope (1986 Nobel prize)
- Formula Translation System (FORTRAN)
- Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architecture
- Relational database
- Magnetic disk storage
- One-transistor dynamic RAM (DRAM)
Disclaimer: 1) I am in no way affiliated with IBM, and know they abused their monopoly in the '80 too. I just think it's ridiculous to compare IBM and MS R&D results, just name 1 significant MS innovation.
2) I'm no big fan of software pattents in general, at least in their current form, because checking 20,000,000,000 pattents each time a program a line of code is impractical.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Alright people, this is stupid. Computer software patents in the U.S. have to be abolished. I've written my senators and representative. What else should we do now?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
> IBM is to a great extent a research company;
l
IBM makes $2 billion/year from patent licenses. With that amount of money and over 10000 patents in diverse areas, they make MS look like a grade-school bully.
From: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.
An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
>Thus they come up with large numbers of what most Slashdotters see as legitimate inventions.
Legitimate?;
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/10/17/005232.shtm
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
I was doing some reading the other day, and based on what I found, I'm not certain that software, technically, and legally, is patentable. The latest ruling determined that the loading of software into a machine makes it into a new machine, and thus, patentable, but it didn't go so far as to say that software, by itself, is patentable- the USPTO has held that software is primarily a series of mathematical algorithms, and as such cannot be patented. I'm wondering if there's still a fundamental question here that needs to be decided by the courts.
took me five seconds to find this yes, you are right, MS never actually had to go to court... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub
What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs?
Thomas Jefferson would be mightly unhappy!!! Origiannly TJ was against patents and copyrights however his friend James Madison eventually talked and showed him how they could be beneficial and support the creation of new art and objects. Once he was convinced TJ, using an actuary table, calculated patents and copyrights should only last 28 years, if I recall right 14 years with one 14 year extention possible.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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?
# apt-get install humour
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Non-Western SoftCo: We wrote some cool new software.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Ha! We have software patents that cover your program! Hand over all your money now!
Non-Western SoftCo: Do we look American? Fuck you, and fuck the horse your lawyers rode in on.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: B-but... you can't talk to us that way! We'll use our bribed, uh, 'lobbied' politicians to stop you entering our market!
Joe Public: [Downloads software from non-US site]
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Shit! Our revenue stream! If only we actually made something! Aiiieeee!
ThiS, of COurse, may have happened already...
You must think in Russian.
Q: How many IT workers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, at Microsoft. Everyone else has to license the process from them or wear night vision gear (Microsoft is working on the candle patent).
Patent's aren't a bad thing. They allow a *limited* monopoly on an *invention* for a period of about 15 years at *most* (in the USA). Yeah, technology changes... The Lempel Ziv Welch patent which recently expired is an example of a patent of a non obvious method which changed our lives and is now free to implement. There are better algorithms and tons of other patents in the image compression space, but this was a particularly high profile patent.
Any patents on obvious or previously implemented technologies won't stand up in court, but of course, it means paying lawyers to stick up for the little guys who don't have the money.
But just because you don't like the law doesn't mean that you can suddenly chnage the rules, unless you are a congressman, and then you can only make the rules under your jurisdiction.
Microsoft may not be the worlds best team player, but that doesn't mean that MS doesn't deserve to use the inventions its employees legitimately invent. It also doesn't mean that Microsoft can't charge licensing fees for the usage of those patents.
What is scary is the number of companies whose sole existence is to buy up patents with potential litigation and then sue people with products that potentially violate the patents. These companies of lawyers suing companies making real products is a disturbing trend in the industry. Normally, when one large company sues another for violating patents, the other counter sues, and the two companies shake hands and agree to license each other's patents. But when a company that exists solely to sue large and small companies sues, they tie up our court system to take money from people who build the products that make our world run.
That ends up coming from all of our pockets to make a few people who bought a few inventions fabulously wealthy.
The moral of the story is that all the large corporations now seem to be cross-licensing each others patents so that hungry lawyer companies attempting to claim huge amounts of money can be beaten down with a big "I licensed that technology from XYZ corp" stick. And the big corps have also started licensing some of these technologies, Microsoft for example has this website here. Is this progress? Well, OSS needs to develop its own patents if it wants to compete. Is it not unreasonable for individuals in the Open Source movement to compete like this?
"Hello Pot. This is kettle. You're black."
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?
"Brass monkey"
Urban legend. Many phrases like that are.
---
I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.
> You got a nice buffer overflow going on there. That strzTemp should be 4 tchars wide to fit in the string terminator.
Thank you for reporting this. This issue exists in our database with ticket Q3579550. It's meant to be that way. Some applications depend on this behaviour.
Sincerely
Microsoft debug dept.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"