Software Patents Compared to Hard Patents

Arie writes "The Slate discusses the obvious differences between patenting an algorithm and a drug. The article introduces the Fence test, which basically says that if you can physically protect your property, you have a case patenting it. In addition, it claims that the burden on a programmer identifying whether he is infringing on a patent or not involves excessive research burden, essentially to the inherent lack of physical boundaries. Obviously the article starts off with mentioning the patent dispute between RIM and NTL."

Comments

Investment, risk, compensation

[Toby The Economist]

The original and valid purpose of a patent is to enable people who make investments in research to be compensated for the risk they take.

This - investment, risk, compensation - is the issue.

Whether or not a fence goes around the concept patented is utterly irrelevent.

If a fence test was implemented, all investment into non-physical research would be discouraged.

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[saxmanb]

The original intent for granting patents was to encourage people to invent things. This has nothing to do with protection of investments. All investments contain risk. If you invest in something that isn't patentable or is patentable but not profitable, then that's just tough. Welcome to captialism and the free market.

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[kfg]

The original and valid purpose of a patent is to enable people who make investments in research to be compensated for the risk they take.

Well, no, not exactly. People already made investments in research and were commercially compensated for it before patents.

The original and valid purpose of a patent is to force them to reveal their research to the public in order to gain government protection of it.

Whether or not a fence goes around the concept patented is utterly irrelevent.

Actually, this is exactly the test applied by the founder of the American patent system and its first examiner; Thomas Jefferson. For things which you can't put a fence around there is copyright.

Patents are not ideas, they are for things.

KFG

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[AeroIllini]

Patents are not [for] ideas, they are for things.

Well said, sir.

I think the fence analogy is rather confusing, however. (No offense to Jefferson, of course.) I prefer to draw the line between ideas and implimentations. Without this distinction, there would be no such thing as a competing product.

For example, let's say you think of a novel new way to wake people up in the morning; something that's never been marketed before, like pouring water on your head. So you take this idea and distill it down into an implimentation called the AlarmWaker3000, which you patent. Now your good friend down the street has this same idea, and creates himself the WakeUp Machine, which he patents. But because the AlarmWaker3000 used a bucket and a piece of string tied to the hands of a clock, and the WakeUp Machine uses a hose crimped by a weight that gets lighter over time, neither one of you are infringing on each other's patents. You didn't patent "A method for waking someone up by splashing their face with cold water," you patented the "AlarmWaker3000" and the "WakeUp Machine".

The question of infringement on a patent usually boils down to the similarity between the two devices. Two companies can build, and patent, two different motherboard designs with exactly the same functionality: onboard video, sound, ethernet, whatever. But as long as the circuits are dissimilar enough (which is up to a judge to decide) then the implimentations are different and they don't infringe.

The problem with software patents is that the the line between ideas and implimentations has been blurred. Amazon patents their code for purchasing things with a single mouse click, once all your information is on file and you are logged in. Suddenly, anyone creating a shopping system that allows registered customers who are logged in to purchase things with a single mouse click is infringing on the patent, even if their implimentation is different. These companies are trying to use the patent system to enforce artifical monopolies on ideas instead of implimentations, and effectively cut out the competition. The truly troubling part is that the Patent Office, and lots of patent courts settling disputes around the country, seem to be going along with it.

Maybe the fault lies with an overworked Patent Office staff; maybe it lies with a culture that irrationally rewards new technologies. I just don't know.

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[tambo]

Patents are not ideas, they are for things.

That's completely wrong. The subject of any patent, and the core protected aspect, is an inventive and novel concept. A physical object may incorporate that concept, but even then it is not the invention - it is the "embodiment" of the invention. It is a manifestiation of the inventive concept that the patent actually addresses.

This is evident in the fact that every patent has a difficult-to-ascertain quality called "breadth" - i.e., how broadly does the inventive concept stretch? A patent might claim the concept so narrowly that it only covers a single implementation - this is what we call a "picture claim," where you've essentially taken a snapshot of one embodiment, and gained protection of only exactly that object (and exact replicas.) At the other end of the spectrum, a "frontier patent" may claim a novel concept with an incredible range of embodiments - any implementation that incorporates that concept is covered.

Note: Even aside from software patents, "embodiment" is not limited to physical objects. The patent system has long protected "processes," i.e., sets of actions with novel results. The novelty here is completely in the abstract, functional steps of the process - it does not have to involve any particular object or composition. Of course, this fact is exactly why the argument against software patents is untenable: what is protected is not the actual software - not the code, compiled binary (or script), or the process in execution - but the abstract method that the software embodies... and such inventions have been patentable for over a hundred years.

- David Stein

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[kfg]

The problem with software patents is that the the line between ideas and implimentations has been blurred.

Actually, I don't like the fence analogy either and it wasn't 'exactly' the model Jefferson used.

The true test is whether the research can be transmitted by speech/print.

k=1/2mv^2, E=mc^2, "Now is the winter of our discontent. . .," as opposed to, say, a cotton gin.

If you can recite the research than it falls under those laws intended to protect speech, not things. As you say, ideas as opposed to implimentations.

It is, unfortunately, computers that have blurred the line between the two with the decision that since the physical device impliments the idea that it is somehow itself the device.

This is the sort of bullcrap we get when people cannot differentiate between the physical and logical levels. At its extreme I have seen plans for a piece of furniture that has no patent protection on it try to apply EULA copyright restrictions to your ablility to impliment the plans and claim a license fee for every instance of the furniture you build.

Oh, yeah, and a website whose legal page actually begins with "By viewing you agree to these policies . . ." which include a claimed restriction on reverse engineering their nonpatentable products.

It's gone totally crazy out there.

KFG

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[tambo]

The question of infringement on a patent usually boils down to the similarity between the two devices.

That's completely wrong. The question of infringement boils down to a comparison of the claims - of the bare, essential, conceptual elements of the patented invention - and the embodiment accused of infringing.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has had to correct this misconception dozens of times. Many accused infringers want to point to some feature of the patentee's product in order to make some argument about the proper interpretation (construction) of the claim language. This evidence is irrelevant. The patentee's products are irrelevant. All that matters is the text of the patent.

Now, why is this? It's because the patent covers an inventive concept - the feature that makes the invention novel and useful. Now, it doesn't broadly cover any "idea"; in the words of the USPTO, the idea must be "useful, tangible*, and concrete," rather than an "abstract idea" or a "scientific principle" without a specific use. But it nevertheless covers the class of "ideas" that constitute inventions.

(* Neither "tangible" nor "concrete" here means "physical." "Tangible" means that the invention has some interaction with the real world - e.g., the reallocation of money. But this money need not be physical; it can be virtual, i.e., data - what matters is that the shuffling of this data conveys a result with real-world consequences, i.e., money changes hands. And "concrete" must means "repeatable.")

- David Stein

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[kfg]

That's completely wrong. The subject of any patent, and the core protected aspect, is an inventive and novel concept.

For which a working physical model can be submitted.

F=ma cannot be patented because it is a "pure" idea. If I tell it to you you walk away with the novel concept in its entirety and can likewise transmit to another.

A circuit board may have have a novel concept behind it, but it is the board that is patented. Something I can actually steal and physically copy. I am not allowed to steal or make a copy of it, but I can talk about it all I want. In fact, to obtain a patent in the first place I must publish everything anyone needs to know to talk about it and there are no overt restrictions on such speech unless I sign some sort of NDA.

The plans for the board, which are just much the novel concept as the board itself is, are covered by copyright, not patent, because they are a publication, not the actual device.

Only the device is traditionally covered by patent, and algorithms have only obtained patent protection by claiming that when implimented by a computer they are part of the device.

KFG

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[tambo]

Nope. What you patent is "a device implementing this idea"...

35 USC 101: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."

In case you missed it, "process" is the first one.

This has been the wording of the statute since 1952. And process patents long predate 1952: in this change, the patent law only affirmed the long-standing USPTO and court practice of allowing patents on processes.

In other words, your arguments that patents should only adhere to "things" are over 54 years too late.

- David Stein

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[tambo]

The true test is whether the research can be transmitted by speech/print.

What an odd concept. Virtually all chemical research is described by "speech/print." You don't document a chemical engineering technique with pictograms or multimedia; you show it by describing, in words and letters, the steps.

In fact, your distinction would relegate every single patented invention exclusively to the land of copyright. You see, since 1952, patentees have been required to describe their invention in claim language - a single sentence of plain words that summarizes the invention. Even the most complex machines that are best explained through a drawing must still be claimed in plain words. Claims like "I claim the invention shown in Figure 1" are per se invalid, and are rejected out of hand by the patent office. You have to say, "I claim: A machine comprising: a sprocket, a flange connected to the sprocket, a winch connected to the flange,..." By your logic, every one of these claims is a summary of the invention in "print," and so every one of these inventions is only protectible by copyright. Do you see now why your test is nonsensical?

At its extreme I have seen plans for a piece of furniture that has no patent protection on it try to apply EULA copyright restrictions to your ablility to impliment the plans and claim a license fee for every instance of the furniture you build.

Oh, dear. I guess it's time for the biweekly Slashdot Intellectual Property 101 lecture once again...

Many objects, including your hypothetical piece of furniture, have both patentable and copyrightable aspects. Copyright protects original expression; patents protect functional novelty. A chair may have both a distinctive artistic quality that constitutes "artistic expression," and also a patentable support structure. In fact, the same physical element can easily serve both purposes, and so be covered by both kinds of intellectual property law.

In the case of your chair, the "implementation" of the plans is called derivatization. You are taking the artistic work described in the blueprint, and you are creating a derivative - i.e., a physical chair embodying the same artistic expression. It's exactly the same as making a movie version of someone else's novel - what you're doing is "adaptation," which is the novelist's exclusive copyright over his novel.

- David Stein

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[torokun]

Let me just note for the record here, that you are completely wrong. To be more specific, this may be how you WISH the patent system works, but it most definitely is NOT how it has worked for over 200 years.

Copyright is all about protecting particular expressions of ideas. Patent law is all about actually protecting ideas.

You can't obtain a copyright in, for instance, the idea of a certain plot, or a certain genre of song, or any other such 'idea.' Copyrighted works must be fixed, and must be a particular expression of such ideas, for instance a particular story which uses a plot, or a particular song which may belong to a genre or pattern...

Patents are most emphatically not about protecting such particular expressions, or particular devices, as you state. Patents are about protecting the IDEA of the invention, and they always have been. Your example of the method of waking someone up with cold water could be a patentable invention, if it had never been done before, and was not obvious based on what had come before...

The particular devices are just what people don't want to patent; nor would it be useful to do so, since inventions are not like books - inventions can be used in millions of different forms, and still serve their purpose perfectly. The devices that embody inventions could be so varied that protection for only a particular one would be basically useless.

This is why the claims of a patent are not supposed to be limited by the embodiments described in the written description portion of the patent, except in special cases. The claims determine the invention, not the particular embodiments that the inventor describes in the specification.

For example, if I claim a chair, by claiming something like a sitting surface with at least 3 legs, etc., I am the inventor of THE CHAIR. It's an idea, not a particular type or style of chair. It's a completely new sort of thing. I will describe a couple of different ways to make chairs in the specification of the patent, to show how it could be accomplished, but these are not what is covered by the patent. What is covered by the patent is anything encompassed by the language of the claim.

Re:Investment, risk, compensation

[ajs318]

The original and valid purpose of a patent is to enable people who make investments in research to be compensated for the risk they take.

NO.

The original purpose of a patent is to encourage people to invent things which better society as a whole, by offering them a temporary monopoly over their invention in return for its eventual release to the Public Domain for the benefit of everyone. If an invention is any good, it will recoup its development costs and maybe make a little profit but that is a side-effect of the means, and not part of the end.

All means to the same end are equally valid. So maybe we need to look seriously at alternatives to the patent system: we still want to encourage people to invent things which better society as a whole, but is a temporary monopoly really the best way to achieve this?

From Soft to Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet Carmen Electra could turn a soft patent into a hard patent if she held it in her hands.

So if the boundary for patent legitimacy...

[msauve]

is to be "things you can physically protect," how does that jive with the fact that completely independent discovery/invention can run afoul of existing utility patents?

It seems to me that the most basic problem with the patent system is that patents can be written in language which no one, even if "skilled in the art" (as is supposed to be the case, but obviously isn't) can clearly understand unambiguously. That causes at least two problems - patent examiners are left befuddled, leading to undeserved patents issued. Secondly, and even more importantly, since patents are supposed to force disclosure to benefit the public (after the patent term expires), having a bunch of claims buried in obfuscating language defeats the purpose.

In the news..

[db32]

Today slashdotters were shocked when another tech writer repeated the idea that software patents are bad in yet another way. I think most people here, and throughout the industry, already know the multitude of problems with software patents. I don't think the problem is convincing people on the working side of the industry that they are bad. The problem is convincing the people profiting from software patents that they are bad. I would be interested in seeing industry leaders that can actually influence the decisions, or some politician types with the power speak out against software patents, but seeing yet another tech person do it is just getting redundant. You have to convince people that really like their money, why they shouldn't make money the way they are now. Until things get so bad that the top starts feeling the pain I don't things are going to get much better. Melancholy Elephants is an excellent short story by Spider Robinson about the end game of this situation we have these days. (It isn't terribly long, and it really is a good read) Enjoy!

QED

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Mathematical algorithms cannot be patented.

All Software is mathematical algorithms.

Therefore, software cannot be patented.

The Slate can shove it.

Re:QED

[Intron]

Would that this were so. Unfortunately, a graphics company I worked for got hit by Cadtrak's patent on the XOR operation back in the day. This is a hardware patent based on the obvious fact that negating a value twice returns the original value. The inventor applied this to drawing and erasing lines on a screen and then sold the patent to Cadtrak who vigorously licensed it.

Its a good example of applying an obvious concept to a new application. Every TV set ever made uses an XOR to add and erase the HSync signal in the VSync, but that isn't drawing a line, so it doesn't count as prior art. Thank you, USPTO.

The Concept of Software Patents Makes Sense

[frohsinn]

The concept of software patents makes sense, it's just that the PTO has been way too lenient in applying the definition of novelty. I believe that in order for an invention to meet the standard of novelty, it must be "nonobvious to one skilled in the art".

Many of the points in the article were really stupid.

The analogy about fences protecting pieces of real estate made no sense at all -- putting a fence around your land hasn't enabled anyone to patent their piece of property! Furthermore I could do a pretty good job of keeping people out of my algorithm by building a fence around any implementation (for instance, by burying the algorithm in an antifuse FPGA), but again, this has no bearing on patentability.

The fact that algorithms are compositional and therefore harder to draw boundaries around isn't unique to software either. Many other disciplines, including material science, chemical process design, and the article's own pet area of molecular design itself make use of elements that are compositional. Algorithms are compositions of operations on 1s and 0s, just like chemistry is about C, H, O, N, and friends. Or an algorithm is just a Turing machine, and chemistry is about protons, neutrons, and especially electrons. Pick your level of decomposition, but algorithms and physics are still both compositional in a very fundamental sense.

In a more fundamental sense, Computer Science is a branch of Mathematics - number theory in particular. A mathematical fact is not patentable, but the application of a mathematical fact to solve a particular problem is. So you can't patent 1+1=2, but you could patent the application of 1+1=2 to solve a given problem, as long as the application of 1+1=2 to the problem at hand met the standard for novelty. Thus the use of an algorithm to solve a problem should be patentable as well.

This places mathematics on the same ground as the laws of physics. You can't patent gravity, but you can patent the use of gravity for solving a problem.

Patentability 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a quote from wikipedia on 'patentability':

Patent laws usually require that, in order for an invention to be patentable,

* it must be of patentable subject matter, ie a kind of subject-matter that is eligible for patent protection,
* be novel,
* be non-obvious (in United States patent law) or involve an inventive step (in European patent law);
* be useful (in U.S. patent law) or be susceptible of industrial application (in European patent law).
[* see below for formal conditions such as 'sufficiency of disclosure')]

Usually the term "patentability" only refers to "substantive" conditions, and does not refer to formal conditions such as the "sufficiency of disclosure", the "unity of invention" or the "best mode requirement".

Under United States patent law, inventorship is also regarded as a patentability criterion.

--source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability

Physical patents are by far more evil

[argoff]

As society enters the information age, I think that any type of controll over information will be lost or change will be forced. So while I think that software patents must go first, I think hardware patents are by far more evil.

This is becuase software patents are about controlling information, but hardware patnets are about physical controll. To controll information often requires BS and deception, but to controll physically often requires physical coercion and violence.

Just as the false property of slavery was destined to end in a violent civil war as those who "owned" slaves lost controll, physical patents brought to their logical conclusion will result in the violent death of billions as society enters into the replication age and physical creation becomes more and more imposible to controll for the sake of monopolizing profit. In some ways we are already seeing a warm up. Millions in africa die of AIDS because access to generics are forbidden, millions of elderly are strongly pressured into using drugs which may lock in markets, but have all sorts of strange hidden side effects because the natural alternatives can't be patented. Safety devices on cars don't get installed causing 1000s of unneded deaths per year because other auto companies own the patent and won't let it be used. Billions and billions of incompatable parts and pieces to appliances that have no need to be incompatable except for patents. (and billions of uneeded enviromental waste because of it). The examples go on and on...

Barriers to entry

[Varitek]

The basic difference between drug patents and software patents is the barrier to entry. You can buy a $200 computer, a $50 book on programming, and be infringing on software patents later that evening. It also costs nothing to release that infringing code to the world. The only people likely to be infringing on drug patents, on the other hand, are well-capitalised pharmaceuticals companies, who can afford to research patents.

This is why software patents "feel" different to the Slashdot audience. None of us think we will infringe on a patent for an anti-depressant, but we don't like the idea of infringing on some obvious patented algorithm just by writing a few lines of code.

Re:Barriers to entry

[bitspotter]

I tend to think the cost of innovation should be a major criteria for patentability. Granting monopolies on the deployment of innovations only encourages innovation when the innovation would otherwise collapse for lack of R&D funding. Such a case would indicate that the R&D is too risky for the current state of the market unless a patent can be granted to exclude competition.

This makes some sense for things like drugs that require large investments to develop. Take away the patents, and, yes, you do solve the generics problem - but you dismantle the incentives for private companies to develop these medicines.

For software, on the other hand, this is ridiculous. the costs of developing software are pretty trivial. This results in an innovation explosion for very little money. granting monopolies does nothing to encourage innovation, because the costs of such innovation are not too risky for the market - they're cheap! In this kind of environment, patents actually backfire and //retard// innovation instead, by resitricting the ability to improve existing technologies.

As technologies of all kinds develop, costs continuously decrease. Periodically, patent adminsitrations should re-evaluate the costs of innovation in each market sector, and think about changing the kinds of innovations that are permitted patents based on the costs of innovation in each segment, rather than carte blanche.

Fencing

[chub_mackerel]

Actually, this is exactly the test applied by the founder of the American patent system and its first examiner; Thomas Jefferson. For things which you can't put a fence around there is copyright.

While TFA uses the term "fence" to denote clear, definable boundaries, there's another interpretation that helps explain the essence of patent law:

The underlying purpose of the patent laws is to encourage the sharing of useful ideas. In order to get a patent you must publicly disclose how your invention works, and the "best mode" for using it (i.e. the best way to take advantage of its benefits).

As you can imagine, normally these are just the kind of disclosures that a profit-seeking inventor hates to make. The patent laws are thus designed to encourage more social, knowledge-sharing behavior on the part of even these self-serving entities. Note that the law is NOT about "protecting" or "rewarding" inventors per se, except as a means to this greater end.

Back to fences: Imagine that a company comes up with a new invention. The patent law gives them an alternative to "fencing it in" (by keeping it secret) and thereby preventing the public from learning about the discovery.

But note what this implies: if it's impossible to "fence in" the technology (i.e. prevent the spread of knowledge about how it works), then there's little reason for patent law to apply; The public would likely find out anyway, so why reward the inventor for disclosing? If knowledge is easily discoverable through some reverse engineering or simply by using a small amount of observation/experimentation, then the principled argument for patentability is weaker.

On the other hand, if an inventor could successfully use a new invention without the public ever learning how it worked (i.e. if it were possible to "build a fence" around the knowledge), then there's a good case to be made for offering the incentive for disclosure.

Just a different way to think about the "fence," that's all...

a plague

[jay2003]

I only reason to have patents of any kind is to encourage invention. If Congress were to amend the patent statue tomorrow to disallow software patents, no one would quit innovating. Trade secret and copyright provide more than enough protection for commercial software interests. Software patents only benefit the lawyers who get paid to create the plague in the first place.

The coming patent Apocalypse

[typical]

The basic difference between drug patents and software patents is the barrier to entry. You can buy a $200 computer, a $50 book on programming, and be infringing on software patents later that evening.

I stronly suspect that no professional programmer has not infringed on US software patents. I occasionally do a keyword search for "computer" on the USPTO to see the latest tech patents, and I'm always appalled by what comes up.

It's not that they even always violate the rules of the USPTO -- sure, for a lot of them, there's prior art. It's that they are *never* clever ideas that another person wouldn't immediately think of if presented with the same problem. This simply does not drive technical advancement.

What I'm really scared about is the upcoming patent Apocalypse.

For the past decade or so, the rate of granting tech patents has *vastly* accelerated. There are now a huge body of tech patents out there.

Thus far, we've only had a few problems with tech patents -- usually the ones that are getting long in the tooth, about to expire, and ones that the holders feel that they have to hurry up and make money on. Kind of like the GIF/LZW patent from Unisys.

Towards the end of a patent's life, whoever is holding the patent -- maybe an inventor, maybe a patent troll, maybe a company in financial trouble (a la SCO) knows that they are in a "use it or lose it" situation. It's just that there's about a fifteen year delay from the time that the patent is granted to the time that it gets really urgent to start litigating on it.

We've talked about patent reform, but no matter what happens, legislators will never, ever invalidate existing patents. To do so would produce business chaos -- business decisions were made based on the value of those patents, and there would be deep concern from companies if that IP value vanished.

Even if I turn on my computer tomorrow and discover that, wonderfully, Congress has officially banned the granting of software patents, there is still a decade's worth of glut of software patents out there.

What happens in another five years when software patent holders start warily eyeing the expiration date on their patents, wondering when they're going to make a return? Oh, sure, maybe IBM isn't going to go out and start suing people left and right, but they can easily sell their patents off to a patent troll. That way, they get a flat return on their patent and don't suffer any PR damage. Patent trolls don't give a damn about PR, because they aren't in a business where PR helps them in the least.

That's what worries me. And no matter how bad the situation gets, there isn't a whole lot that Congress can do. They can't reasonably do anything about *existing* patents. And there isn't much that the industry can do to work around the problem. Sure, they can ship software development jobs overseas to developers that aren't hamstrung by US software patents...but if you want to sell your finished product to the lucrative US software market, you *still* have to abide by the patents. This affects everyone, because just about every software development company out there depends on at least some US sales.

The problem isn't even just patent trolls. Given their recent exploits against Microsoft and similar folks, I'm pretty sure that IBM/MSFT/etc are more than happy to push for legislation that makes life miserable for trolls. But they sure as hell don't want to stop the stream of patents that *they* are acquiring. And there are *plenty* of bullshit patents going to both of those folks.

The really doubly frusterating thing is that if you're a researcher, a PhD that's gone into industry, almost always *have* to file for patents. It's a metric of "how well you're doing" in a field where it's *really* goddamn hard for your superiors to figure out how effective you are.

You've seen academics that have hundreds of papers with some authorship credit. Very, very few people have hundreds of papers worth of importa

Re:Wrong

[Ekarderif]

Actually, the point of the patent was to increase information sharing. A patented product (at least in the US) must disclose all the steps necessary to create the end result; the owner then owns the exact method for a few years (which he is capable of doing anything himself but anyone who uses his method must receive his permission). This was implemented to counter trade secrets (a la Coca-Cola) by providing incentive (exclusive rights for a short period of time) to those who open up their innovations; reverse engineering a trade secret is perfectly legitimate (Pepsi), but reverse engineering a patent means nothing since everybody already knows how it's done.

The problem isn't the idea of patents. They exist for many reasons and have proven to work immensely. No, the problem lies in software patents. I'm not against software patents in general, but 20 years is far too excessive. If we reduct it to one year or some equivalent, there wouldn't be such fiascos. The software world changes quick, and thus so should the laws protecting them.