Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I'll bet Carmen Electra could turn a soft patent into a hard patent if she held it in her hands.
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!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
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
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...
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.