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.
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
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.