Paul Graham on Patents

volts writes "The always interesting Paul Graham has a new essay, 'Are Software Patents Evil?'. "A few weeks ago I found to my surprise that I'd been granted four patents. This was all the more surprising because I'd only applied for three...""

Comments

Re:The US Patent Office is very generous . . .

[servoled]

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 [35 USC 1 et seq.].

What most likely happened is one of his applications was claiming multiple inventions, so it got split into two different applications through a restriction/divisional.

Re:Good but idealistic article

[magetoo]

I will only address one point of the optimistic idealism I saw in several parts of the article, there are others:

"A company that sues competitors for patent infringement is like a a defender who has been beaten so thoroughly that he turns to plead with the referee."

This point is made in the context of other statements that indicate this is the main reason that a company starts suing for patent infringement. The reality is there are companies that have no developers at all, just lawyers, whose sole purpose is to seek out and buy patents and pressure other companies for licensing fees.

Yes, and he mentions them a page further down. You did read the article before posting, didn't you? Of course you did.

Re:bzzzzzzzzt - wrong!

[Halo1]

All the arguments for hardware patents can be made for software patents. All the arguments against hardware patents can be made against software patents.
To object to one but not the other is inconsistent

Yes, it's really annoying, this inconsistent Federal Trade Commission, saying that patents do not have the same effects in all industries. In a sense, you're somewhat right, because they note that patents have little effects as driver of innovation in the semiconductor industry too.

Or maybe the National Research Council, claiming that the software industry is quite different from traditional industry sectors for various reasons.

Or maybe the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes? (the latter even own some patents on mp3 compression)

Re:Patents are not what they are supposed to be.

[TheZax]

What they really wanted to do was to entice people to publish their trade secrets so that their innovations wouldn't be lost to the public when the inventors died.

I really don't know what I'm talking about, but this is Slashdot, so i won't let that stop me ;)

But I think the idea was not so much to get their ideas when they died, but at the time people were inventing machinery that could be reverse engineered very easily. Patents were issued so that a competitor couldn't simply by a widget, take it apart, then mass produce it at the expense of the inventor.

Re:Patents are not what they are supposed to be.

[nadamsieee]

I really don't know what I'm talking about, but this is Slashdot, so i won't let that stop me ;)

At least you're honest. The original intent of patents was to advance science. Protecting the inventor (via a time-limited monopoly) was only the means to that end, not the end itself. From FindLaw (speaking of both copyright and patent law):

"Only the writings and discoveries of authors and inventors may be protected, and then only to the end of promoting science and the useful arts."

Re:Patents are not what they are supposed to be.

[nadamsieee]

From the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power...
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Patents in General

[dcam]

I agree with Paul Graham's leading paragraphs to some extent.

One of the things I hear a lot on slashdot is that somehow software patents are different, that with software there is only one way to do things and that the patent blocks that (eg the LZW algorithm). What is more this is described as unique in software, ie this did not occur before they allowed software patents.

The thing is, its not. I was chatting to a biologist friend regarding patents, and there are similar issues in biology. He was describing one particular process for extracting DNA which is the so much better than earlier methods that it is, in effect, almost the only one used. The process (and the enzyme) is patented, so everyone who works in this area licenses the patent or buys the enzymes from a licensee.

Or take the medical field. If you patent a drug, and there are no other comparable drugs then if people want to use that drug, they must license from you.

Or take the area I was trained in, Engineering. Suppose someone patented FEA (Finite Element Analysis).

The point is Paul Graham is largely correct. The issues we are having with software have occurred earlier with patents. They are not completely new.