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US Software Patents Hit Record High
Aditi Tuteja writes "US Patent and Trademark Office made a new record for the number of software patents awarded in a single year. The agency has issued 893 new patents yesterday. Pushing the total to 30,232 in this year. If this is the trend, more than 40,000 software patents will be issued this year, according to the Public Patent Foundation. The previous record was set in 2004. Several major technology vendors have pledged not to enforce their patents against open source projects. IBM for instance essentially donated 500 patents to open source projects last year. Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court overthrew a prior judgement that required a judge to issue an automatic injunction if he found that a patent was being infringed."
Indeed.
In fact it is the second biggest thing after paper money: paper thought.
Without any intellectual property there could be no code. All code requires some intellectual property. When everything is patented, everyone will be a patent infringer. If you can selectivly enforce your patents, then get as many as possible and wait untill someone else uses the idea and gets rich. Then start enforcing the patent.
Basically the patent system is "accept all submissions, if it's wrong let people contest it in court". But don't they realize what a burden this is on society? Are patent examiners evaluated on how many wrong patents they let through, and fired if it is too high?
Let's think of something else insane. An office where you fill a form and for $1000 you get official permission to punch anyone you want in the face. Insane? Yes. But is the patent system less insane?
In other words, does anyone know if any of those IBM patents were good for anything? Because we all know that most patents are useless and IBM probably lets at least that many patents lapse every year to save patent maintenance fees.
Yes, because people in Europe never write any code...ever.
Whoa, just because an idea has been around for CENTURIES doesn't mean it's has prior art. I mean, clearly $IDEA "on the internet" is a completely new and non-obvious idea.
Hehehe, people should just ignore patents and hope they go away. It's much simpler than getting all in an uproar about it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Such pledges aren't worth squat. While they may wind up in the record and thus could be used by open source projects as a defense in court, the bottom line is that one would still have to go to court to present that evidence. Against a well-financed corporation, that's likely to mean little, especially since some judges have even gone so far as to disregard prior art in order to uphold a patent claim.
The bottom line is that the court of law is not a rational venue, but instead seems to be a place to roll the dice, where the odds are stacked heavily in favor of whoever has the most cash.
That means that open source projects are going to be very vulnerable to patent lawsuits, even in the face of a "pledge" by the patentholders that they won't sue.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I'm waiting for the case of N peeps with vaguely overlapping patents [N > 2] and then they can have fights about it. I'd pay to watch that... wait...
I don't know why people are all proud about their patents. Places like IBMs hand out awards and framed pictures of [first page] the patent to inventors. Most of the time it's like "method and apparatus of doing something obvious, on the Internet." When patents are so easy to come by the value of them should be nil, or at least you'd like to think that...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Our current software patent practices make a mockery of the true intent of the patent system. Nobody working on any software project would be foolish enough to go checking to see if the software infringes because: (1) Odds are it probably does, and (2) if you proceeded without licensing all of the "inventions" that you "infringed" on, you are then liable for triple damages for willful infringement.
By allowing this state of affairs to continue, truly innovative patents are harmed because of the extreme disincentive to avoid willful patent infringement. The biggest losers are open source projects, since the patent trolls have free access to the source code to examine for violations. It seems that the patent system has been reduced to a risk to be mitigated against for many companies. Better stockpile some bogus patents of your own so you can fend of the trolls with patents of your own.
Time fails me to even get started about "Business Process" patents. Remember the Amazon 1-click patent anyone?
Congratulations, you've just discovered the problem everyone is complaining about with software patents.
You cannot possibly check all these patents for infringements. And any non-trivial piece of software will infringe some of these patents - some of the patents are on laughably trivial and common ideas.
Even if you could afford to pay an army of lawyers and programmers just to scour patents, there's still no way around it. The patents are worded in language that is obtuse and without a serious investigation into each one, it may not be obvious that it does indeed describe something that is present in your software, just not in the wording you would have chosen.
Our "intellectual property" system in the US is well on the way to madness. There is no way out.
I can tell you that it is not a rubber stamp process as ours took well over 16 months and several submissions, back and forth questions and answers, clarifications and justifications. Probably several hundred pages in total and I shudder to think what it cost in lawyer fees. The USPO examiner did his job and really made us work for it, narrowing the claims and causing us to better differentiate from prior patented software.
US Software Patent Examiners Hit Record High.
Because, judging by the kinds of patents they're approving these days, it's farqing weed city down there at the patent office.
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IIRC derivatives can be protected under copyright, giving you adequate protection. The problem with a patent is, someone may have had an idea sparked by your algorithm but can't publish or use it as you have a broad patent. The fact that this new algorithm is too far removed from your original algorithm for you to have any claim over it doesn't matter, you can still screw this person over. Copywrite would have meant that this derivative is nice and legal (as it should be given that it's no longer taking enough of your idea for you to stake claim to it) but closer derivatives would not be (hence protecting you). IMHO patents are far too sweeping and last way too long to be of any use in software.
Silly rabbit
When starting up a new business, it's common practice to hire an accountant. Managing your finances, withholding from your employees' wages, and filing your taxes is complicated. If you screw up, it could destroy your company. It should be done by a professional.
Funny, all of those arguments apply to intellectual property as well.
Of course, if he wants to completely avoid being sued with a US patent, he could relocate to another country and refuse to do business with the US. You can't be sued where there is no jurisdiction.
Patents are a cost of doing business in America. You can adjust for that, or you can pray you don't go down in flames.
I agree with the parent that no spot checking system could be implemented.
It's statistically inconceivable that 40,000 original, unique, useful and non-obvious methods would be created in a year. Most of them are probably garbage. If the PO did it's job, there might be a couple of dozen methods that would qualify under the Constitutional definition of patentability.
Would you ignore a sniper with his weapon trained on your childs head?
Software patents are plain evil and unless literature is an area of technology, expressly forbidden by TRIPS. You can't just ignore this one and hope it goes away, that isn't going to work!