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IBM Adopts Open Patent Policy
Andy Updegrove writes to mention a New York Times article about IBM's bold new move to reform patent practices. The nation's largest patent holder will adopt several new policies intended to clear up the veil of secrecy and wall of lawsuits that plague the patent process. From the article: "The policy, being announced today, includes standards like clearly identifying the corporate ownership of patents, to avoid filings that cloak authorship under the name of an individual or dummy company. It also asserts that so-called business methods alone -- broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics -- should not be patentable. The move by I.B.M. does carry business risks. Patents typically take three or four years after filing to be approved by the patent office. Companies often try to keep patent applications private for as long as possible, to try to hide their technical intentions from rivals."
The above-mentioned corporations do all skilled legal staff but patent litigation is not their business. IBM and GE in particular have expertise that allow them to follow through on their patents. Any "copy-cats" would have difficulty producing products from many of the more esoteric, high tech or highly process oriented technologies these companies have to offer.
If patent finding publishing becomes widespread, it will give companies the legal footing to allow them to concentrate on creating technology rather than split hairs over buzzwords. We see an aligning of real innovators against those who simply gamble that some court will award them money like mana from heaven.
Who decides whether or not a patent is frivolous? If it is the same people who approved it in the first place I see a problem looming out there...
If not, why don't we fire all the current patent reviewers and replace them with the people we hire to detect frivolousness? Then retroactively review all patents ever granted to specifically check for frivolousness that we previously could not detect due to our patent reviewers inattention to frivolousness, thus letting frivolous patents through and getting us into this mess in the first place. If our new frivolousness inspectors detect any frivolousness in any particular patent they send a letter to the frivolous patent holder notifying them of the detected frivolousness and of the impending prison sentence you proposed for just such frivolous screwing around with the patent process.
Packaged with the frivolousness notification letter would be, like a firearm turn in, two tickets to a local sporting event or the like, along with a strict admonition to engage in no more frivolous patent activity because we no longer tolerate it and, honestly, are quite few up with it.
But then again, maybe being sent to prison because a government agency granted your request for something is a stupid idea.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
'The new policy is the result of a development process that included external as well as internal input, and is based upon a Wiki that gathered the comments and contributions of "over 50 patent and policy experts from the United States, Europe, Japan and China," offered during May and June of this year. That document can be accessed at this page at the IBM site.'
Via the ConsortiumInfo Standards Blog
Reduce, reuse, cycle
In fact, they are not only anti free market, they are genocidal. Like how they held back safety devices for 20 years in automobiles while over million people died in auto accidents. Like how US pharmacuticals sued the African nations in the world court to stop making AIDS medication generics while over a million people died of AIDS. In the future 3d printers and nanotech are going to move manufacturing out of the factory and back into the home, and those who believe in patnets will want to extend the coercive power of government into every last persons life to collect royalities and revenue streams. Dont think so? Just look at what happened with copyrights - 30 years ago, no one would have believed that they would go this far either.
I'm a programmer, and TBH I'm _for_ software patents, as long as we get rid of the generic "business method" patents.
See, patents were supposed to do two things, in this order:
1. First and foremost, to make sure we're getting the exact recipe to make something, instead of ending up buried somewhere out of reach. Sure, you get your monopoly on sewing machines, Mr Singer (for example), but in return society gets the _exact_ recipe and description of how it works. After 20 years, we get that in the public domain.
2. To stimulate innovation. Go research something already. If someone else patented it, well, research something else.
The current non-patented programming fuck-up serves neither point. We have millions of monkeys who don't invent anything, and don't share anything. They just copy-and-paste (even via memory, but copy-and-paste nevertheless) someone else's algorithms, and never invent anything new. Ever. And the results of even that unoriginal copied-and-pasted work remains buried somewhere behind a wall of NDAs, on some old tape in a steel safe.
Sorry, people, that's not how technological progress works. What we have here is stagnation and waste of resources.
You're affraid that patents will put your company out of business? Well then how about said company starts investing in research already? How about inventing something new already? How many people does your company pay to research new algorithms? No, seriously. Be honest. Zero, perchance? No, that's not innovation, that's not progress, it's just copying someone else's work, over and over again.
Yes, software patents do carry the stigma of having been abused and mis-used by patent-trolls. There were a lot of bullshit and obvious patents snuck through just because the patent office got disoriented by anything that mentioned "in software" or "on a computer". Ooh, it's the same old volume knob, only now "on a computer"... that sounds soo high-tech, let's patent it. Duly noted, and I too wish we'd be rid of _those_ already.
But there are lots of things which aren't trivial at all. And blimey, I'd love to see more of those researched and documented.
E.g., to give the old (and now expired) whine about the LZW patent, how about you invent a compression algorithm from scratch, if you think compression is trivial. Yes, LZW (and LZSS and arithmetic compression and everything else) seems trivial when you just copy it (even via memory) from someone else's book. Sure, copying is easy. Now you try _inventing_ a new one, then tell me how trivial that was. If you're not damn good at maths, I doubt that you'll even know where to start. No offense. I tried and didn't know either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'll throw out an idea. The patent office is flooded; frivolous patents are accepted because the resources aren't there to examine applications with anything near the correct level of scrutiny.
Why is the patent office flooded Because teh potential benefits of securing a patent are significant enough to justify the cost of flooding it.
Reduce the benefits. Scope and term. 5 year term for most patents; 2 years for software if you really don't think we can live without software patents. 0 years for "business methods" -- gimme a break.
(This suggestion assumes that anyone anywhere is aware that patent protection is a State-given right, not a God-given right)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
More serious note though: has this policy been influenced at all by that SCO guff? I wonder...
Meta will eat itself
I can't really find anything to verify or debunk your claim. But for arguments sake, let's say IBM did invent software patent. I think this announcement is definitely a step in the right direction around software patents specifically: According to this press release from IBM, we've been awarded the most number of patents for 13 years running.
;-)
Considering that IBM is asserting " that so-called business methods alone -- broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics -- should not be patentable."
It would be interesting to know how many of the patents IBM received over the past 5 years would have fallen into this bucket. And maybe take it one step further and announce that these patents won't be enforced. Now that's something that would make it a whole lot easier for IBMers to weigh in on the software patent discussion without worrying about our own backyard!
Savio