Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It

An anonymous reader writes "BlueJ is a popular academic IDE which lets students have a visual programming interface. Microsoft copied the design in their 'Object Test Bench' feature in Visual Studio 2005 and even admitted it. Now, a patent application has come to light which patents the very same feature, blatantly ignoring prior art."

Comments

Sick Software "Patents"

[Reverse Gear]

If Microsoft get this patent, which from previous granted software patents doesn't seem unlikely, this again shows that software patents do not deserve the name "patent".
A patent used to be something that had invented something new, if whatever they had come up with was already out in the open and common knowledge then there a patent could not be granted.

So many things have been patented late, as far as I know these patents did now show up until a few years ago, yet all kinds of things that has been out in the open has been patented.
Software patents doesn't seem to have anything to do with who invented anything, it is about who first comes up with patenting something and get the application in.

So far I have never heard a sensible argument for why software patents is a good thing. It doesn't look like the big companies that keep on filing these patents would stop developing because there was no such thing as a software patent, they did so long before software patents would ever show up. I haven't heard of a single case where the lone programmer (inventor?) gets a patent for some smart code he invented and the big companies will pay him for his efforts. All that I heard of is big companies (or maybe small companies that invent nothing but has made it their business to file patents for things that already exist) that have asked money from another big company because of these patents.

Re:Sick Software "Patents"

[teh kurisu]

The problem is that it is the responsibility of the party filing the patent to check for prior art, and report their findings to the patent office. This is a clear conflict of interest. However, this is not unique to software patents, only that the effects are more pronounced because the industry moves so much quicker than most.

Reform of the patents system, not abolition of the concept, is required to ensure that they fulfil their purpose.

Re:Sick Software "Patents"

[Anonymous Coward]

Reform of the patents system? By this i hope you mean "throw out software patents".

The patent system was setup to encourage invention, and give incentives for people to make their work public. Patents are only needed in areas in which invention or innovation are lacking, or are regarded with to much secrecy so as the industry doesn't move forward. Software is a industry where problem solving is a everyday occurrence, and there is no need to give any huge incentives to people. Software is also covered by copywrite, and is one of the few industries protected by copywrite AND patents (the only one i know of actually, but im sure there are a few others probably).

Software is not a industry of the physical world, in which invention needs encouragement, the entire idea of software requires the ability to solve problems, to do things not done before, and overall, to innovate. If a company wants to succeed in software, then they must produce software that keeps on innovating, or they will soon fall behind and customers will then jump to some other software company to get the services they need.

When patents get involved, things go bad. Patents give inventors incentives by giving them a temporary monopoly on their patented idea, forbidding other companies from taking that idea without permission, or until the patent expires. This monopoly immediately discourages innovation within the claims of the patent due to the government approved (thus legally binding) monopoly that cant be removed. Normally, this downside is outweighed by the benefits of the invention within the public domain, once the patent expires, the monopoly ends, and the patent falls into the public domain for any use.

The need for invention is the key to patents. Monopolies granted by patents is a big turnoff to innovation, and this must be remembered when deciding what should or should not be allowed to be patented. Software is already protected by copywrites, also important to remember. Software requires innovation, something patents discourage in the short term (short being the patent expiration term), in the long term, does the software industry really benefit from patents? The answer would be no. Software patents only cover ideas used in software, not actual software. The ideas used would have been created by the need for them by a programmer. Sooner or later, some other programmer would have also come up with the same ideas. Not only that, but software patents try to be generic as possible, they don't just cover implementation, but the whole idea of something. This is what kills innovation in software. Without patents, innovation will flourish as companies wont be scared to death about coming under fire by patents, allowing them to innovate and move the industry as a whole forward. Without software patents, the industry will not suffer from a lack of invention, as stated, the industry requires it just to exist, and if a company did decide "hey, without patents, why should i invent anything?", with will soon find themselfs in a world of hurt when their customers start switching to other software makers (hey, just look what happened to Microsoft and Mozilla, Microsoft won the browser wars with Netscape, and from then on didn't work on IE, Mozilla meanwhile caught up to IE and even surpassed it, forcing Microsoft to update their browser in fear of losing even more people to Mozilla/Firefox and other browsers gaining headway.).

Competition is good in industries, and in the software industry, you compete and succeed by inventing (yes, success is also being bought out by other companies). As noted by Microsoft, without competition, why even bother innovating and inventing? Patents remove competition, and in a industry who's main goal is to innovate and invent, removing competition is what makes companies sit on their ass.

More Evidence

[mfh]

That this is no longer a world of great men, but a world of committees.

Vote with your money

[rjdegraaf]

Vote with your money against such business practices, use competitive products.

Submit the prior art

[mbone]

The whole purpose of publishing patent applications was so that people could submit prior art to the examiner.

So, if you care, and if you think you have prior art, submit it to the examiner.

Go To The Source

[MrNonchalant]

That's the final straw. How feasible would it be to take the USPTO to court for not fulfilling their chartered duty and as a result causing millions of dollars of damage? There have been liability suits against the government, I think. How is this one different?

Re:Go To The Source

[Dufftron 9000]

Aside from the fact that this is an APPLICATION and not a GRANTED Patent? What are you going to charge them with? Allowing someone to file a patent application? If it gets granted, then by all means go nuts on them, but if the reference is easy to find it will likely get rejected.

Microsoft has no legal/ethical/moral boundaries

[erroneus]

They will do whatever they think they can get away with... and more. They always have and they always will. Their patent people know quite well what patents are for and what the rules are. They do it anyway. I think if it can be shown through some sort of evidence that they were compelled to files these patents by some sort of directive, that they should actually be barred from filing any further patents if not forever, then for a specific and damaging amount of time. Abusers of 'the system' should be blocked from using the system.

Re:Granted, but revoakable

[delt0r]

The number of downright stupid patents is not summed up by the words "sliped through". Sure they my be overworked and under paid. But toys that are fuled with farts, sticks to entertain dogs, or "one click" online crapola. Its stupid to assume thats novel, inventive or anything other than plain stupid.

There is no cost to the patent office for granting patents that are stupid. There is no or little cost to the applicant for appling for a stupid patent. Thats the problem.

evil

[oohshiny]

Yes, this is evil. But you're underestimating the problem if you think it's just Microsoft or that we can stop it by reigning in a single company. Apple does the same thing, for example, as do many other companies.

The only solution is a total overhaul of the patent system.

(As for the BlueJ feature itself, I'm not exactly sure what's supposed to be new about it anyway. People have been doing that kind of testing since the days of Smalltalk.)

Re:WTF?

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

An apt analogy. Someone with a crappy patent can still "win" if they have a dominating chip advantage over an opponent that doesn't have so many chips and can't afford to go all in.

How this could have happened

[Grond]

Note: I'm not going to take Microsoft's side on this. Whether or not this was an innocent mistake, they should own up to it now and withdraw their patent application.

That said, here's what I think might have happened.

1. A group of people at Microsoft collects suggestions for the next version of Visual Studio: one of the suggestions is for BlueJ-like functionality.
2. The feedback group sanitizes this information (i.e., removes any explicit references to BlueJ), then passes it on to the devs.
3. The devs implement the BlueJ functionality, and (as is probably standard practice) a patent is applied for.
4. The named inventor on the patent application is a developer who doesn't know anything about BlueJ because of the aforementioned sanitizing. As such, there's no perjury or fraud on the patent office.

That's my theory, anyway. It goes to show that there's a perverse incentive for large corporations to have a system of information hiding so that it can later have plausible deniability about this kind of thing.

Do we really need a patent system?

[RexRhino]

Do we really need a patent system?

Oh, I understand the purpose - The purpose is to allow someone who developes a new technology to be able to make the research costs back by having a monopoly, thereby encouraging innovation.

But, I see two situations:

1. The new invention is so clear an obvious that there is no effort at all to reverse engineer it when it comes on the market. (i.e. Sporks, intermittent windshield wipers, etc.)

2. The new invention is technically sophisticated, and requires significant effort to reverse engineer.

In case one, we probably don't want those obvious types of things patented anyway. In case two, even if there is no patent, the person will have a monopoly while other companies reverse engineer the product, tool up for production, etc.

I just don't think that people are going to stop innovating because there are no longer patents. In fact, I think it will ACCELERATE innovation. A company won't be able to develop a product, patent it, and just rake in the bucks from their monopoly anymore - They will have to make constant improvements to be ahead of the curve.

Re:Antipatents?

[flimflam]

I thought that the idea of a defensive patent wasn't to protect yourself from getting sued for that invention, but to be used as a bargaining chip in case you get sued for a different patent infringement. That way a company with a huge patent portfolio (such as IBM) is able to negotiate a cross-licensing agreement with any company that may be inclined to sue them for patent infringement. Of course it doesn't protect against patent trolls who have no need to license anybody else's patents since they don't actually produce anything....