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Ubuntu Founder Says Microsoft Not A Big Threat
Golygydd Max writes "Who says that Microsoft and open source developers are enemies? It's not Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. He says that Microsoft is not the patent threat Linux and open source developers should be worried about, and that the software giant will itself be fighting against the software patents system within a few years. 'He said the most dangerous litigants are companies not themselves in the software business, small ventures or holding companies that get their principal revenue from patent licensing. He singled out former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold and his company Intellectual Ventures, which is stockpiling patents at a rate that alarms large companies such as IBM and HP, as an example of such a potentially dangerous company.'"
One onerous requirement might be for a patent holder to maintain a credible product in commercial production in order to sue others for royalties. Add "or be able to substantially prove ready plans in development to do so" to that, and you've got my vote. This idea of patents being some repository to hold ideas hostage is really detrimental to the technology market. Kudos to Shuttlesworth for pointing out our common enemy.
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I still think patents should apply only to tangible inventions or objects (i.e. say a new motherboard system bus design) and copyright should apply to software.
I believe OSDL has a patent pool. Can we expand it?
There are lots and lots of creative folks that work with GNU, Linux, *BSD, and who read Slashdot. It would be great if there was an open invention process whereby one could take an idea, do the basic stuff, then submit it to the OSDL (or another reputable group) who would get the patent in your name, but assigned to them.
Such a process would reduce the barrier to entry for getting patents on truly new ideas. (I would have a dozen or more if my employers had filed for patents on some of my ideas.) It would also allow you to have your name on a patent which looks great on a resume (finally something that is actually worth something to the inventor). But, most importantly it would expand the pool of patents available for open source and remove additional ideas, concepts, and inventions further out of the reaches of the patent-only law firms.
This should be a call to action!
I'm not convinced that any sort of software algorithm should be patentable, but if we are going to allow patents on some narrowly-defined "implementations," which might involve software at some point in them (but not being wholly comprised of software), I think it's pretty clear that the term of the patents needs to be substantially reduced.
The term of our patents was set in an era when sending a message from one city to another took days, or if it was separated by an ocean, weeks (potentially months). The flow of information moved at a completely different pace. Ten years then would have been a very brief time in which to bring a product to market. In today's world, I think it would be about 12-18 months: just enough to give the patentee a slight advantage over the rest of the marketplace, but not enough for them to amass an arsenal of patents with which to destroy all competition.
Now, perhaps there's something to be said for somewhat longer patents on pharmaceuticals, because of the long government-mandated review process that they have to go through, before they can become profitable (and which mandate disclosure of the ingredients, meaning that keeping it a trade secret isn't an option). However, I think this should clearly be the exception rather than the rule.
A patent length of a year -- five or at most ten for pharmaceuticals -- non-renewable, would do wonders towards improving competition and the production of new ideas in the technology sector. (While we're at it, lets have a 20-year copyright span, too.) Unfortunately I think by the time the major players come around to realizing that the system is hurting more than it's helping, the U.S. will be increasingly irrelevant.
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Why not just (common sense)reform the patent system, thus crushing this holding companies?
I've explained this before. I used to work for the US government many years ago. Look at it from Uncle Sam's perspective.
1) The patent office makes money. A lot of it. Unlike other government agencies who consume tax dollars, the patent office makes a profit. Profit = good. Why would you "reform" an agency who is making you a ton of money and thus make less money?
2) Businesses have yet to scream en masse that patent reform = a good thing. Until Microsoft and IBM and Cisco and Intel and lots of Fortune 500 companies say "The system is hurting us and costing us more money than you are making under the current system. A reform would actually bring you more money." then it will never happen.
3) Government bureaucrats are outstandingly good at protecting their own turf. Expect patent office mangement to fight tooth and nail against reforms.
4) The government is convinced that this is win-win for everyone because it's like Mutual Assured Destruction. Everyone has patents, so nobody will use them unfairly. Unfortunately, the reality is that Shuttlesworth is right. The company everyone should fear is the company that has nothing but patents, like the guys who went after BlackBerry.
5) Most people in Congress are lawyers. Most lawyers like patents. It provides easy work for other lawyers on both the "infringing" companies and the IP holders doing the suing. If everybody is being sued, lawyers have lots of work and earn lots of money. Win-win!
This is only one of the numerous examples of how the patent system has impeded innovation and has mostly made a mess of things. Another shining example was the airplane. Most of the basic patents in the US were held by either the Wright Brothers or Glen Curtiss. The Wrights and Curtiss despised one another and engaged in a decade of pointless and expensive legal wrangling. Aircraft makers were unsure what to license from whom and often couldn't negotiate terms. The result was that when World War I came along, the US was far behind Europe in aircraft technology even though the airplane was invented in the US. In order to get the US back into the aircraft business before the huns or turks or whoever started bombing New York, a patent pool was established and litigation was put on hold. Thankfully it was not reinstated after the war.
Y'know what. We got along just fine without software patents for 20 years. I think we could do so again. I'd go further than that, and (carefully) dismantle the entire damn Patent system. It's pointless, doesn't -- so far as I can see -- encourage innovation, and doesn't even work very well. We've got enough problems with global warming, overpopulation, incompetent and mendacious leaders, corporations run amock, etc, etc, etc. Why go out of our way to create more?
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