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Courts May Revisit Software Patents
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the courts may finally be gearing up to overturn the ruling that opened the floodgates for both software and business model patents. It's been nearly ten years since the US courts decided that business methods were patentable and that most software could be patentable — and we've all seen what's happened since then. With all the efforts to fix the patent system lately, it appears that the court that originally made that decision may be regretting it, and has agreed to hear a new case that could overturn that ruling and restore some sanity to the patent system."
Consumers have everything to gain from this. Nowadays it's impossible to write a gui'd "hello world" without stepping through a minefield of patents. As a small business owner, it's unreasonable and likely impossible to expect me to research every patent and pay royalties/license fees for "a piece of software that beeps when it wants the user's attention", or other things. Only large companies can afford such things, and they use it stifle competition. (What do you think MS's sabre rattling over linux has been about?)
Any CS person will tell you that when it comes to software, there's more than one way to skin a cat - probably thousands. But software/business patents let you find one, and squash the rest.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
a new case that could overturn that ruling and restore some sanity to the patent system
No bets here, lawyers enjoy the complexity and confusion too much to make this any better. Congress just needs to change the law. In a business like computers which is evolving so quickly, say a 2 year patent then it expires. And you can only sue if you produce a competing product with it and have been harmed.
You need to stop patent trolls dead. Like RAID and bugs. Let innovation back into this business.
- A rethink to head off not only having their wrists smacked but having the USSC start reviewing their cases much more often (complete with reversals) or
- A chance to put together a really solid and detailed ruling to give the USSC a reason to agree with them.
We won't know which they pick until this summer.Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Interesting stuff.
in some places you can't patent drugs you can only patent the process of making them which makes much more sense.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
How about just relying on 'good old' copyright to protect your code, instead of software patents?
I know, copyright laws are also under fire, but still, I think that using patents to protect code is a cure worse than the disease. And it's too drastic and largely unnecessary.
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent:
A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.
Patents, from the beginning, were a compromise so that people who would invest in new developments would disclose the work of those developments (for public good) while being able to turn a profit from them in the short term (a motivation for inventing) through an exclusive monopoly.
Vested interests do not write the law, for it is the individual who has the most vested interest in the government. I think you mean to say "sociopathic capitalists write the law".
For patents to benefit society, the term of the monopoly must be greater than that required to recoup investment expenses, but shorter than the portion of an invention's life span where it is valuable to the people. In a government that exists for the benefit of the people, the shortest patent term is the most desirable. That's how our government was set up -- unfortunately, the world is more and more getting exactly what it deserves, as a few have learned that people will sell their freedom for remarkably little.
People can't own their ideas because they were never wholly their ideas. All that we invent is the summation of all that has come before us, perhaps with something new thrown into the mix. Your ideas belong just as much to your teachers, your parents, your peers, and the generations that came before you, as they do to you. In the long term community ownership is the only system that makes sense for such a creation.
In the short term, a man's got to eat. In the long term, society as a whole must reap the rewards for what it has sown. Only a parasite keeps that from society, and like any parasite feasting on a host, society becomes sick when that happens.
The basic idea is that giving a patent-holder a limited time monopoly to profit from their inventions encourages invention. It does make sense, but the concept was formulated during an era of the solo inventor, and certainly not designed for the era of patent trolls. The system does not function terribly well now, and has encouraged a sort of arms race as large corporations build up arsenals of defensive patents, while patent trolls attempt to extort licensing fees, often based on highly questionable patents.
Governments and the courts have utterly failed in their duty to reign this behavior in, and if they don't start soon, we're going to see the ultimate meltdown. Arms races are fundamentally unstable propositions, and at some point someone who really counts, like Microsoft, is going to pull the trigger and the whole thing is going to explode in a terrible conflagaration. At that point governments will have to do something, but only after billions of dollars are tied up in ludicrous lawsuits and the consumer is screwed in the process.
The solutions aren't going to be easy for some, particularly those who have made a business plan out of extortion (SCO didn't invent this, after all). Patent terms need to be shortened, software and process patents need to be thrown out, and patent offices need more resources to identify bad patents and prior art.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.