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Time To Abolish Software Patents?
gnujoshua writes "Has the time come to abolish software patents? Fortune columnist Roger Parloff reports on a new campaign called End Software Patents, which he views as 'attempting to ride a wave of corporate and judicial disenchantment with aspects of the current patent system.' Ryan Paul of Ars Technica writes that the purpose of the campaign is to 'educate the public and encourage grass-roots patent reform activism in order to promote effective legislative solutions to the software patent problem.' The campaign site is informative and targets many types of readers, and it includes a scholarship contest with a top prize of $10,000.00. We've recently discussed the potential legal re-examination of software patents."
You can bitch and moan all you want about software patents, but the problem is something else. It is the inability of "the little guy" to license patents in a way that doesn't cripple him, or make him subject to the whims of the patent holders.
When patents are easily and fairly licensed, the incentive to use them is increased, and the patent holder reaps the rewards of the increased usage. When they are kept locked down tight and only used as bargaining chips in patent wars, then no one benefits, not even the patent holder.
Patents should be freely licensable if the holder does not currently produce a product based upon the patent. The patent should be negotiable to any other third party who requires it, and it should be available at a reasonable price for reasonable terms. The only time a licensing request should be denied is in the case of gross misconduct of the licensee or if the licensee is a direct competitor to whom providing the patent would materially damage the patent holder. An arbitration agency should be in charge of deciding if a license denial is valid, and to decide if a particular patent holder is denying license requests too often.
No, we haven't.
We've established that mathematics should not be patentable.
Oh, BTW: you probably meant "an exception to the rule that he who creates something novel should be rewarded".
Any other fields of endevour we should exempt? Not that anyone here doesn't have a personal stake in the outcome.Otherwise it just doesn't make sense, with or without Chewbacca.
Well, let's first see if patents even work as intended.
Ignore this signature. By order.
You make it sound like they lose all their protection for the software. That isn't the case. It will STILL be under a copyright.
And if something can be easily re-implemented (i.e. CSS/deCSS), then does it really deserve the ability to stifle all competitors like patents do ? Shouldn't the best software/best value be the winner instead of whomever got to the patent office first ?
Neither software nor should processes be copyrighted. How do you think the world would have been if Ford had patented the assembly line ? Do you think we would have been able to advance manufacturing if he had ? Do you think he would have licensed it to his competitors ?
UPS Sucks
So then someone can come along, change 1% of the design and sell it as their own? I'm thinking of cars as usual. In software's case, the final product is protected by copyright rather than patents. Individual methods are protected by patents. AFAIK America only introduced software patents in the 90s and things have gone downhill over there since then.
which is totally what she said
The problem isn't software patents. The problem is actually business model patents masquerading as software patents. Another issue is that patent length is standard across industries, when it should vary based on the timescale of innovation. Seven years in software is an epoch; the same for pharmaceuticals would be about a third of the amount of time spent developing a drug.
But the mechanism by which one implements his invention shouldn't matter. The fact that the bar is too low is an entirely separate problem.
What's nonsense is the claim that someone can have exclusive ownership over an idea or pattern. It creates a whole bunch of unintended consequences. I fail to see how legislation can fix that.
1. software patents != copyright
;/) but also means you can do whatever the fuck you want to to ANY piece of program in the world, including reverse engineering the hell out of anything, installing OS X on a non-Apple toaster, freely mixing Linux and leaked windows code, and so on. I would see it as a benefit. The OSS community and the open source / free software model is too powerful for any closed-source corporation (but maybe one) to stop, so simply forking a project and closing the source will mean the fork will die soon.
2. abolishing COPYRIGHT, not PATENTS, would eventually mean that ALL the software will fall under a BSD-style license, which not only means free (but without copyleft
3. Abolishing copyright won't happen any time soon. *Maybe* if Stallman becomes the president.
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My biggest problem with software patents is that most of the don't provide a working model. If you want to patent the software, you should have to provide all the source code with the patent that shows your "invention" working. I don't like how software gets 3 kinds of legal protection where anything else in the world only gets one. With software you get trade secrets, because you never have to release your source code. You also get copyright, so the relased binaries (or source code if you choose to release it) can't be copied unless specific permission is given. You also get patent protection. No other thing produce by people gets so much legal protection. My biggest problem with software patents is that they are mostly given on trivial inventions, where any skilled developer faced with the same problem would come up with a very similar solution.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You have a leap in your logic.
As one who opposes software copyrights, I use the GPL and not the BSD license.
As long as copyright exists, we use it, via the GPL, to prevent others from using it.
When copyright does not exist, the GPL is not necessary, and then the "BSD license"-style freedom takes place.
Choosing the BSD, rather than the GPL is the choice that reflects support of copyright -- it lets others use copyrights on derivatives of your work! If you do not support copyrights, disallow others from using copyright to restrict your software.
Those of us who oppose software copyrights are also pro-GPL, and I do believe Stallman is also in this crowd.
The problem with software patents is that anything that's really novel, like your impossible compression algorithm is basically a mathematical algorithm. Since you can't patent mathematical algorithms, there shouldn't be any need for software patents. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything really inventive in software that wasn't a mathematical algorithm. There's patents on things like one-click shopping, which aren't mathematical algorithms, but which aren't really all that novel either. And then there's patents that are inventive, like GIF compression, MP3 Compression and others, but which fall under the umbrella of mathematical algorithms.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well lets say I made a compression algorithm that will lossless compress all data by 1/2 (Yes it is mathmatically impossible, I know) This a new and marvel method. I don't patent it.
Historically, mathematicians (as well as other people like scientists) have never been granted an monopoly on the use of the results of their research, and it's not clear why should that change?
As you acknowledge, it's mathematically impossible, so let's look at a more likely situation: you release your great new application, except big_company comes along and points out a range of other patents of theirs that you are infringing upon.
At best, you might be allowed to cross-licence if you have something they want - in which case, they use your "invention" anyway. Otherwise, you have to stop distributing your product altogether (and hope you don't get sued).
Even if we did accept your hypothetical scenerio - it's not clear that a world where hard drives everywhere have double space is worse than one where the only allowed application of this knowledge is your little app.