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The Death of Nearly All Software Patents?
An anonymous reader writes "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in article 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three — the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal — the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine.'"
Invalidation of software patents was patented by me back in 2003.
Sounds like the machine that these patents are going to be tied to is the Titanic.
Someone should jump the gun and patent the idea that software cannot be patented. Then sue the trademark office for patent infringement.
The subject says it all.
Thus is a good thing. Patenting software is like patenting a math equation. I can understand software copyrights but not a freaking patent. I wonder how this will affect the cases that where already in court.
Now if we can only get some sense in patents regarding biology. By the way my patent on the biological reproductive process in humans will go into affect today. So all you with kids prepare to cough up.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Can someone who is in the "know" on this matter please translate it to English for us please?
Maybe the system does work.. albeit glacially slow.
My cynical self wonders how long before companies buy a new act that re-instates the broken method.
--iamnotayam
They should patent it.
Good news at last!
Common sense prevails.
Hopefully patent trolls will not be able to lobby against such changes; as for once, I daresay that certain major corporations are likely to be somewhat supportive, the current patent mess is as much a pain for them as for everyone else.
These restrictions bring patents back in line with their original intention, and hopefully will help reduce the excessive (patent) litigation so prevalent in the US...
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
I don't care who's reporting it or how reliable the source, the news that software patents would be invalidated, at least to me, and I'm sure a great many others, is something that is far in excess of too good to be true, so I'm gonna wait and see what happens.
I really wish I could believe that this were possible, but I think too many people with very deep pocket and friends in the right places would get screwed over by this sort of thing to ever allow it to happen.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense, but holyfreakingshit conveys my feelings better.
I haven't finished reading TFA yet, but this seems huge if it pans out — not only would software patents be invalidated, but essentially all "business process" patents would get tossed out as well.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Does compression of data count as "physical transformation" (IMO it's not, but I wonder what the USPTO thinks about it)?
And if this turns out well, does that mean that the MP3 and MPEG4 formats will no longer be patent encumbered?
I would like to see an end to business process and some medical (DNA!) patents.
First of all, can I just say, WOO HOO! This has been far too long in coming!
If this is what it sounds like (and no, I didn't RTFA; way too many links that look like they're probably rich in legalese!), it could pull the rug out from under many patent trolls, and allow a lot more innovation to come back into the US software world.
However, precisely because it has been so long in coming, it could mean a major shakeup of a number of things. One important example is listed right in the summary: Google's PageRank patent. With that invalidated, other search engines can legally use PageRank, without giving Google a dime, which could give them the same searching power as Google.
I can't even begin to speculate what the fallout of this would end up including, but I think it's important not to underestimate it. However, even if there are some short-term negative consequences, I think most of us here will agree that in the long term, at least, this is a big win for everyone (well, everyone but the patent trolls, that is!).
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The famous Overture's PPC patent which microsoft is trying to accuire through Yahoo should become invalid as well, resulting in "interesting times" to say the least.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Hope this gets done quickly, because the EU and other players are pushing for software patents and one of the main arguments is "harmonisation with the global (read: US) systems".
And I'm very keen on finding out what their next pseudo-argument is gonna be.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Will the patents like the so-called "one-click" patent be voided wherein anyone who paid licensing fees to that company will no longer have to? Will fees be refunded?
They are holding patentable when there are two computers involved. So, any networking code may still be patentable since it is a system of multiple computers. This may help to invalidate non-network software. Fraunhofer, I'm looking at you...
The article uses the workd "invalidate", which sounds to me like it would cancel existing patents. My question is - would this new set of criteria be retroactive, or would it apply only to new applications?
The PTO changing the rules to cancel previously approved patents would generate massive legal problems. In particular, companies have spent billions of dollars to register patents, only for the PTO to say "Oops, just kidding. Jokes on you."
No matter where you stand on software patents (and I'm against them if they can be restricted sensibly, BTW), that's no way to run a patent office.
I don't agree. Once again, patent policy is being set by people who obviously don't understand the technology, and so, having lurched from one extreme to the other back in the 1980s, we're now going to lurch to a new extreme that is also not going to make sense. If you read TFA closely to the end, you'll see that somehow two connected computers constitutes a "particular machine", where one does not. This doesn't make any sense, and is going to result in an arbitrary selection of which patents are valid and which aren't.
I understand that many people feel that software patents are so broken they should be thrown out. I don't agree. I think the problem with software patents is that the PTO never has had adequate expertise concerning prior art in the industry, and largely as a consequence, the bar for obviousness has been set about two orders of magnitude too low.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
If this is actually true and at least the frivolous software patents are going to be removed, what about those who have been sued by the patent owners and lost? Will they be entitled to receive anything back from the patent owners as the patents are now invalidated? I know if I lost out hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of these BS patents, I would want my money back. Hell, if I lost $5, I'd want it back. I only read part of TFA, so maybe I'm missing something. Patent discussions are boring :o
On the down side, I was hoping to patent an online technology that I think is revolutionary. On the up side, I guess that's done with now, and I get to release it to the public sooner!
That blog seems to want software patents to continue -- not surprising, really, given that it's a "patent law blog", and lawyers are the ones with the most to win from the cottage industry of software patents.
While I doubt this ruling will stand, I hope it does. Google has an enormous amount of manpower to throw at this kind of problem, most of it highly intelligent. The only way this hurts Google is if a competitor is able to implement PageRank (and other features) so much better than Google that people start to switch -- and I doubt Google will be standing still as this happens.
The fact is, software patents have had an overwhelmingly detrimental effect.
Does anyone really believe that, for instance, h.264 would never have been invented, were it not for patents? It would either have been open, or some interested party would have paid for the development.
As it is, while it's relatively cheap to obtain the computing power needed to, say, transcode a large library of video to h.264, the licensing cost can end up being something like $2500 per machine used in this capacity. And because of the longevity of patents, it seems unlikely that it will expire before a better encoding option surfaces.
Yeah -- ever wonder why YouTube took so long to convert everything to hi-def, when they have the computing resources of Google available? I think we know now.
I can imagine software patents being a good thing, but not in their current form. Getting rid of the 15-year-monopoly on an ephemeral idea or a mathematical function can only be a good thing for society as a whole.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...software patents then what is common factor? Abstraction Physics!
Woot, look at the submarines, they're all sinking! It's beautiful!
Must be the one on Nibi-Nibi island in the south pacific.
Too much common sense here to the US PTO.
how much particular? What about i.e. iPhone? There are a lot of patents around it, probably several related with software. If "tied" means "no way you can implement a similar algorithm if is in a different hardware" should be mostly ok.
This could be the silver bullet needed to kill all patent trolls.
It is about time!
This has the look and feel of a very good decision. Software patents, used in conjunction with trade secrets and copyright, are a wonderful way to create FUD. That FUD chills programmers too much because they don't want the litigation risk associated with FUD.
I hope the courts eventually figure out that software patents are troll food--and nothing else.
So what is happening to patent troll companies with software patent portfolios?
s/process/physical transformation/g
Before: "A process by which text may be inserted into a 'base' of 'data' in a format easily searchable by electronic means."
After: "A physical transformation by which text may be inserted into a 'base' of 'data' in a format easily searchable by electronic means."
And presto, patent granted! Cue the next round of the trolls! :-)
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Here's what I've found so far:
And, the original article: The Death of Google's Patents?
From TFA
This is not, however, the end of the story. The PTO's decision in Ex parte Wasynczuk provides one final twist so Kafkaesque as to strain credulity.
...
In sum, an innovative process is not patentable when operating on a single computer processor but is when operating on two processors, even though the Board recognizes that the process in the unpatentable claim "is essentially the method" set forth in the patentable claim.
I really hate law sometimes. Using two computers (instead of just one) means that the method is tied to a 'particular machine' instead of a general purpose computer.
So while this may kill of some current software patents, only a slight change in hardware is required to keep on patenting software. Why even bother? All this does is ensure that every software patent from this day forward will be tied to a 'particular machine'.
I harbor a secret hope that this will still render software patents ineffective, because to get a patent, you'll have to say that your process can only be run on a 'particular machine' comprised of two computers, while your competitors will just run a 'general purpose computer' and claim that they are not violating your patent. That's still probably wishful thinking, given my usual misunderstanding of how laws actually works.
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
Those parties materially impacted by this policy, for good or ill, will presumably need to get out their checkbooks and start making contributions to candidates who will legislate/administrate in whatever manner suits the contributors.
The courts are too smart to invalidate software patents wholesale. They realize the incentives to innovation they provide, the vast sums of research money that are put into place based on them already, and the destabilizing economic effect such a shift in policy would have.
You've got to decide whether software patents are good or bad. If it's good for Google to patent the idea of page ranking, then software patents, in general, must be a good idea. If software patents are a bad idea, then allowing Google to have a software patent on the PageRank algorithm is a bad idea.
In the future, if software patents are basically denied altogether, Trade Secret law will used to protect this sort of thing. Unfortunately for the many companies like Google, who've already been awarded patents, the algorithms are already disclosed. Which is why you will probably see some sort of transition period where currently existing software patents aren't just immediately invalidated, but I suspect will be grandfathered in - a basic principle of fairness is you can't change the rules after someone has already upheld their end of the bargain - the patent bargain is that you publically disclose your 'secrets', so that other people can *eventually* use them, but get legal protection on those secrets for a limited time. Telling people who've made disclosure that suddenly they get no protection on their disclosured algorithms is something I don't think is gonna pass - there will be too much resistance from companies on legislators to get protection for this sort of thing.
Personally, I think search engine competition is a good thing. I think competition in general is a good thing. My only concern with outright gutting of the patent system, is that now much knowledge that would have been disclosed in patents, will now remain locked up as trade secrets and NOT eventually become generally available to practitioners of software engineering, and so will, long-term, hold back the progress of computer science. Of course, we all know that right now, patent trolls are holding back the progress of computer science even more. Sort of a lose-lose situation. I guess gutting software patents is, really, probably the lesser of two evils here.
Cough up? Uh... I thought it was the other way.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
As I understand it, at least a few codecs we know of as "protected by patents" are actually mostly open -- just some crucial mathematical function has been patented, and it's impossible to build a working encoder/decoder without it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Someone check the temperature in hell!
Woo hoo!!! But I think that some patents should stand if they are truly innovative. If someone comes up with a killer compression technique that can compress a rar to 10% of it's size then they would deserve a patent. It is these "use a hyperlink to start a video" patents that need to go.
I propose that to circumvent the new "particular machine" requirement, all software patents should henceforth contain the phrase "this algorithm executes on a general purpose computer and a pony named Jack, housed in the San Francisco Zoo". A pony should be particular enough, right?
once again the bell has tolled over the death of something or other around slashdot with absolute zero proof that anything will change. the village idiots are all cheering in the streets over the sudden outbreak of common sense even though a finger really hasn't been lifted against the foe yet.
sweet dreams, guys. this is an extremely premature victory party.
Somehow I've got the feeling that if this goes through, there will be a lot of patent attorneys making a lot of money writing clauses into software patent applications along the lines of:
"whereby said process causes an electron to move from transistor a to transistor b"
since way down at a quantum level, the bit state of a block of memory is a physical process.
Alternatively, I'm sure there will be a lot of "software appliance" patents showing up under the argument that once its an "appliance", its no longer a general purpose computer.
...is for companies to employ a "physical object" provision in their patent filings. Google's PageRank patent, for example, may change from:
"A computer implemented method of scoring a plurality of linked documents"
to:
"A computer implemented method of scoring a plurality of linked documents with possible applications as a shower curtain"
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
If you read TFA closely to the end, you'll see that somehow two connected computers constitutes a "particular machine", where one does not. This doesn't make any sense, and is going to result in an arbitrary selection of which patents are valid and which aren't
That doesn't sound very particular
If anything, I'd think a particular machine would be defined by whether it's able to work independent from it's parts. Oh wait, fuck, then we'd have to figure what constitutes 'works', and 'parts', wouldn't we? But you get my meaning anyways, right?
Regardless, if patents are worth it to manufacturers, we might see a more hardware-centric business model.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
catchy article title but you are joking, right? anyone aware of how many billions in "property" will be erased in an instant?
.. and there will be noone there to silence them!
... well, at least those people will be most happy to hear about it
if that title ever makes it to a main media channel like CNN, you will hear thousands of CEOs, board members and other millionaires yelling at once
as a matter of fact, I am sure there is going to be a second wall-of-noise generated by cellphones ringing in law-firms, political bureaus and lobbist halls
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
...how long it will be before some lawyer argues that flipping bits in RAM or on a hard drive constitutes "a physical transformation of an article".
As nice as it would be to get some real reform efforts going, I'm not holding out too much hope for this particular one.
the coolest club on
Just imagine where we would be today if that nonsense had never existed in the first place.
I'd guess that we'd have much more usable software that worked well together and was more secure and efficient, vs. crap that was done just to avoid a ridiculous patent infringement.
Come on.
The first thing IBM, Google, Microsoft, and a gaggle of companies will do is march right over to congress and say that the earth will implode if this is allowed.
Then they will mention that they may not have money for campaigns, jet trips and dinner engagements.
And..
A bill will work it's way through congress in record time. Gauranteed.
I love a good mystery (and polls). So, is it the PTO saying:
a) "Cap'n she can't take much more!" (Approaching total functional failure)
b) "Go ahead, make my day." (I ain't takin' no more sh*t from you)
c) "Do you want to live forever?" (What the hell, got nothing to lose at this point.)
d) "ZOMG! pwnies!" (This acid trip is soooo righteous, man!)
The scariest part about it is, as a government office/function/bureau, the most likely answer is:
e) All of the above (Hi, my name is Sybil.)
I favor patents, even software patents. However lately software patents have been abused. I favor patents such as compression algorithms, encryption methods, etc. Stuff that takes real though and is a part that the pattenter knows has practical application. However most patents are stupid, and are not used to help the inventor protect his rights and allow them to profit for a time to cover the R&D costs, but they are used to keep others from doing what needs to get done, eg. Microsoft patent on timing the last time you clicked a button. Or the Amazon.com One Click. Things like these would be created when a business requirement to make them comes up. However when you get a business requirement to say compress data or encrypt data as part of a larger project most professional developers will not go out and make their own they will use someone else's method, and that person should get credit/compensation for the work that they are using. Smart patents are good and help provide stability for innovation (as many are afraid to innovate if their work cannot be protected).
Now for the fact that Software patents are against the GPL well remember the GPL forced this idea onto itself patents have been around long before the GPL, and if you want a GPL version you will need to make it slightly different or wait for the software patent to expire. If the GPL was written without the the Ultra Left views it could have been designed that patented code could be use if the patienter gave permission for use of this code in all GPL licensed software without stipulations of reoccurring costs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
dont get me wrong - i would definitely not like a piece of software i wrote being stolen.
but patenting software and methods are WAY stupid. its basically patenting algorithms, which is basically the PROCESS OF THINKING. can you imagine ? we are allowing people to patent complex THOUGHTS. and even many are not complex either. we are issuing patents on the process of THINKING.
its totally absurd. the new stance office is taking is spot on.
Read radical news here
Then I got one, and was paid good money for it (sold it to the company I was working for).
And now it may become invalidated. Hmmm... While some software patents are ridiculous, such as the XOR algorithm and the "one-click" purchase of Amazon, others that involved true ingenuity and shrewdness perhaps should remain? If the same intellectual "energy" goes into creating an algorithm as it does, say, a widget, should it not be awarded *some* protection?
I am really mixed on this because of all the abuse software patents have seen. At the same time, when the whole notion of patents was drafted, that was no such thing as "software" Now, we have software running everywhere, including controlling such machines as the car you drive.
I know I will be hissed and booed, but perhaps there is *some* place for *some* software patents.
But in today's high seas of corporatism, many patents are abused anyway, and not just software ones. Big corporations will use their patents as "head whackers" where one corp will sue and counter-sue over patents just to gain market advantage, as opposed to exploiting the market for a patent. It's a fine distinction, one I am not sure about.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
You think your negative view is unique? Aren't you a special little black snowflake.
I've just spent the last 5 weeks putting together a patent application for a "System for greeting individuals called World" - and now it's worthless.
What's the point of other people doing work, if I can't cash in on it.
Sod it. :-(
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Score one for freedom and the free market! This is GREAT news!
...I haven't finished reading TFA yet, but this seems huge if it pans out...
Can you hear that ever increasing hum? It is the sound of a few thousand software industry lobbyists revving up the engines of their luxury cars and driving off to Washington at breakneck speed.
Software patents that already exist are unlikely to be invalidated (though it's not impossible). Any law undermining existing rights probably amounts to an appropriation of property, and companies affected could appeal to the 14th Amendment for (potentially enormous) compensation. If the patents were annulled (i.e. said to have never rightfully existed in the first place). Who's to say, though. At least the momentum seems to be swinging away from the ridiculous.
Not that I agree with this, but I believe that a patent is considered property for the purposes of the 5th Amendments "Just Compensation" clause. Given that, patent holders may be able to sue the Government for "taking" the patent back.
(I am not a lawyer, and certainly not a Takings expert; just a random thought.)
We're just trading one type of troll for another. Instead of patent trolling, people will just look for marketable software that they can "make their own". Reverse engineering and cracking will go up and the only net gain will be a decrease in the workload at the patent office.
It seems that in the past a lot of the debate regarding GPL2 vs GPL3 has largely been over patent issues. What would this do to the argument if software patents were removed from the equation.
yvan eht nioj
Do you not agree that software is equivalent to mathematical formulas, or do you think that software patents (an arbitrary subset of mathematics) should be patentable for some reason?
In the latter case, do you believe that, say, Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat's last theorem could be translated to a typed lisp expression (or any equivalent in some other language) and patented as a method of proving a certain fact about integers, and then authors of any proofs using Fermat's last theorem as a lemma could be sued for violating the patent? What about the four-coloring theorem which requires a programmatic proof? In short, what criteria would you use to distinguish unpatentable mathematics from patentable software?
Let's say software and business process patents did not exist. Where would Google be now? Would Sergey and Brin not have bothered to work on search algorithms if there hadn't been a patent carrot at the end? I highly doubt it -- and I doubt that there would be any change for the worse in the software or business landscape in terms of new ideas and new processes. Let's use the example of "not a Patent troll" NTP. A very friendly write up (in Businessweek, iirc) noted that this company wasn't a patent troll because they guy who'd had the idea of push e-mail and worked in telecom for years, had the idea and patented it, then put it in a drawer for "later use" That's the problem -- 99% of these patents are either 1. Defensive or 2. Predatory. I think Google's patents are defensive -- Google is doing so well because they figured out a way to make everything work. I agree that the "particular machine" seems a bit odd, but I guess as with many others I'm so disgusted seeing a system which is supposed to promote new ideas and move the marketplace forward doing the exact opposite. It's being used to kill or extort companies that are actually making new ideas work -- say vonage -- by companies that just patented huge swaths of ideas speculatively and in that case both defense and predation. (Verizon patented a lot of VOIP stuff it doesn't use but by going after companies using it they protect their core business model using older methods) Are there two examples of software patents that really helped innovation and would have been unlikely to be discovered / worked out if software was not patentable? - Jeff Dodge
My software is a process tied to a particular machine.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Marshall, TX just lost most of its business. (At least, I hope this is the case.)
--Z
I suppose the author, Mr. Duffy, thinks he wrote a fair and balanced article. He mentions several times how valuable certain patents are, and that this change "threatens" many patents and will "destabilize" patenting. There is no mention of the gains to society, this seems to be purely a lawyer's outlook on the immediate consequences to patent attorneys and their clients. Clients will lose a lot of patents, oh no!
There's no mention of how this will greatly help everyone against patent trolling. The closest he gets is a mention that this is "cause for celebration among those ... philosophically opposed to property rights in innovation", as if there are no real benefits to be had, as if that's a point that is of no interest to any except a few theologians of some obscure religion, He writes that this is a departure from over 2 centuries of tradition. We think otherwise. The tradition of patenting is over 200 years, yes, but the tradition of patenting software is perhaps only 30 years old, not 200. And the "system is supposed to be designed to encourage ... the innovative", but there is nothing about the means or any studies about the system's effectiveness. Are we supposed to take it for granted that because the system was designed to accomplish a purpose, it does so? Apparently we are supposed to take that view. How else could a "contraction of patent eligibility" be seen as "very troubling"? To the contrary!
He concludes that figuring out answers to these "fascinating questions" will keep patent attorneys employed. I would add gainfully to the front of employed, but I'm doubtful that these questions are "fascinating", any more than a "debate" over the merits of Young Earth Creationism vs Old Earth Creationism is interesting. We know the answers already, it's that some don't like the answers and have tried to create debate and controversy out of nothing.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If this is in fact true, then I would imagine that there would be some sort of grandfather clause (or there probably will be after enough companies with deep pockets with large patent portfolios get to enough people in power) that would render existing software patents as valid, but prevent any new software patents from emerging (unless tied to a physical device as started before).
Would this completely destroy GPL and Creative Commons?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
you think this is a good thing. /. seem to think, government agencies do listen to the people.
Contrary to what many posters on
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The trouble is, I think the submitter is wrong and that the cases he's citing don't go nearly as far as he claims they do.
There are too many Intellectual Property attorneys out there that would be put out of business by such a ruling.
Of course, the whole concept OF "intellectual property" actually IS something of an oxymoron, when one considers the actual meaning of the term... property that exists only intellectually... and not on the physical plane...
It will be interesting to see how the COURTS rule on this, as opposed to the Patent Office. It's the courts that will have the final say, anyway... not the Patent Office...
So computer programs are both equivalent to a physical machine, and an abstract mathematical proof, at the same time.
That is, you can argue it either way, and they're both right.
That said, I maintain that you should have to acutally build the Turing machine to get the patent :-)
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
So what would all this mean for the Linux/BSD OS's?
This appears to be one step closer to reason, but not quite the outbreak of common sense that many (including me) have been hoping (and/or pounding fists into tables and heads against walls) for. Patents are good when they (1) encourage the application of resources (time/money/intellect) in working out how to do something new/better/improved, (2) provide for a means of allowing the individual(s) who devoted these resources to derive some benefit from their efforts (primarily monetary, but not exclusively), (3) explicitly allow for the expiration of the rights (of exclusive ownership of the implementation details) to ensure that the the general public can, in time, benefit most fully from the invention after a suitable level of "encouragement" has been allowed to accrue to the inventor. A proper functioning patent system will not only address those 3 goals, but also balance the relationships among them to achieve the best long term outcome for all individuals (i.e. society). What the change discussed in TFA addresses, is a part of the larger discussion on the refinement of the system regarding software patents to make sure that patents are only (hopefully) offered on the working out of the implemenation details to make it work, not on the concept or method itself (which took inspiration but not substantial development effort to invent). It's a critically important distinction that means the difference between a system which encourages people to invest their time/effort/money in developing new/novel/innovative ways of doing things without worrying about losing there shirt to copycats on day 2. The invalidation of most software patents would get us back, here in the US, to being closer to a patent system which is as it should be: an economic inducement mechanism for encouraging investment in development of new things, not a prize system that locks up value within the organization who patent ideas first (or who have the biggest legal teams to do so).
So this covers "pure software" process, but what about anything related to i.e. printers, cd/dvd burning, hd/usb/(database?) writting and so on?
Sometimes the spirit of the law it isnt in the way it is written. My 1st idea of what meant physical transformation was related to software that uses machines in a production chain, i.e. for making car parts or a can of soda. But the way it is written opens enables again "generic" enough patents.
None of you actually believe any of this hype do you? Andrew Young hit the nail on the head with "Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it."
I would go so far as to assume that google employs more than 100 businessmen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google says almost 20000 total, so if at least .5% are businessmen...). I realize it's no law of physics, but Mr. Young's point is that laws that are bad for businesses don't usually work out. And common sense tells us that the worse it is for the bigger the industry, the less likely it is to work as expected.
Google and M$ are big. IBM is big. Take away something they all bank heavily on? Not happening, I don't care whether or not software patents make sense or are bad ideas. I don't care if the USPTO has total authority and is the one saying it will happen, mark my words, the problem we all share with software patents will survive this battle, even if it has to rename itself.
Just run the software on a monitor with mechanical pixels. You know, like those oldschool signs in train stations and airports.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
The makers of the Blackberry would then educate you about that $600 million check they had to write.
You just know someone is going to sue claiming that abolishing software patents is a "Taking" under the fifth amendment and that they (and all the other patent trolls) are due compensation.
...I would say it is much more akin to authoring music or text. You have a limited (though sometimes wide) vocabulary and syntax. Many authors will put the same vocabulary and syntax together in a strive for similar goals, yet the combination used is generally unique. The differentiation between them come out in skill and subtlety as well as application.
Copyright, IOW, is very appropriate. Patent is entirely not.
Business process falls into the same category IMO. If the drive-through window were invited in the 90's and not the 40's, only the first bank or fast food restaurant to come up with the concept could use it and all others would have to pay royalties. Then the owners of toll roads would sue for prior art, etc. etc.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
One important example is listed right in the summary: Google's PageRank patent. With that invalidated, other search engines can legally use PageRank, without giving Google a dime, which could give them the same searching power as Google.
Just because I could legally use PageRank -- leaving aside for the moment the fact that much of Google's actual search algorithm isn't patented, it's a trade secret -- doesn't mean that I can magically materialize data centers with tens or hundreds of thousands of servers and the money and personnel to run them. There are plenty of barriers to entry in the search market, and intellectual property isn't the most important of them.
One would think that, having observed Microsoft, among others, making billions of dollars from unoriginal and technically inferior products, people would begin to realize that neither the quality of one's technical ideas nor their originality are the main determiners of success in the marketplace. Ideas, even good ideas, are cheap and plentiful and therefore not worth very much. The world will not beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. In fact, the idea that anyone is going to beat a path to your door for any reason is why so many brilliant people end up working for someone else.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The whole pagerank algorithm is well know and not particulary complex. Implementing it and writing a spider was one of many homeworks i had in my numeric programming course (thou one of the most interesting) Basically you put the probability to get from website A to B into a matrix and find it's eigenvalues (which is best done numeric). Those are the pagerank. ...
What's not so well known is how to find a good set of a few hundred websites out of the trillions of pages your spider indexed to build that matrix
Let's says that Second Life has some patented algo's. We know that Second Life somehow exists in this space, as I have read a paper based article on the virtual world software application of same name. If, as we have seen, the application's "real estate" can be purchased for REAL money from this space, clearly a transformation has occurred. Somehow those mathy logic loops moved some money at a distance. A recent Accenture study indicated that 70% of value of the S&P 500 is intangible. Google does not have enough capital goods to equal their current valuation - where does that value come from? The overwhelming bulk of their value is one pretty complex algorithm. How much money is that algo moving at a distance for Google? Not all of that money movement is digital, as some is still moved in the form of checks. There is some interface between the purely math world of for loops, and the real world of money and iPhones. How many applications are there out there attempting to increase the efficiencies of the S&P 500? Literally thousands. If only a few succeed, they too have performed a transformation in this real space. The transformation is the physical firing of neurons setting behind the keyboard, through the interaction with the software, and then propagated to other neurons/keyboard combinations, until a new efficiency has been achieved, resulting in more REAL dollars in the company's bank account. The software is focusing or harmonizing neural firings to achieve a new reality that a group of people in this space share. Acme company: Yesterday, we could only do two of these projects simultaneously, now with our new project portfolio management software, we can do three. New reality, more money. Transformation complete. There are substantial arguments on whether math is a representation, or math IS reality. For this discussion, it doesn't really matter. Software, and the math loops behind it, is increasingly manipulating objects in this space via the transference of an organized thought from one neuron host to the next. The social software sites are an extreme example. The software is changing our culture (youtube, myspace, linkedin, etc.) - talk about transformation. I have five software patents, and each time I think about them, sometimes I'm proud, and sometimes I feel guilty. My mom is always proud. I'm not smart enough to have any ideas outside my current domain, so this company I started represents my retirement. Patents represent some great potential value for me. Conversely, I can't get to all of the things that the patents represent, so if they were in the public domain, potentially great efficiencies could be obtained, lessening carbon output in some small way. The right path is not so clear to this dude. When the PTO begins research into a new claim, they say they are "going to the shoes." This terms goes all the way back to the very first US patent examiner, the 3rd president himself, TJ. He was selected the first examiner, because, well, he knew everything. However, he kept some reference material in shoe boxes, hence the term. I think the bar for most software patents is too low. However, I do think that when software incorporates new algorithms that can demonstrably transform behaviors in this space, that software seems pretty special to me, and a patent doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
Seriously the guy should get a refund for all those patents he paid for. It's really not fair.
If only my last client had used their money to pay me what they owed rather than filing a bunch of software patents...
Well they'd still be out of business, but I wouldn't have to wait in line for their bankruptcy handouts.
With the real world.
Mathematics and software create their own world, the laws of which mean that an answer is right.
E.g. a software simulation of gearing will show that you can get 1,000 gears set up so that you can have a gearing ratio of 1:1 up to 1:1,000,000,000. In real life, you'll find problems that you have to overcome (and it's the method of overcoming them that is worthy of a patent) such things as:
a) Backlash
b) Friction
c) Stripping gear teeth
d) sizes
e) torque losses
f) manufacturing the gears
g) putting them together
and so on.
Science gets away with it by saying "this is probably not 100% correct, but it should do". Engineering and the patents you are allowed to have are answering the naive production making you say "shit. why did that not work". Scientists get papers, prizes and accolades of their peers for finding out why it didn't work. Engineers get patents.
Well... this is interesting, we'll have to see how it plays out.
On the one hand, if the tag is true and that there will be no software patents, startups are effectively dead as well. Many startups use a patent as collateral for investors in order to get started. No patents mean that anybody (provided you have the resources - time, or a flock of programmers) can now reverse engineer what you've done and use it and you have no protection against that happening. Since you cannot protect your idea, your idea no longer has value to investors -- you have no collateral for investors to use to secure investment monies. Microsoft, for instance, will be able to not pay any licenses to the 'little guy' in order to use any new IP. Copyright only protects the source, not the algorithm. As long as anyone wants to write their own source, they have your IP. The flip side is that the big companies can't keep any other company (large or small) from making use of its IP. So, the death of startups based on new ideas and the proliferation of anyone with the resources using any idea from anyone else. Pretty high stakes.
The other side is that any company with the resources will simply make physical products instead of software. This could herald in the return of cartridge based systems and set-top boxes and the return to hardware based solutions. Since it's a physical product, the barrier to creating new hardware is pretty high (not everyone can manufacture their own cartridges or fab their own chips). Plus, because the algorithm is now implemented using atoms instead of ideas, electrons, and magnetic fields, it can now be patented... since atoms are seen to be more valuable than ideas.
What people don't understand is that IP does have value. The idea of a plow and what that idea enables is far more (incredibly more) valuable than the steel that's used to make the plow. Just because something isn't made of atoms does not mean it has no value.
uh, i almost forgot that they're such great innovators! what have they invented? oh yeah, a search engine and how to destroy our privacy!
remember: just mention "google" in the context of sth bad (sw patents) and that sth turns into sth good immediately.
next please.
Actually, all that math is an abstraction of electronics, and electronics is just an abstraction of physics.
So "researchers" are no more Computer Scientist that "programmers" are because neither of them comprehend the entirety of the physics that are driving the electrons that make it possible for that computer to do the math that has been abstracted to a high level 'English-like' readable language. /sarcasm
Really, intra-software industry pissing matches are just humorous. There is no significant difference in skill levels of programmers and researchers. Only the knowledge of the application's focus changes. And for as complex as modeling some new mathematical equation may be, I can present you with a mile long list of tax codes, international trade law, federal regulation, incentive programs, etc... that can make a "simple" accounting program just as complex.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The author of the blog post referenced by this article exhibits a conservative bias, and doesn't disclose a conflict of interest. Others have called him on it. But, it's his blog, isn't it.
Nevertheless, the post replies are interesting reading with passionate arguments on all sides, some of whom are ACTUAL PATENT ATTORNEYS!
Cough up? Uh... I thought it was the other way.
Just wait til his patent is invalidated by prior art ... from his parents.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
That is like saying a nut and bolt is physics. You can't patent physics. A refrigerater using a compressor, a gas, an expansion valve, and a condenser is just physics. You can't patent physics.
You CAN patent what you've done with physics. You can patent what you've done with math.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Can programmers stop calling themselves software "engineers"?
I actually read the article. It made me wonder if patenting a piece of software as "a process, implemented on an x86 cpu" would be patentable, since it describes a particular piece of hardware. If so, it looks like rather than reducing the amount of frivolous patents, this merely opens the floodgates for a bunch of wannabes to attempt to patent "software x" on specific processors, while shafting the original idea guys because their patents are "too broad".
Also, what does "utilizing multiple computing devices" have to do with software? Can I just perform the same exact steps on a single cpu, perhaps taking twice as long, and claim that I'm not violating the patent just because it doesn't happen to utilize two separate devices?
This looks like a good way to start some sort of corporate war, but will end up being meaningless to the common man (until he hires on as a meat shield for the coming Microsoft/Yahoo/Sony conflict (Live, in HD where available!)).
Is it any wonder there are so many "pirates", when even the people who make the rules don't know how the rules work?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Your software is a process running on MY machine. Unless your patent says "on Mark's machine" you're SOL. And if it does, then you can be violating your own patent when running it on your machine!
USPTO will not act; I'm not even sure they should having read many of the posts above.
Polititians will not act, same reasons.
If you want to invalidate software patents then you must make the current system unworkable. Some examples might be...
1) Target a high-profile software patent and patent dozens of things that overlap with it.
2) Target a high-profile patent and re-publish the guts of it as math in some respected math journal
Use some means to pick the high-profile patent so that it is not just a vindictive stab at a targetted company - maybe something that gets voted on as being particularly egregious or something that would benefit lots of people if it were busted.
I'm sure that with a little thought, the patent process could be used against itself.
Nullius in verba
This argument you pose can be applied to any phenomenon. In the end, EVERYTHING is rooted in mathematical equations. To allow for segregation, separation, and specialization, Society has decided that at some point the level of obscurity where mathematics is evidenced (or not), warrants a new classification.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Every time this subject comes up, I'm amazed at the number of clueless people that chime in. I seriously doubt that ALL 'software patents' will go away. That's far too broad of a stroke. There are many many 'software patents' that are perfectly legitimate. Yes, there are many that are questionable and need to be reined in... and that will happen. But all? Sorry, no. If something is invented that is truly novel, non-obvious and useful... it deserves to be protected with a patent no matter what it is made of. To automatically think it's somehow not deserving simply because it's 'software' instead of brick and mortar is, frankly, stone-age thinking. The same blood, sweat and tears in terms of creative work can certainly be poured into a software project that can be poured into a brick and mortar project; probably even more so.
The BIG problem is, a lot of things are getting patented that don't meet the statutory for patentability... which really has nothing to do with it being software.
including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc
If this is about page rank, Google did a great job applying it to the web, but the idea and approach were not "pioneering". The same algorithm had been in the literature for many years.
All they need is to make a hard copy of every search result. This should satisfy, "result in a physical transformation of an article". Then we can build golf courses on all the land freed up by Googles need for printer paper. Note: I have protected my idea by making a hard copy of this posting.
Tech Support: "No, sir...clicking on 'Remember Password' will NOT help you remember your password."
Sex may not be well known to the average slashdotters, but there are people in the trade to whom the techniques are obvious.
Actually, the parent post contained a simile that compared software to math, not a metaphor.
Say pieces on a board, make each piece a pair with another piece.
like...
|55|33|66|
|44|66|55|
|33|44|22|
|22|11|11|
a piece can only be figured out to move one way...
pick any piece, try to move it somewhere...
have the chosen piece move to another piece, it moves there and makes the other piece have to move too.
when a piece is moved to another piece, it becomes a pair with the piece it moves to.
any piece that is moved has to have it's pair move at the same time.
any piece to move to another piece is a piece that moved at the same time as it's pair, and moved to another piece that
moved at the same time as it's pair too. A piece that moves to another piece becomes a pair with it, and the other of the pair
has moved to become a pair with another piece.
try anyway, works in one way where a piece can move back to the piece to move first.
A common type of problem, I forget what it's called.
A piece always goes where a piece leaves, the first piece has the last piece go where it left.
You can't move a piece that moves where the piece came from.
There is no such thing as a free space, a piece always moves to another piece.
A pair never moves to a pair.
A piece works out to move where another piece can get back to where a piece moves from.
The last move has to be known for the first move to be made, because the first move can't be understood until
the last move is. That's because the first move is where a piece moves to and it works around to the last move, and the
last move is where a piece can work getting to from the first move.
so try this...
draw for each piece a line that shows each piece that moves to another piece for the way that piece can move. A line should show a
piece that moves back to the piece started from. See each piece and pieces involved in moving for that piece as a machine part.
A machine part is a connected condition where there's a dependency on one condition for another condition.
see this as a machine diagram.
move a piece then figure the machine diagram again, it's the same machine though...
see how every other piece moves another way now?
what happened for how the machine moved?
If this is accurate, it's an even worse situation than right now.
The fact that the patent office is granting obvious patents, or patents "it's a good idea to do this" rather than "this is a good way to do something" is the problem.
The patent system is designed to promote innovation. It does so by allowing people to exploit an invention without the overhead of trying to keep it secret. If this becomes the policy, then if you come up with innovation, you need to keep it secret, because it is only protected by trade secret.
There's a large (and to me, obvious) difference between something like the one click patent ("if we let people order with only one click, we can make lots of money") and RSA (a specific method of doing public key cryptography). The criteria should be that a patent must clearly specify a *method* of doing something, which would be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art who was confronted by the problem of "how should I do this".
... in the enrollment papers:
"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
My God. You dont get an ounce of work for free out of a lawyer, doctor, plumber, electrician but software development gets crapped on left and right. First its the exempt status with NO overtime pay and then its the outsourcing debacle and now, do away with patents.
I'll just raise my rates three-fold to cover the losses. Simple as that.
Secondly, lots of folks on this thread are confusing Simple Turing machines which implement some specific algorithm or other with the Universal Turing Machine, which can read a description of a Simple Turing machine (i.e. a program) and then emulate its execution.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
The article specifically states:
"The vast bulk of patents on software, business and information technology are thought by some not to be threatened because those innovations are typically implemented on a machineâ"namely, a computerâ"and the tie to a machine would provide security against the agencyâ(TM)s contractions of  101."
Yes, it affects PageRank because that software the technology not tied to a specific machine. But according the the article it shouldn't affect patents which are tied down to a specific hardware and software specification. Apple's iPhone software should be totally patentable. My personal view is that all this does is narrow the scope of patents so that you can't patent some technology for general use all computers.
The article specifically states: "The vast bulk of patents on software, business and information technology are thought by some not to be threatened because those innovations are typically implemented on a machine namely, a computer and the tie to a machine would provide security against the agency's contractions of $ 101." It affects PageRank because that the technology not tied to a specific machine. But according the the article it shouldn't patents which are tied down to a specific hardware and software specification. Apple's iPhone software should be totally patentable. All this does is narrow the scope of patents so that you can't patent some technology for general use all computers.
Software is a series of words that instruct a computer to perform specific functions. Copyright is all that's necessary to protect the intellectual property of software developers.
And I don't mean copy protection of the specific code, obviously there are many ways for software to achieve the desired effect. It's the effect that should be subject to copyright, which is what leans software developers towards the patent office.
However, if you translate a poem to french, which would entail significantly changing several phrases to maintain a rhyming scheme, the original author still has copyright protection.
L'auteur n'en apprendra jamais probablement*, but the software developer probably will learn of competitive products that violate copyright.
* The author would probably never learn about it
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
It's popular to be against patents here on slashdot but most of the discussion is unfortunately limited to very simplistic black and white type reasoning where people use legal terms they barely understand. Quite frankly, most people here seem to have no clue about what they are actually against / in favor of. What is a software patent and what is not a software patent is very murky in a legal sense and quite hard to explain. Quite many patents related to software systems are actually phrased as traditional patents about devices performing certain functionality in very general broad terms. In other words, they are not software patents at all and you can get them registered outside the US (provided there is enough novelty).
The problem is not so much that there are software patents, but that there are many trivial patents for which the prior art research leaves a lot to be desired and for which the claims are covering a lot of existing systems. Challenging these is difficult, time consuming and expensive. Patents that are actually software patents or method patents are generally pretty weak to begin with. It means the patent lawyer wasn't able to phrase the invention in more traditional patent terminology (and they are really good at this). Having them is one thing, enforcing them is another.
Some lawyers & institutions pondering how to tweak definitions, interpretations, etc means nothing until laws are actually changed and until court cases (re)define interpretations of those laws. We are talking about a very lengthy process that is going to be very political. Decisions will be challenged endlessly because the stakes are very high. A decade is nothing here. Even then the impact is probably going to be very limited. No way, that many thousands of IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc. patents are suddenly invalidated. That represents billions of dollars of investment for these companies (R&D + legal fees). At best it might get slightly easier to challenge some of the more obvious patents.
That's probably a good thing long term and there seems to be a lot of demand from big corporations for this due to the fact that they are under constant attack from small companies owning bullshit patents. But meanwhile the amount of patents registered will likely continue to grow.
Jilles
Fact is, it is possible to prove the correctness or otherwise of a computer program, so it's mathematics.
Actually it's not possible to prove correctness - though there's other stuff you can prove.
Consider:
What constitutes "correctness" depends on the intent of the program. A perfect "cat", for example, is broken if what you wanted was "sum".
So if you have a method to formally prove correctness of a program, you have to specify to it what the intent of the program is. And you have to do that in a formal way. This, itself is a programming problem. So you have ANOTHER program which may or may not be correct, as a necessary step for proving the correctness of the first program, and this new "program" is itself not proven correct. Infinite regress.
The "correctness" proof, meanwhile, is demoted to a proof of equivalence between the two "programs", which are merely different ways to express the same intent.
Of course this can be very useful: The two (or more) forms of expression of the intent can be wildly divergent. Expressing the same intent in two or more divergent forms drastically reduces the chance that the same error is made in all of the expressions. Combined with an automatic way to prove equivalence between them (and thus root out the errors that don't occur in all of the expressions) and you end up with a drastic reduction in the number of errors in the final product and a drastic increase in the chance that there are no undiscovered errors.
Other things that can sometimes be proved about programs include impossibility and membership in a class of programs with equivalent degrees of computational difficulty.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you can't keep the process secret, then you aren't giving anything up to get a patent. And if you are just saying "pour beaker A in to beaker B", you can't keep that secret.
That's the sort of process patent he's on about.
You stupid communists/socialists are begging for unfair/corrupt world where the doers get squat and the lazy bums make all the money.
... but I wonder why they elected to dump the entire software patent system rather than fix it?
Maybe the pro-patent lobbyists wish list looks like this:
1. A dysfunctional patent system system that lets us patent stuff without actually disclosing any details.
2. No patent system at all - reliance on trade secrets.
3. A functional patent system that will make the market force us to disclose details.
Is what is patented: not the "use the machine to make widgets" (which is the program). So that doesn't work.
Your widget is patented.
Your machine (how to make the machine) is patented.
Using the machine to make your widget is never patented.
Try again.
I threw a chair at him but it missed and hit a statue of Natalie Portman.
And you're still alive? Natalie didn't clean you?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It wards off "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics and other types of anticooperative behavior.
Patents by their vary nature are anticompetitive (I know you said "anticooperative", which patents can be also), they grant the patent holder a monopoly.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
...the problem is that they aren't treated like other sorts of patents.
If I file a patent for a new type of chair, I have to explain how it works on public record, and in return for society getting new and useful information, I am granted a limited monopoly.
If you want to uphold the concept, you really need to require companies that file software patents to present their complete source code trees for the software that they wish to patent. Society really isn't getting any benefit by granting amazon.com a monopoly off of 'one click checkout' bullshit. but society might benefit if amazon open sourced its code after seven years of monopoly.
If companies don't like this, they are free to keep their code as a trade secret. It's worked quite well for the Coca-cola company and their famous secret recipy.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...I want to read your play now...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Why shouldn't someone be able to patent a gene they made that lets you grow five noses?
Because the practice just stinks. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA*gasp*AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
GUI's could have been patentable, but as we've seen, Xerox started it, Apple used it, and Microsoft stole it from apple. When Microsoft was sued, they claimed prior art from Xerox. Once again, graphical representation is now prior art.
I used to think the same as you, that MS stole the GUI from Apple. However as CEO of Apple in or around 1991 John Sculley sold a license to a GUI to Microsoft. Some people think Steve Jobs stole the GUI from Xerox too. However Xerox invested in Apple and invited Jobs to tour Xerox PARC and try to develop a commercial product from what he saw there, PARC did fabulous research but weren't so good at commercializing what they created.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ideally speaking, companies would be able to let loose algorithms, and it would be trivial for other people/companies to buy them very cheaply using some kind of a micropayment system.
Super simple algs like quicksort would be fractions of a fraction of a percent, while more developed algs (such as say an algorithm to detect faces, or extract individual instruments from a piece of music) would take a larger percentage (still probably small) from any earnings that the new software makes.
It's good, because even the smallest startup can afford it (since it's a percentage, not a flat fee). As long as there isn't lots of red tape to slow down the process, I can't see the harm.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I don't think these people here read the whole article (I don't expect that), but the issue here is not just about software patents.
Software patents represent the cutting edge in innovation for a good two decades, and to now backpedal and have the patent office claim they mishandled these applications is not just a blow to software, it represents a breakdown of the system itself.
From the article:
And it is likely to generate puzzlement among business people and innovators, who may wonder how agency decisions supposedly premised on the need for ensuring that âoethat the patent system be directed to protecting technological innovationsâ[22] have ended up rendering unpatentable innovations in search engine technology, computer modeling, bioinformatics and many other innovations in cutting edge fields related to software and information technology.
So Dyson, Pfizer, and Toyota are innovative/inventive, but Apple, IBM, and Google are not? It would be easy to argue they are, and if they in fact are, then what are the patent office's claims that make them not worthy of similar protection? That they work at a higher abstraction level than wood and glue, nuts and bolts, soldiering irons and circuit boards?
Yes there are some very stupid software patents. But look at all other types of patents. The number of ridiculous patents you find will be proportional to the time you spend looking. It is when these patents become cause for litigation that they start to hold any meaning whatsoever.
So will they be offering refunds on the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the patents that were granted but are now invalidated by the new rules?
My guess is that depends on what "machine" is considered to be running that software. Let's say you genetically manipulate a human. Does the code run on the machine "human"? Or does it run on "ribosone" machines? And for both of these machines, can they be consider "particular"? But the more important part might be the physical change: the protein synthesis. One might argue that changing code only indirectly lead to physical changes, as ribosones just read everything they run into. If not, than Google could just argue people physically go to the bars that they found thanks to PageRank. I am definitely not a legal expert, but I do think somebody better write a well informed paper on this subject (if it has not already been done).
Google's page rank patent has no reason to exist. The point of a patent is to protect innovation in trade for disclosing how that innovation is done. Google does not disclose how they rank pages. Their actual page rank algorithm is a trade secret. They seem to get benefits both ways, patent protection for the page rank idea, but don't disclose how they really do it. That simply seems to violate the spirit under which patent protection might be granted.
I've read submissions from Adobe that they don't support patents.
They think the troll cost is not worth it. They do utilize patents, but that's just so they have something to cross-license. They claim patents aren't necessary for innovation, nor for protecting startups (eg. they started up fine without patents).
This was a few years ago, so they may possibly have since changed their minds.
I bet Stallman got a hardon reading this.
RSA is a really clever algorithm. Its creators deserved to make money off it. Principal component analysis, the fast Fourier transform, and MPEG compression are all very clever algorithms whose inventors deserved to have gotten rich off them.
Being able to patent algorithms is a good thing. The problem was the USPTO's standard for obviousness, which was too low, and let people patent stupid stuff like one-click shopping, hyperlinks on cell phones, or email over wireless.
Everybody who posts something against software patents, but does so not from actually knowing anything about software patents, but because they believe that patent, copyright, and all intellectual property is inherently bad, and all software and music should be free, should post a note to that effect so we know they're crazy.
Ding Dong the Witch is Gone.
Does this mean Microsoft can no longer engage in patent extortion against the Open Source community?
Oh Happy Day
Can't say nothing else than "Hurraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay !!!"
And mathematics isn't a science at all - it is a logical discipline, where (all useful) theorems are either true or not true, unlike science where hypotheses are there to be shot down, but so long as they work better than existing hypotheses they are held to be contingently true.
While I agree software should not be patentable, mathematics is NOT logic. That's what Kurt Goedel's proof shows: you cannot build mathematics while only using logical components (as Frege, Russel, Hilbert and others tried before).
Well with genes, there is one caveat. Nature can do produce the very same gene, just on its own. So should you be liable for patent infringement, if you are born with five noses, or your parents?
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
How useful was the matrix-like structure. Very, it reduced memory usage by 96%. How long did it take to create?
As you were doing private research you were entitled to use the patent's content (making the shaky assumption that US patents are like UK ones in this respect) so if you'd be using the patent databases effectively you could have saved some time by just appropriating this technique. That's why we give out patents, so we can get the full disclosure of innovative technology back to aid research and push forward technical advances.
Of course if the technique is common in the art, just find a prior art publication (someone else's dissertation?). In the UK such things can be filed as SS.21 observations (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/patent/p-other/p-object/p-object-observation/p-object-observation-making.htm) and can be used to invalidate a patent or at very least protect anyone from being sued under that patent.
This sounds like they're aiming for a compromise that might actually make sense:
1) Source code is not patentable, nor are descriptions of business processes.
2) Binary code in a computer or other programmable device can be patentable, since that is what gives the system to perform the actual patentable task.
Since different compilers can produce different binary implementations of the same process (or even the same compiler using different settings), it might be possible to avoid infringement fairly simply.
In order to make this reasonable, the PTO should set the bar for non-obviousness and scope of claims higher as well. The flexibility of the general purpose computer (including PCs) means that most uses should be considered obvious unless they involve a completely new numerical method or involve a special device attached to the PC. And the scope of the patent must be intimately related to the new algorithm or device. So a patent might be issuable for the implementation of a new formula that calculates the re-order points for their supplies and materials, but not for the overall process of setting the reorder points.
We are the 198 proof..
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- no decision or opinion in re Bliski has yet been handed down by the Federal Circuit since the en banc hearing, and:
- Professor Duffy is simply a lawyer offering an op-ed piece. While he is an informed member of the patent law community (he presented oral argument at that hearing) he does not work for the PTO, nor is he a federal judge. His opinions are just that - opinions.
So save the champagne or the kleenex; it's what the courts say that counts.
P.S. - P.J. and the GrokLaw folks have been discussing this.
Ex vitio sapiens aleno emendat suum
In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman beats a dead horse and throws chair and hits YOU!!!
This sounds like a normal game of Nethack to me
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Poor Microsoft!!!!
unless you are under 20 years old, you could be held against yourself in a court of law. Or, does that violate the 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights?
Since patent rights are not inherent rights, but privileges granted by law, there is no basis for protecting them other than the laws passed by Congress authorizing and limiting them.
But can the U.S. Congress[1] or an agency under its control fail to maintain such privileges without invoking the protection of the Fifth Amendment[1] against uncompensated takings?
[1] Or foreign counterparts.
At the same time, when the whole notion of patents was drafted, that was no such thing as "software"
There was software, in a sense. Humanity has known about algorithms at least since Euclid, and the name "algorithm" itself comes from the ninth century when Muhammad ibn Musa al-Gorithmi (transliteration may vary) published a book about arithmetic with Indian numerals. (You might also recognize him for writing the first book in the Kitab al-gebra wal-muqabala, or Book of Completion and Balancing, series.) You're probably thinking of the fact that when the USPTO was formed, there were no machines to perform arbitrary algorithms automatically. That didn't happen until the twentieth century.
Yes, algorithms existed, but "software" could only be the stuff of metaphors. However, I do recall something about a type of loom that used punch cards to control it, but can't recall what it was called and when it was built.
Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a loom using bitmaps stored on punch cards in 1801.