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Is the Tide Turning On Patents?
Glyn Moody writes "The FSF has funded a new video, 'Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system,' freely available (of course) in Ogg Theora format (what else?). It comes at a time when a lot is happening in the world of patents. Recent work from leading academics has called into question their basis: 'The work in this paper, and that of many others, suggests that this traditionally-struck "devil's bargain" may not be beneficial.' We recently discussed how a judge struck down Myriad Genetics's patents on two genes because they involved a law of Nature, and were thus 'improperly granted.' Meanwhile, the imminent Supreme Court ruling In re Bilski is widely expected to have negative knock-on effects for business method and software patents. Is the tide beginning to turn?"
This topic is extremely interesting, I think that having a video (hopefully go viral) will help the masses better understand the issues here. In my own experience it takes only about five minutes to explain the issue, yet hours to really drill down through both sides of it.
My attorney encouraged me to focus not on the software aspects, but how the software interacted with the surrounding system (sensors, hardware, users, etc). It's been suspected for a while now that the vise was going to tighten up against patents on algorithms.
And good, IMHO.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
I see a lot of parallels between Bilski and Eldred v. Ashcroft. They are both IP cases where the Court was asked to step in and do Congress's job for it. In Eldred they refused to issue any opinion whatsoever as to what would constitute an unreasonable extension of copyright terms. I see no Constitutional basis for them to hand down any other opinion in Bilski. IMHO the majority will refuse to state anything definitive on the issue, and mumble something about it being Congress's prerogative to interpret the "progress of science and the useful arts" clause in any way they see fit.
At that point lobbyists will descend on Congress with checkbooks in hand, and we'll all end up worse off than we were before the case was ever brought.
If the supreme court strikes down software patents with their Bilski ruling, a huge amount of money will flood Congress from patent lawyers and large patent holders like IBM and Microsoft and the super scary Intellectual Ventures, hoping to buy legislation that puts software patents right back in again. So yes, the tide is turning. The question is how fast will it turn back again.
Google VP8.
I have a patent on turning tides
Yes, but barely, and could easily return to the No side with big money backing it.
That being said, whether it's next week or next year or 20 years from now, software patents will be be pointless. They will be ignored by everyone and their dog because countries like China and Russia completely ignore them and to compete with them, we will do the same thing.
Open source is the future, believe it or not.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Is it?
Most of the patent stuff I read is definitely stifling to innovation, but when it comes to things like Monsanto and their patent on specific varieties of plants and seeds that get into the wild and contaminate other crops, that's not just irritating or unfair, it's downright terrifying.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm
Hopefully this silliness will end.
At the very least, we can get mandatory licensing. I almost understand rewarding funds for research on a particular technology (not quite, much of it is simultaneously discovered) but I absolutely do not understand giving any party a monopoly over how to use that technology. Patents and copyright only stifle creativity and progress.
Obviously, software patents should be illegal. And patents get seriously abused, with patents on really trivial things.
Some patents, though, I can agree with. If I invented a new rocket engine, one significantly different from any existing one, I would like to make money off of it.
Realistically, patents should be restricted, not banned. There should really only be a few hundred patents a year, not thousands. Get some educated specialists to work for them, reform the system to only allow truly innovative patents, and keep out bullshit like software and "process" patents.
I'm very optimistic about Bilski. Not because I predict a big win, but because I think the worst of the reasonably likely scenarios amounts only to no change. A somewhat win is likely, and that would be great because it would leave the door open for us to make our arguments again in a future case. This is how the SC handled patentable subject matter in the 70s, they did a trilogy of cases: Benson, Flook, Diehr. And that last one isn't as bad as the USPTO and the CAFC would have you think.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
A program is one big damn algorithm.
An algorithm is a mathematical/logical THOUGHT set to words.
You can't patent thought.
Aaaaaaaaargh!
Cited as evidence of a sea change in patent law: the FSF makes a Youtube video. Some academics wrote some papers.
This puts patent law reform at about the same level of public interest as this video on pouring shampoo out of a bottle.
I'll wait for in re Bilski, thanks.
Unfortunately, no one with any influence over government has the technical knowledge to install Ogg Theora.
The question is, if you were starting a business that provides a software solution, would you want to be able to protect your solution from the competition?
Patents protect small businesses and innovation from competition, including big companies that will do anything in their power to stomp little companies with disruptive technologies. Open source is great, no doubt about it. But if you invent something, even if it is software, it deserves protection. Patents are part of capitalism, so no, there's no tide turning.
Oh so witty. Well 50% wit. No, this isn't H264. What? Do Macs have 90% market penetration? Or Windows 7 added to Mac OSX 10.5+ makes 90% already?
The US Supreme Court has never upheld a software or business method patent. All they said in Diehr is that things that are patentable can be managed/controlled by a person or a robot/computer. The CAFC and the USPTO ran with this and approved all kinds of programs for such a robot/computer, but they're not the authority here. The Supreme Court is now taking over again for the first time in 30 years, and all they have to do in order to abolish software patents is to clarify and repeat their previous rulings.
The Supremes have always said that math isn't patentable, it's a fundamental truth that can't be "invented", and they've said that putting instructions, including math onto a computer is an obvious step.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Most people will start to snore or as others have mentioned, switch to videos with cute cats when that fellow first says the word 'matrix', and it doesn't refer to anything with Keanu Reeves. The math is necessary, but they need to find a way to brush quickly over it and only touch on the fact that general formulas are patented when someone assigns specific variable names to them... in a non-nerdy way. And doing this makes it difficult for others to create new programs to do the same thing but differently. We see postings on Slashdot all the time about how Americans are becoming mathematically and technologically (in general) more dumb. Now we try to win them over with a video showing math concepts that most in America can't understand in the first couple minutes. This ensures that most won't watch it longer than the first couple of minutes. I like the idea though.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I support the ruling, but that sounds like a weak justification. Every technological discovery involves the laws of nature, whether it be the force of gravity, the propagation of electricity or radio waves. The entire field of engineering is the field of using the laws of nature to accomplish a purpose.
Arial Black?
That's non-free software... in an FSF video! That doesn't compute!
Eldrad must live!
Eldred? Oh!... Never mind.
Quiet a topical topic. I've been having a discussion with one of my mates about Intellectual Property. He supports his side with fallacies and assumptions while ignoring the logic against positive rights. There is no sound reason to support IP, well unless you think owning another persons property is reasonable.
You can read a lot about IP from Stephan Kinsella.
http://ip-policy.wikispaces.com/
Anyone who has Flash Player has a decoder for H.264. The most common way to get a Theora decoder is to use a browser other than IE or Safari, but a lot of users still use the pack-in.
You know, we'd very likely solve all problems with genetically modified food, monocultures, etc. if we simply declared life unpatentable. We might even see Monsanto rushing to congress with anti-monoculture laws designed to force farmers to buy the ten distinct products they've just developed recently.
Patents make sense when you must building a factory. Patents don't make sense when government grants paid for your R&D and your marginal cost is zero.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I would think that our politicians may not wish to be seen as business friendly right now.
All five major TV news networks (CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox) are owned by a movie studio in the MPAA. People who believe the TV news (and there are a lot of them) will believe a story that spins any consideration of narrowing copyrights or patents against bedroom authors and inventors.
"Nobody in the legislative branch or in the high ranks of the USPTO uses Mozilla Firefox or Opera or Google Chrome." Did I hear you right?
Fed-Soc.org - Patents: Legitimate Rights or Grubstakes that Obstruct Progress? - Winter 2000
As I said before The 2000-2010 "Intellectual Property" boom is about to go the way of the "Subprime" Mortgage, Dot-Com vapor startup, Junk bond and Dutch Tulip futures. The Patent Troll Business Model is inherently flawed, and just like the aforementioned others, add nothing to a nations REAL economy.
I have yet to see a software patent that isn't obvious, except for public-key cryptography.
How about video compression? Was the choice to use an in-loop deblock filter obvious when H.264 was being built?
I'm a bit troubled by Slashdot's blanket reaction to software patents.
In the line of work I am in (broadly: statistical analytics), almost all innovation comes in the form of creating improved methods that are implemented in software. It takes a large amount of resources to come up with these improved methods (they are generally far from obvious), and they can easily be transferred across the industry. Most companies in my industry would refuse to pay for innovation if they knew people could join, learn every recent innovation in two months, and then leave to the highest competitor bidder, effectively destroying any competitive advantage. Non-compete agreements are legally useless in my state, and NDAs are tenuous and practically hard to enforce. Patents (or stealing IP) are really the primary methods companies in my industry survive.
tldr: software patents can and do vastly encourage innovation in several competitive and useful industries.
Change Patent law to not of exludability but of guaranteed royalties equal to like 10% of the cost of the product.
Human knowledge, the amount of what people know about the world (arts, sciences, politics, business, money, ...anything that can be written down, created,...) has been accelerating. At one time Plato knew it all. All there was to know about medicine, all there was to know about physics, all there was to know about about mathematics, astronomy, story telling and literature, navigation, agriculture, politics, religion, mountains, rivers, seafaring, logic, the elements, all that was known about anything, he knew about (the last true polymath). After him, more knowledge was discovered and no one person could know all there was to know about everything. Spin ahead to the 21st century. We have PhD's who know a lot about very little. They keep learning more and more about less and less. They still know a lot....they know as much about the little bit that was known about everything. In the 'information age' where people are required to find the information they need, because they know they don't know it all, its ultra-modern that we have tools like Google to guide us through millions of web pages and trillions of pieces of information, and yet we suffer with general knowledge sites like Wikipedia not because of provenence (although that does give pause), but rather that some of the best information on Wikipedia is 90+ years old, and that's because patents and copyrights have locked more recent human knowledge up out of the reach of most people. We rely on innovation, yet chain recent discoveries away. Absolutely absurd!
it was evident that when you started to allow patent on thoughts and logical constructs, patents would eventually start to infringe upon nature's laws. because, in the vast space of thought, nature's laws are nothing different than any other thought/logical construct.
patents need to be abolished. imagine someone patenting "if a b and b c then a c" in a bundle with other logic constructs. you would say that its a simple basic logical operator and it cant be patented, but once numerous patents like these are issued, you would be surprised how fast it would become the 'established norm', like it happened with many civil and criminal laws throughout history.
stem the tide before it hits the shore. abolish patents.
Read radical news here
In the days before IP patents, ideas were not patentable--only implementations of ideas. You couldn't patent the concept of "a machine to distill alcohol from fermented grain" only the physical implementation of a still. Other people were completely free to build their own design (using the same laws of physics) as long as it wasn't sufficiently like yours.
In the software world, other people should be able to implement the same idea as long as they don't copy your code.
Maybe we just need to close the bowling alley, bar and waffle house in the east district of Texas and all patent trials/trolls will go away.
Or at the very least take MacGyver off the TV and all the seniors will leave.
The fundamental flaw is that the original bargain is not being upheld. The deal was, you disclose how your thing works and we'll give you a monopoly on it for a while. The first failure is that we no longer require an idea to be "reduced to practice." That is you only have to describe something that could be built and this allows the new class of patent trolls to "front run" technology with vaguely defined ideas. The second failure is that the disclosure no longer allows/requires you to describe it in a way that is useful to another engineer. Have you ever had a discussion with another engineer about a problem that you did not know the solution and have someone step up and say, "I'll bet there is a solution waiting in the patent office. Lets go look through those 17 year old patents to solve this problem." Never happen. So what is the point of patents if they never really provide engineers with technology? The bargain is is just not fulfilled.
It seems like one of the biggest justifications for software patents is this:
Say I develop an algorithm that performs some task better than other existing algorithms. As soon as I ship my software, it can be reverse-engineered by my clever competitors who figure out my algorithm and implement it in their own software, where they can presumably undercut me on price because their reverse-engineering was less expensive than my original development. This makes me unhappy, because I feel like I've wasted my money on a new innovation. So I want to patent my algorithm so that I have a government-granted exclusive right to use it (or license it to others) for a period of time.
We have already identified several problems with this pattern. First, we feel like patents are granted inappropriately by the USPTO: the running gag (which is not all that separated from reality) is that a person can take any ordinary activity or item from real life, append 'on a computer/on the internet' to the end, and patent it. Second, we're only supposed to be able to patent 'non-obvious' things, and the determination of what's obvious in algorithms (as well other areas) is not clear. Third, since computer algorithms are isomorphic with mathematical algorithms (which are arguably not patentable), we think there's justification for software patents to be invalidated.
Now, I don't think it serves the public interest for algorithms to be patented. But here's an idea of how companies can get around this whole mess. And I apologize for the buzzwords, but this is a great opportunity to go for Software as a Service or Cloud Computing. Google, for example, has their pagerank algorithm, the specifics of which they keep secret. And since they don't deploy pagerank to customer sites, there's little opportunity for reverse-engineering. They get to keep their algorithm secret, there's no need for patents, the consumer gets the benefit of using Google's software, and competitors have to develop their algorithms on their own. Everyone wins, right?
I'm not really a big fan of always-on-line software. I don't want my stats analysis system to have to outsource its processing to another machine across the Internet. But if the makers of the software want to keep their algorithms secret, this seems like the only way to do it. And let's ditch software patents, because I think they do more harm than good.
Slashdot has long been a forum where two intelligent sides present their perspectives on an issue. Often, this issue has been about software patents and patentability. There have been, and likely still are (let's face it, no amount of fact will change a person's mind when it is in his best interest to believe otherwise) people who see software as an invention and should be patentable. The video goes into great detail as to why software isn't and shouldn't be. But the real point that drives it home is in the creation of music. After all, people who create music are just as proud or even more proud of their results than programmers are. But music has been around a LOT longer than software has and we already have a basic understanding that ALL music is derivative in nature and borrows from other music on a regular basis and even when some music is thought to be quite original, we have seen where completely unrelated musical creations are quite similar in the end.
Perhaps we haven't reached that level of understanding with software yet because the spectrum of elements and factors in music are extremely well defined and understood. Software is only understood by a very tiny few and everyone else sees software as pure magic... and patenting magic is okay because they don't understand it otherwise.
I appreciate that someone may have spent their lives developing an idea for software. Effort doesn't make it patentable. Creativity doesn't make it patentable. How much of a wordsmith you are doesn't make it patentable.
I hope the revolution against software patents comes about and soon. It would enable F/OSS to compete with commercial software. (The GiMP needs CMYK... Adobe won't have it. Fedora needs to be easy and feature complete, but RedHat is afraid of being sued.) It would also be a HUGE relief for companies who spend millions on their own patent arsenals.
And then next up, photographers and copyrights...
I disagree on your economic analysis with software patents. Patents on software are a type of "broken windows fallacy" argument, and as such, are a hindrance to the economy, not any sort of positive asset.
This is *precisely* the time we should be abandoning outdated (**AA type numbers and agenda, the entertainment distribution "industry") /harmful(software and living things patenting) /useless(casino gambling banks and created out of thin air financial "products") /parasitic(governmental make-work mc jobs) "businesses".
Yes, there would be an adjustment period if we eliminated the bulk of those "jobs" up above, but after a short time, you would find people would be concentrating on real wealth production work, which in turn contributes to real wealth creation, an economy that doesn't need sham official figures to try and sugar coat reality, or one that relies on ..shoot..bingo cards as somehow all that valuable. This "IP" stuff is all well and good in some extreme moderation levels, but you can't run a huge nation the size of the US on services, patenting everything possible, every little tiny nuance of anything, even abstract concepts, and then high stakes financial gambling. The rest of the planet is starting to route around those bottlenecks now, that is why we are having a financial crisis, because we have been doing things "that way". So it is "that way" that needs to change, not just do more of it.
You are anonymous already, so spill the beans, please. Please name the *exact* clueless bozo in charge, name/title, etc, of this decision to force you guys to use IE6, so that the population in general can ridicule and harangue him, shame and embarrass. It is also not very secure, so there is the whole "homerland cybersecurity" angle to push as well. We need a name to throw at some elected officials in the appropriate subcommittees and to the press.
That is silly. All works of man, not just music are derivative. The question is what is the value of your contribution, which of course is an extension of the work of others.
It is well known that small businesses are innovators. Software patents are necessary to allow small businesses to compete with the large corporations which might otherwise copy, repackage, and sell the innovations of small businesses. There are definitely problems in the patent system, it is all too frequently abused. The negative attitude here on slashdot is, I'm afraid, a result of a successful campaign by the Free Software Foundation. I love open source software, both as a user and as a contributor, and it is unfortunate that patents do negatively affect, in many ways, the work of the free software movement. That does not, however, make patents evil, they are a necessity for the continued growth of technology and of a capitalistic economy.
In regard, again, to free software, it does seem more and more like the comparison of communism versus capitalism. Surely, there is some innovation in free software, but much of that originates from commercial entities looking to upsell other products. It is reminiscent of how the only innovation in (classic) communist countries originated from a national agenda, such as the Russian space program. However, even in the commercially supported open source software realm, many of the "good parts" are often kept under a lock and key, such as with Zimbra or SugarCRM. My point is, that without a capitalistic agenda, innovation does not happen. Innovation does not happen without a strong patent system, as inventors are motivated by money. It is not that companies and people won't invent without money, but that money stimulates and motivates in a way that pure interest, desire, and passion do not -- keeping in mind that the financial stimulation is in addition to, not in lieu of passion-based innovations!
The point? Do you work for free? What if you built a better mousetrap and began marketing it, but before you had the time to take it off the ground, a large national manufacturer began selling copies of your design? This wouldn't be protected under copyright, but would be covered under patents. This same scenario can happen with software too and small independent developers need protection, or they'll stop innovating completely, sell their businesses, and get themselves hired by large firms. Without competition, the large firms will stop innovating as well, and we'll all just twiddle our thumbs as we wait for the rest of the world to eclipse our rotting corpse of an economy.
GiMP wrote "What if you built a better mousetrap and began marketing it, but before you had the time to take it off the ground, a large national manufacturer began selling copies of your design? This wouldn't be protected under copyright, but would be covered under patents."
This is a logical fallacy. A physical invention (mouse trap) cannot be copyrighted. Software is not a physical invention, and can be copyrighted, just like music. And both are fully protected in the courts via copyright. That is why Microsoft has not been able to take a copy of Linux (which has no patent protection), slap a GUI on it, and call it their new "multibillion dollar investment in innovation." Copyright law, which the GPL license is based on, prevents even a company as powerful as Microsoft from stealing software. So copyright is very powerful protection for REAL innovation. jwwjr
Software patents are necessary to allow small businesses to compete with the large corporations
The same handwaving propaganda that first appeared on slashdot several years ago and is repeated on a weekly basis. Why are you pretending you didn't know that?
Patents are just a tool. They are used by large corporations as well as small businesses. They in no way change the balance of power between the two.
In regard, again, to free software, it does seem more and more like the comparison of communism versus capitalism. Surely, there is some innovation in free software, but much of that originates from commercial entities looking to upsell other products.
The same handwaving propaganda that first appeared on slashdot several years ago and is repeated on a weekly basis. Why are you pretending you didn't know that?
Open source, which includes academic research, is highly innovative. Your pretence that it isn't is laughable. The internet itself is just one example amongst many.
The point?
See this and this.
Please, lift your game. Your arguments for patents are puerile. Until you can give quantitative and solid scientific evidence for why government should engage in this massive and extremely costly interference in the citizen's business in any particular area (billions of people are blocked from using an idea so that one person can get additional profit) you should go back to school before you say anything more.
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Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
You are full of it.
In Europe software patents do not exist. My small company gets along just fine. If you can not keep ahead of the competition you deserve to wither and die.
Europe will never accept software patents and neither will Russia, China and loads of other countries. The reason is that there are more than 200 000 software patents, mostly owned by American companies. To accept software patents will place these countries at a great disadvantage. Couple this with the waining influence of America, the poor dollar situation.
The tide is turning, software patents will harm American interests as the rest of the world moves on without them.
As a small developer, you can be absolutely sure that just about any useful software you write will infringe on numerous patents. The only thing keeping you 'safe' is that you are either flying below the radar of those that hold the patents, or those patents currently remain unenforced against small developers.
No one is saying that you have to work for free, but unless you're a supra-genius, chances are that your idea is not as original as you think it is. I have seen very few exceptions to this, and the ones that I have seen are so esoteric that reverse engineering is almost always less effective than hiring someone else that is skilled in the same field of expertise to implement the general concept properly.
If the bar is set high enough for the patent system to work effectively, you can be pretty sure that 99.9% percent of the people that think as you do will not be able to submit a patent that wouldn't be rejected due to obviousness/unoriginality. If the bar remains as low as it has been, then you suffer as per my first paragraph.
OTOH, if your invention is that good and original that it warrants being framed in the glass cabinet of the patent system, then I have no issues with allowing a patent for a reasonable term (17 years being far too long in light of the speed of innovation in todays technical climate).
The negative attitude here on slashdot is, I'm afraid, a result of a successful campaign by the Free Software Foundation.
Ever considered that common sense could also explain why people do not like software patents? Of do you really consider the readers here dumb-mindless-followers?
For some reason, when I read this, I did not see "patents" but instead I saw "parents".
So I thought it was somehow an article about how parents have lost control completely. I say this as my 2 year old (boy) is trashing my living room and screaming for no apparent reason.
So I put him to bed.
Come to think of it, there's a lot of patents that should be put to bed too.
There, not completely off topic anymore..
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Your first para: Yes, they might throw out Bilski and cancel the CAFC's test (which throws out certain software patents) but that's *not* the same as saying that software patents are valid. They could just say that the CAFC went beyond the scope of this business method patent case in creating a test that applies also to software.
Second para: note that the "particular" is important. Being tied to a computer is not sufficient. Computers are general. A particular machine would the sewing robot I invented or rubber curing machine I invented.
Third para: Ben Klemens' paper and a heap of studies show that swpats are bad for the economy.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Open source patenting is a possibility and beneficial for software: There are plenty of people who espouse the view that patent protection is simply a tool for big business to flex its muscle and block access to innovation by small players and competitors. However, the underlying rationale of patent protection is to force an invention onto the public record. Sure, the patent owner gets a monopoly but it is limited for a specific period of time (very limited if you compare it to the monopoly a copyright owner gets) and after that it is free for all to use – down to the very last detail. In fact, you can’t get a patent unless you put in the detail. So the patent databases in reality form the largest standardised library in the worldpublicly accessible (no paywall / subscription fees) and reliable (at least in relation to granted or issued patents). Why should the open source community consider patenting? Getting a patent for an invention blocks another party from getting a patent for the same invention. So, if a group of open source collaborators can secure a patent, it can choose to grant a royalty-free licence to the open source community to use it (just as open source software is licensed). This secures the invention for public use immediately. In other words, it blocks the ability for another party to patent that invention and prevents that other party from exploiting it for commercial gain. Check mate. Secondly, it secures the open source community the right to continue using the patented invention subject to the terms of the patent licence. A term of the licence may be that any modifications, enhancements or improvements are owned by the (open source) patent owner, thereby retaining all enhancements for public use. Thirdly, open source patented innovations reside on patent databases and thus form part of the same public record, which makes the public record more comprehensive and useful to the community at large. So, how is open source patenting workable? One of the key hurdles to patentability is that an invention needs to be novel (new). This means it cannot be publicly known or used before the patent is applied for. How can open source collaborators collaborate without destroying novelty? One suggestion for making it workable would be to exploit the “grace period” available under patent laws in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan and the USA. A grace period means that you can still apply for a patent after disclosing your invention (sharing it with open source collaborators) so long as you lodge your patent within 6 to 12 months (depending on the country). Sure, it’s not foolproof because not every country has a grace period (Europe is a notable exception) but we’re talking about ways to overcome hurdles to enable open source collaborators to tap in to the benefits of patenting. Another suggestion is that a project be flagged for patenting at its inception (before any detail is provided) and collaborators sign up under an NDA before they can view and contribute. For example, an inventor could: provide a high level view of their invention onto a site; invite contributions or help from the peer to peer to join in drafting a patent description; interested participants could subsequently request to join the community specifically associated with drafting that patent description; The inventor and associated community can then let the new contributor join if they show skills that are helpful to the patent’s description generation; and All contributions would be logged against each contributor so as to determine if they are making a technical or inventive contribution. What about costs? Building a community of particular skill sets to help draft the description of an invention for a patent would offset patenting costs and aid in obtaining a contribution by a community in an Open Source manner. The patent once described (e.g. as per the steps above) could have a patent attorney draft the claims or oversee the claim drafting, rather than being involved throughou
I understand small businesses who want patents to protect their work from stronger competitors. on the other hand the very general patents that the big businesses hold, make it a legal minefield to even start a small business. Also the duration of the patents... 20 years is FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR too much - even 10 years is like a century in the Software business...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I think people should read this analysis of the academic paper mentioned in the post - http://bit.ly/dupMre