Slashdot Mirror
Why Software Patents Are a Joke — Literally
eburnette writes "A former Sun/Oracle employee explains how developers created patents in an unofficial contest to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. James Gosling said, '... we got sued, and lost. The penalty was huge. Nearly put us out of business. We survived, but to help protect us from future suits we went on a patenting binge. Even though we had a basic distaste for patents, the game is what it is, and patents are essential in modern corporations, if only as a defensive measure. There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn't nearly the goofiest.' Now Oracle is using patents from the same folks as the basis for its lawsuit against Google."
For years I've been criticizing all those fake solutions to the patent problem, such as "patent pledges" or the Open Invention Network (OIN). Both Google and Oracle are licensees of the OIN. The OIN patent agreement is meant to be a non-aggression pact between its members, with respect to "the Linux System".
Given that Android is a Linux distro (and a strategically very important one), it should be fully covered by the OIN as the self-proclaimed protective shield for the Linux ecosystem. Consequently, Oracle should be prohibited by the OIN cross-license agreement to sue its fellow OIN licensee Google. I'm not the only one to have raised that question. I saw Simon Phipps (OSI board member, former chief open source exec at Sun, now at ForgeRock) and Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center (and formerly FSF) raise the same kind of question on Twitter/identica. Now TheRegister contacted the OIN and wanted a comment on Oracle vs. Google, and the OIN declined to comment.
By the way, Eben Moglen promoted the OIN big time at LinuxCon, just a few days before Oracle announced its lawsuit.
What's certainly not a fake solution (although difficult to achieve) is the proposal to abolish software patents. The EndSoftPatents.org campaign runs the software patent wiki and has a pretty informative Wiki page on Oracle vs. Google.
I wanted to recommend this detailed blog posting (about 8,500 words, plenty of scrolling) on Oracle vs. Google.
It discussed many aspects of the dispute and in particular goes into detail on the seven patents Oracle seeks to enforce against Google, and inhowfar they may or may not read on Android.
I posted a correction in the comments there to point out that Oracle changed its stance on software patents years ago, not just after acquiring Sun's patent portfolio.
He seems to mean this primarily in terms of compliance with the official Java specification but one could also look at it in terms of software patent action against FOSS. I recently wrote about Microsoft's use of patents in connection with open source and got bashed for simply telling the truth: so far it's actually other companies who make the truly hostile moves. Far be it from me to defend software patents; I just mean to point out that there are different ways in which they get used, and in light of Oracle vs. Google, I believe more people will agree with me now.
You totally misinterpreted his comment, and it looks intentional. Gosling is obviously stating that Microsoft is a horrible company, but the rest of the industry has become so much worse recently that Microsoft seems benign in comparison (i.e., it is a sad truth). Microsoft is still the mortal threat to open source that it has always been.
I'm going to come right out and say it, I guess, since I'm posting AC anyway: I suspect you're shilling. This stinks like a PR campaign.
The software industry is more affected because it depends much more on innovation than other industries.
In particular, it depends on the incremental innovation, whereas almost all new inventions are typically (and in some cases by logical necessity) are old inventions slightly reconfigured. Patents stop the incremental innovations in its tracks, since an "inventor" of a killer app has all the reasons to sue everyone in sight and none of the reasons to improve on the app. And even if the patent holder does use the monopoly profits to innovate further, it cannot possibly make up for excluding everyone else from the process. Imagine for a moment that a compiler was patented. Only a few biggest players could then afford licenses required to develop commercial software, and free OSes like BSD or GNU/Linux would be illegal. Proponents of software patents must admit that that is the way we should have went: if anything deserves to be called an innovation in software, a compiler certainly does. They also must close their eyes on the fact that the free software community produced and now maintains not one, but two best OSes of today, while competing with an entrenched monopolist. Anyone who believes that software patents are producing any good for the society is either grossly misinformed about the software market or is an enemy of the public (that is, a corporate cock sucker) and a hater of the computer science in general.
Android has pretty much played out the way that we feared: there is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers.
The notion that Android suffers from a huge fragmentation problem seems to be repeated everywhere, but I really don't understand where this is coming from. I've developed JME and Android applications and the amount of fragmentation on Android is mostly non-existent. Apart from some small number of device-specific bugs (that are fixed with phone updates) that won't affect most Android apps, cross-device development is a breeze. I remember JME development was way more troublesome, where model-specific versions were the rule instead of the exception.
You might not need a patent for your keyboard, but in any complex technology, you do. The Apple Vs HTC is a great example. HTC is building off of the 'no shit' next steps in cell phone technology. What is patented by Apple is stuff that, even if they did "invent" first (which is a dubious claim to even begin with), would have been invented in the very near future by others who were running down the same path. So, Apple sues HTC claiming infringement on a pile of obvious next step technologies that are absurdly broadly defined to begin with. HTCs only defense is to turn around and do the same. So, HTC has some stupid and obvious patents that they then claim Apple is infringing upon. The defensive pattens are not there to protect your technology, they are there to be used against a company trying to sue you.
Patents are like nuclear weapons. Even if you don't want to use the damned things offensively against others, you still want them so that you can threaten to use them on anyone who uses them on you.
Sadly, what this leads to is a stifling of creativity and innovation. The point of a patent is to encourage people to invent. As soon as a patent fails at that, it fails at its purpose. So, in the case of cellphone makers, it isn't like the lack of the ability to patent some overly broad technology would have prevented Apple from using and developing it. It is being used now ONLY to prevent creativity and innovation. It basically means that no one who doesn't already have an arsenal of patents can't jump into the market. The thought of a small time specialized cell phone maker jumping into the market is laughable because you can't enter the market unless you are armed to the teeth with your own defensive patents. Hell, the very reason why HTC is getting attacked by Apple is because they have the smallest patent portfolio.
AC has a point up there, especially when you consider that Microsoft doesn't sue openly, but instead makes all of its threats quietly (see also Novell's little pact, as well as various little or unpopular distros making similar pacts...) There's also the TomTom case. Microsoft wasn't exactly a Boy Scout whipping around that FAT32 patent like they had.
SCO was a copyright case, but in Microsoft's eyes, IP is IP (Ballmer has a nasty habit of not making distinctions in that particular realm either). Also, while in a similar post you go on and on about how one doesn't "inadvertently" infringe copyright, you missed something. Fact is, SCO posted (IIRC) as their one and only public 'encrypted evidence' snippet... a piece of BSD-licensed code that drifted into SysV's reference codebase even before the whole AT&T vs. Berkeley fights (I know, I know - Early Pleistocene and stuff). BUT - the point stands: anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at the whole BSD vs. SysV legal wars (and more importantly, their outcomes) knows better than to say something like "you don't infringe copyright inadvertently". Sheesh.
But anyway - while they're not as noisy about it (given their record of losing so many of such cases, little wonder why), Microsoft does do more than the usual amount of backroom intimidations and back-alley shakedowns in this whole "intellectual property" circus.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
About 18 years ago, I did the same.. We had to come up with patents for a product that was the owner's pet project... Well, I had to come up with a patent too, since I had worked on the project, so I wrote up a patent for a steering wheel. It was a complete joke and i used as much obfuscation as I could, describing complex equations defining circular motion such as X^2+y^2=1 and the likes.. It had the other engineers in stitches... We all thought it was hilarious and the boss slipped it into the pile to go to the patent office so they could enjoy the joke as well... Some time later the boss came in stony faced and simply said "The patent for the steering wheel. No one ever jokes about it again. Ever. Period." then walked out. Seems it was the only patent that stood up to scrutiny.... All the rest were rejected... So, the owner of the "Timezone" amusement centers around Australia formally owned the patent on every electronic steering wheel that controls a vehicle... Ever invented. Anywhere. Even if it uses mechanical linkages. Especially if it was in the shape of a circle, but it also counted if was a joystick that could be moved through a "virtual circle"... Not that it didn't stop the engineers rolling around on the floor laughing for a few minutes when I told them all. Yep. another literal joke patent... And to their credit, they all kept a straight face when the "Big" boss came in to congratulate us all.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
... in America.
This week China became #2 economy in the world. Don't you think America that it is time to worry about keeping up with innovation, USA ? You won't top Chinese labs with lawyer companies.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Not quite true. You can't collect any damages for infringements that occur between noticing and sending them notification of infringement. You can, however, wait until they're shipping a million units a day and then demand that the court awards an injunction to make them stop shipping, at which point they don't have much option but to give in to your royalty demands.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Apparently you have no idea how many monkeys I have. Unfortunately they keep coming up with Hamlet and not any kind of code.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I was at the london science museum last week and saw something interesting on the information board regarding one of the steam engines on display. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photograph / transcribe it, but this blog gives a summary: http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2006/08/engineering-parallels-at-the-s.php
To quote the blog's transcription of the caption:
In 1769, James Watt had taken out a patent that allowed him to dominate steam-engine design and improvement. As a result, other engineers were prevented by law from developing new, alternative designs."
When the patent expired other engineers were able to innovate again, particularly Richard Trevithick. He experimented with using steam under a much higher pressure, and as a result was able to build smaller and more powerful engines, which enabled him to build the first locomotive railway engine capable of hauling a load.
So even the science museum is suggesting that patent's stiffle innovation, and have been doing so for over 200 years
They're not admitting fraud. They're admitting submitting patents that are ludicrous according to the standards of common sense, but valid according to the standards of law. They are admitting bending the rules as much as possible without breaking them, and demonstrating exactly how insane the rules actually are. They are not admitting to breaking the rules.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Gosling is obviously stating that Microsoft is a horrible company, but the rest of the industry has become so much worse recently that Microsoft seems benign in comparison (i.e., it is a sad truth).
It's true. I admit I've recently been thinking less bad about Microsoft. I'm not going to be a fan any time soon, but MS seems to have remained rather stationary on the Evil scale (possibly even edging slightly away from the evil end, but that might be an illusion), while everybody else seems to be in a hurry to overtake them and dive off the deep end of the scale.
10 years ago I didn't think it was possible, but in the mean time many companies have proven that it is indeed possible to be far more evil than Microsoft.
You obviously don' t understand. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, which owns the republican party. The Chinese are shrewed enough to recognize that Murdoch can be easily manipulated by his insatiable greed. To maintain his business in China he has to do what the Chinese want, which is to insure that America's ability to attend to its political and economic problems are overwhelmed by mind numbing, inane "info-tainment" to rile up those incapable of thinking for themselves or support the debt they incur, yet who, by virtue of their numbers, can obstruct progress directed toward solutions of any kind that might set America on a path of "innovation" or "success". America is doomed to being caught between Glenn Beck and the lawyers, who represent Murdoch and his corporate clients. Technical advances in all spheres of human activity will steadily gravitate toward China until about 2020, when the Chinese overtake the US and call in our debts.
No, I meant literally. There were actual joke patents being filed. I don't know if any got approved, but the light switch one in Gosling's blog churned around for several years in the system before it was abandoned (as opposed to getting rejected immediately with prejudice, or not filed in the first place).