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Red Hat Urges USPTO To Deny Most Software Patents
Julie188 writes "The United States Patent and Trademark Office asked for public input on how it should use the Supreme Court's Bilski decision to guide it when granting new patents. Not surprisingly, Red Hat took them up on it. The USPTO should use Bilski and the fact that the machine transformation test is 'important' to Just Say No to most software patents, it advised. Rob Tiller, Red Hat's Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP, is hopeful that the patent office will listen and put an end to the crazy software patent situation that has turned patents into weapons that hinder innovation."
I'm sure that's what they will do. After all, they have a long history of putting the public ahead of big business and making sensible decisions.
The USPTO isn't going to change their policies to help one small company steal ideas from others.
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
Right, so patent trolls got the idea?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Huh? Asking the public? We didn't vote for this! We voted for smart people in government and the USPTO to use their own brains and superior knowledge of the facts to do the right thing. Democracy not idiocracy. Let's go through the choices:
Option 1 - ignore it
Option 2 - apply it to all software patents
Option 3 - randomly apply it to some on a vague, arbitrary basis ("Apple App Submission" style)
Option 4 - ????
Option 5 - Profit!!!
Indeed. It will instead maintain its policy that helps a small company steal an idea many large companies are already using and considered too obvious to protect, and register a patent on it in order to make money from lawsuits.
Name a single company that hasn't "stolen" an idea from someone else.
Look at the GUI. Originally invented by Xerox. Apple stole it out right and then tried to sue Microsoft and HP for using the idea. When Xerox tried to sue Apple the case was dismissed. Few ideas were as original and trans-formative as the GUI. Companies these days are getting patent protection for ideas that others came up with decades ago or for absolute garbage. I have yet to see a software patent that wasn't overly broad, vague and utterly worthless.
Name a single company that hasn't "stolen" an idea from someone else.
RedHat.
Might want to ease up on the flavor-aid. Patents are a tool of extortion so people can steal the inventions of others and have no useful purpose in a sane society.
I am a software author. Software patents interferes with my right to publish texts that i write myself.
)9TSS
People on Slashdot will be critical of this.
Something tells me that the Patent Office, if told the same thing, will not.
That is... People who aren't already on our side on this issue will not take your post of "What? Are you calling them thieves?" as sufficient argument that they're not. Unfortunate, but true.
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
It is if I use my patented brain eraser on you!
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
It's not "steal ideas", it's "copy ideas". And, as far as I am concerned, it is a Good Thing. I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied. Skimming the article, I didn't see any place where someone is asking the USPTO to "help one small company steal ideas from others". In short, I don't know what you're talking about.
What I do know is that many small companies (as which I don't think Red Hat qualifies, by the way) fear software patents. Not because patents prevent them from "stealing ideas" or even copying ideas, but because, as the article puts it: "there are hundreds of thousands of software patents, with tens of thousand more granted each year. Many are so vague that it's impossible to ensure that a new piece of code doesn't infringe on one of them, somehow. This in turn places a big fat bullseye on the back of all software developers, as infringement lawsuits cost millions to defend, let alone actual damages or injunctions." If that sounds like software patents are a great tool for wealthy companies to discourage, slow down, halt, or even destroy competitors or would-be competitors, you've got the right idea.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yeah, right. The idea of people buying software patents, as opposed to actual software, for the benefit of new marketable technology is absurd on its face. Sure, people will buy patent licenses to reduce legal uncertainty, but software ideas without the software are worthless. There are more useful ideas than people know what to do with in the public literature and in the heads of competent engineers.
If the inventions were so useful, patent trolls would spend money on factories that implement the ideas. The truth is they don't really know which inventions are useful. No one does, so no one reads those patents. Any useful stuff in there is independently reinvented, so those "inventors that do pure research and development" don't contribute anything -- implemented ideas would occur at the same pace without them.
I make millions from suing college students who copy my "Hello World" code!
as a holder of patents on random shit that shouldn't be patentable all I can say is that the USPTO cleans up the mess they have created.
Will be interesting to see if they act on the advice. There are some seriously large companies that share the same view now.
So your point is that you're a troll. Gotcha.
PizzaAnalogyGuy was way better.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
"Patent trolls" foster innovation because it seeks out inventors and encourages them to do pure research and development.
Ah, so I shouldn't be scared about the missed calls I have on my answering machine (while asleep after a larval stage), the patent trolls were trying to encourage me, not threat me with patent-law suits.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
To give a counter-example:
I just patented "Commenting in an online news aggregation website" - now do research and development on that. You can't in fact. You can't get around it. My code was protected WITHOUT the patent. In fact, allowing ideas to be free and watching people make their own code and their own implementation and twists on it is what increases research and development.
To give a good example of this - there are TONS of sorting algorithmns. If someone had patented "Using a computing device to sort a list" there would only be one.
Interestingly enough, the way patents work nowadays amongst large companies is "We won't tell if you don't"
Which means that Xerox won't sue apple because they'll counter-sue on X other patents.
Which also means that pa-and-ma's software development house can't raise its head high enough to avoid getting sued into oblivion.
And this is good for innovation :)
Patents only brought us one real innovation: litigation innovation.
You can't handle the truth.
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
If you have an idea, and someone patents it, then it is effectively taken from you. Does that count?
It also means that patent troll companies can buy these "patents" and extort money from small or big businesses. Patent trolls don't do competing products and so the "patent as defence" strategy does not work for them. And that is bad for innovation.
To quote from Isaac Newton:
Patents on ideas go against the most basic principles that brought the modern age to be.
Raw greed tends to do that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Does anyone know of any fledgling software companies that were strong-armed into oblivion by software patents?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Not necessarily, because if they implemented ideas, they would likely infringe on other people's patents.
For example, say you hold 3 patents. If you don't do anything and just wait for someone like IBM to infringe, you can sue them and get $$$.
However if you actually try to make something, you might infringe on one or more patents of the tens of thousands in IBM's patent portfolio. So you might have to cross license, maybe even pay IBM more than IBM pays you.
In which case you might not make as much money per capital invested for the risk you take.
So the patent system actually encourages many people/companies to try to patent a vague loose description of a useful idea and then just sit on it, rather than actually build stuff to help society.
And it also encourages the rest to patent lots of crap in defense against each other (doesn't work against the trolls). Not very good for innovation. And overall it just ends up being an unnecessary tax on society. Useless friction on the wheels of progress etc.
Ideas are easy. Many of us here can come up with lots of ideas. The difficulty is getting them done.
Plagiarism on the other hand is something different. So to me it's fine for you to copy someone, but you should not claim you are the first if you aren't - that would be lying (and if it's lying for gain it's fraud).
To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation. These would be judged in hindsight (hindsight is easier right?). You could have many different categories, and two classes of prizes - one judged by the Public and one by Experts in the Field.
So even if the expert snobs think your invention sucks, if the Public think your invention is good, you still could win a prize.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
Does anyone know of any fledgling software companies that were strong-armed into oblivion by software patents?
Mine.
I'm afraid to go into business with my great idea thanks to software patents. So I'll just keep it to myself and keep working my 9 to 5.
That's what's so insidious about software patents. They have a chilling effect on the industry.
The proper venue for changing patent laws is congress.
The Supreme Court clearly could have decided Bilski narrowly or or broadly (as Red Hat and others would have liked). They clearly chose to decide the case more narrowly, and while this may give the patent office greater motivation to "push the law", it also motivates them not to do what Red Hat is asking.
The patent office is unlikely to make drastic changes absent clear direction from congress, or the Supreme Court.
Let's be a little honest, the patent office is filled with a bunch of "very smart individuals"!
Agreed. Running a startup is a huge amount of work, research, software development, marketing, soliciting investors, etc. According to the USPTO the burden is on the company to watch all new patents and contest ones which are blatantly obvious and or invalid as if the small businessperson had time or money to monitor and tangle with legal engines and patent trolls
I have some good ideas that I want to try to take to the next level. I wonder if there is another country more friendly to startups...
The counter question is how many startup's were never started because the innovation field was littered with patent minefields
The End Software Patents campaign also submitted a brief, a little more specific:
http://news.swpat.org/2010/09/esp-to-uspto/
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied.
The idea is to copy them after the inventor has had a chance to recoup the research investment.
With normal physical-device patents, that takes a long time. With software, everything moves faster. Keeping software patents around for decades isn't practical. My personal preference is that software patents be cut back to 5 years or so. It's enough to provide a fighting change for a new company, but not so long as to hinder development.
Beyond that, I agree with what you said.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Before anyone shrieks "DEFENESTRATIVE PORPOISES OWNLY!!!!!11!!!", please remind me: who now owns all of SUN's patent portfolio?
What's it to be, Red Hat? Are you going to (not) put your patents where your mouth is?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Like capitalism? Fairness?
Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
If the second inventor wants to directly copy the original idea, the patent allows the original inventor to license the idea, helping to recover the cost of developing it. The original inventor gets a fair chance to profit from his idea, ideally even starting his own company to manage the invention and innovate further.
That's the goal, at least. Now patents are approved that are too broad, and software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life. The basic existence of patents isn't the problem, though.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Not just software patents should be denied, but lifeform patents as well. In fact, I would love to see all lifeform patents invalidated, as this would take the wind out of the sails of Monsanto.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
No, becasue effectively =/= actually having it taken - and even then, the only thing patents cover are expressions of an idea [in the form of inventions] - meaning if you have other means of implementing it, it should still be possible to get it out there.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Ideas are essentially worthless. Only implementation of ideas create value.
Also, most but a small few high-profile cases of inventions are merely incremental improvements on already circulating knowledge.
It rarely takes a lot of investing to come up with an invention. It does however take investing to implement it. Thus the implementor who built th factory, paid the workers and shipped the item to market is more entitled to a reward than the person who just spent some effort thinking of it.
The GUI was actually invented by Dag Engelbart: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa081898.htm
Sure, but I was more wondering if there was actually a fledgling business who tried to get off the ground, but was hit with a hard lawsuit. I'm not saying there isn't a problem here (I think there probably is), but I was just hoping for a solid, measurable basis for such fears.
I don't know about you specifically, but it can be kinda scary to give up the 9 to 5 and run a business full time. Fears that look big may turn out to be small or non-existent. That's why I'm curious about actually filed anti-competitive lawsuits.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Like capitalism? Fairness?
Fairness is a subjective measurement and thus we can exclude it from this conversation entirely.
\
Now patents are approved that are too broad, and software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life. The basic existence of patents isn't the problem, though.
The question is whether patents help more or hurt more. If they hurt more than they help then the basic existence of patents is the problem. We can argue over that all day, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, Xerox didn't invent the GUI. It was invented by an individual that showcased (loaned) it to Xerox at Parc. Digital Research invented GEM Desktop and Apple hired away the top 2 employees to start working on Apple's gui.. Apple then sued DR because of the Trashcan icon to slow down GEM. Microsoft copied from Apple and, if the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is a real portrayal, poor little Steve Jobs whined about Bill Gates stealing the GUI... Wahhhh Hahhhhh...
Wake me up when U.S. citizens are ready to take back their country from the corporations.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
In France, we have subventions for innovation by an organization called Anvar.
You have to present your R&D advances, and if it's innovative enough, you'll get money to help you pay your development team (they'll pay you a percentage of your expenses for the R&D salaries).
Of course, all companies are taxed for this organization, but the money is redistributed to the innovative ones.
In my opinion, this is a better way to handle innovation than patents, since you can be paid around 2 years after having started...
This is demonstrably false.
When I was a kid my old man invented a tool for fitting high pressure hoses to fittings. A trusted friend was supposed to provide funding for the patent application process.. Instead of partnering with the old man the guy just went down and applied for the patent in his own name and became very wealthy. He stole the idea and patented it, and almost all tools that you see today for press-fitting hoses to fittings are some variation of what my old man invented back in 1962.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
You're confusing two issues. One is patents on software, one is patents that are two broad a scope. Your claim is analogous to saying that patents on drugs are a bad idea because someone could have patented 'using chemicals to prevent the spread of illness' and prevented any advances in medicine for 20 years. The problem would not be with patents on drugs (in this case - there are other problems with them), but with the patent office accepting an overly broad patent.
A more convincing argument would be to ask what would have happened if heap sort, merge sort, and quick sort had all been patented. I doubt anyone would have patented bubble sort, so we'd be able to get away with using that, if we didn't mind everything being painfully slow. On the other hand, since merge sort and quick sort both involve recursive partitioning and subsorting, you'd probably need to license both patents to be able to use quick sort.
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Look at the GUI. Originally invented by Xerox. Apple stole it out right
Interesting definition of 'stole'. Most people regard 'exchanging for something else of value' as 'buying' or 'bartering'. Or are you forgetting the rather large set of Apple shares that Xerox got in exchange for allowing Apple people to look at ideas from PARC and commercialise them?
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Patent 5960411
"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network"
Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
It sounds like you've never interacted with the patent system. If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
If it comes to court, then you must demonstrate that your method does not overlap with the patented method. While this is taking place, the court may grant an injunction, preventing you from shipping anything until the case is resolved. Even if you win, a small company may make more of a loss from the case than they can possibly recoup.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In the US, the constitutional purpose of patents, is to promote the advancement of science and art, not giving a "fair chance to profit".
Most all ideas behind software patents would be developed whether or not there was a way to patent them.
Software patents are primarily used as weapons or threats against other companies.
Or can you give an example of: "Without software patents, xxx would never have been developed".
In reality, software patents give an artificial monopoly on an idea with an inventive duration (time before someone else would think of it) of 0-1 year. They company holding such an idea will naturally invent less, as it can profit and litigate from old ideas for 20 years.
20 year patent and 95 year copyright monopolies interfere with competition/capitalism, as monopolies in general do. But these monopolies are government backed.
Note the words in the title: 'Method and system for'. If you actually bother to read the patent, then you'll see that this is a fairly specific way of implementing an online shopping cart. There are several ways in which you can implement online shopping without violating this patent. It is not patenting 'selling stuff online,' it is patenting a specific way of selling stuff online. Even if it were, that would not invalidate my point; that granting overly broad patents is a different issue to patenting software.
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Well that was MY idea, but you stole it. So I guess it's not my idea anymore. thief.
But your old man still had his copy of the idea, so it wasn't stolen. I suppose you can argue that credit for the invention was stolen, though, but that's a different issue.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Patents are directly in opposition to free market capitalism as they prevent or limit competition. You can argue that they are justified under certain conditions, but that doesn't make them part of capitalism.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I here the argument that patents are okay, but just too broad, all the time. I don't buy it. If the patent was narrower, it should be easier to code around. How does that protect the idea/patent if it is too easy to work around? Isn't it better just to have no patent at all, as it simply acts as an obstacle, without original inventor protection? If it is too broad, you cannot code around it, but we have the current problem. Where do you suggest we draw the line? Answer: ask a lawyer, and so we end up back in the same mess.
Let's argue, then.
I define "fair" as a situation where the person that spends resources has an equal chance to recover those losses as either anyone else with the same idea, or himself with any other idea. In other words, no external non-collective influence should alter the chance of recovering losses.
By that definition, it is fair for a bad idea go to market and fail. It is fair to see a good idea go to market and fail because of incompetent management. It is fair for an inventor to license the idea out to anybody free of charge. It is not fair for a good product to be undermined by a competitor copying the product exactly and just spending more on marketing.
The question is whether patents help more or hurt more.
I believe that patents and the current implementation can and should be considered separately. How does a patent itself hurt? Can you provide an example where merely protecting an idea has damaged the ability for an inventor to recoup their investment? How about an example where a patent has stifled innovation, regardless of the current broken implementation (lifespan of a patent, approval of broad patents)?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
That's about right. That's why patents include a list of references. Credit where credit's due. How is that bad?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It has been stolen. He cannot use it any more.
There isn't a clearer case of how "Intellectual Property" can be stolen than that. It's even more clearly "stolen" than plagiarism, where at least you're still allowed to use your own work.
But here your ideas are now the property of someone else.
They may let you on it, but this is no different than if it was your land or your car or your house.
If someone claimed ownership of your car and let you drive it if they paid you, would that not be stealing any more?
If not, what would it be?
Consumers are free to buy any product they want. Companies are not free to copy any idea they want. Patents do not inherently restrict the right to compete. If you want to come up with your own completely different implementation of a concept, go for it. If you can't come up with a different implementation, that's not the patent's fault is it? Maybe the approver for approving a broad patent, but that's been acknowledged as a problem.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Without patents, my company's product probably wouldn't have been developed. We run on Hadoop, which is based on technology licensed (free of charge) from Google. Would Google have released the details of its BigTable and MapReduce technologies without patent protection? My guess is no. They might have done the research, but probably not released all the details.
One year for a physical device is far too short. That's why the lifespan is 20 years. I'm fine with that. Software patents should, in my opinion, only last long enough to be useful. I think I said that already...
...software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Did you decide not to market a program after discovering that it was covered by a software patent?
I have decided not to market a program after discovering that the boot process on the program's intended platform was covered by patents, enforced by the courts of at least one major country.
I have also decided not to market a program after discovering a look and feel copyright whose owner is notorious for waving it around as if it were a patent. And yes, the owner of this copyright has threatened me and several of my beta testers with DMCA takedown notices about videos demonstrating the use of my program. I'm not sure I could afford a competent lawyer to argue Lotus v. Borland and Capcom v. Data East (precedents against look and feel copyright) against this copyright owner's likely claim of Atari v. Philips (precedent for look and feel copyright).
You have got to be kidding me. The invention was the idea. The product invented was stolen through fraud. If you cannot legally profit from your own invention, from your own idea, because someone else is doing just that without your permission, then your idea was stolen.
This is a clear a case of theft as exists.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Who decides if it's innovative? The really interesting stuff takes a while to be recognized for what it is.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
If Isaac Newton would be alive today, he would be sued by Apple.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Because anything nontrivial ends up needing hundreds of patents to implement. It's not just about credit, it's about licensing. If you're a large company, then it's fine - you just sign a cross-licensing agreement with your major competitors and you get to ignore anyone else's patents. New players in the market find that their first product infringes a few dozen of everyone's patents and they either pay a lot of money to the established players or they give up.
Each iteration through the 'X almost works for us, but we could do it a bit better if we add Y' process adds another patent and that patent stays around for 20 years.
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"... hopeful that the patent office will listen and put an end to the crazy software patent situation that has turned patents into weapons that hinder innovation."
Hindering innovation is exactly what patent is for, and that's what it's always been for. There's been enough written on the topic over the past few centuries; you'd think that people would understand this.
The only thing you can do with a patent is to take it to the courts to prevent someone else from using it in something they're building. If this isn't what "hinder innovation" means, what weird definition of "innovation" are you using?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
With that metric, a legit patent could actually steal your idea. If I independently invent something after someone else did it, I had the idea, and I cannot legally profit from it.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That only works if you can easily judge the submissions on face value. If it was possible to do that well and fast, the US Patent Office wouldn't be having its current problem.
:) ).
As I said, doing it in hindsight is easier. Plus if your invention is so ahead of its time that it takes 40 years to get finally get recognition, you could still win the prize (hopefully not posthumously
They don't completely restrict the right to compete, but they do strongly limit it, which is a force contrary to the principles of a free market. There is a lot of competition in the aspirin market because there are no active patents covering it. There is no competition in the market for Cialis because it is covered by a patent. ICOS is the only company that makes it AFAIK.
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As far as I can tell, Google doesn't want software patents and hasn't started any patent litigation. Also, it seems hadoop is under version 2.0 of the Apache license, which grants an irrevocable license to their patents for derivative works, so you could develop a proprietary competition that uses tech covered by Google's relevant patents.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That is a straw man argument. If you come up with an idea separately from somebody else, and patent it before he does, then it's first come, first serve, and entirely ethical. It's a matter of both of you exercising ingenuity and imagination, and neither one of you is defrauding the other. The legal system is just set up so that the early bird catches the worm. That's entirely fair and I have no problem with it. It's a matter of timing or luck-of-the-draw, and much of what happens to you in life is predicated on that. You didn't get that job you wanted because someone else got there first. Do you think they cheated you? Do you think you should both have the job? That scholarship you were depending on to go to school isn't available because it ran out of funds before you applied for it. Did you get cheated, or is that just life?
That is not what happened in this case. The thief would never have come up with the idea on his own. He took the idea someone else came up with and fraudulently presented it to the legal and financial system as his own. That's theft.
Here's a question or two for you. How do you extract value from an idea of yours that someone else has fraudulently patented? You will get sued if you attempt to implement it. So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned? Of what value to you is your idea now? Someone else is harvesting the value of your ingenuity and imagination.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Why would a patent on the boot process of the platform affect a program running on the platform?
Such a patent, worded to claim the software card used with this boot process, lets the maker of the appliance sue makers of unlicensed software cards for the appliance.
a PC or Mac
Comparing the boot process of a PC or Mac to the boot process of a mainstream video game console or handheld is very much apples and oranges.
Further, do you reside or have assets in the country in question (patent jurisdiction is generally not transnational)?
I am not aware of such lawsuits targeting United States-based resellers of blank software cards for this platform, but the maker of the appliance has sued publishers of unlicensed software for its previous platforms, successfully in some cases and unsuccessfully in others. Besides, I would likely get a chargeback from my payment processor for each unit stopped by customs.
Did you contact the company about a license?
I did not because documents published by the company indicate that applying for a license would be a waste of time. The company has a blanket policy of not making licenses available to entities that don't already have a dedicated office and a successful product on another platform. Quoted from the application form: "Home offices are not considered secure locations." I have also read news coverage, which I can cite if you want, about another developer working from home who was rejected for exactly this reason.
Copyrights are a vastly more powerful form of IP than patents, at least in the US.
The U.S. Code also has 17 USC 102(b), which appears to exclude methods of operation from the scope of copyright. For example, I believe LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice.org) doesn't infringe the copyright in Microsoft Office 2003 because of this statute, and Quadrapassel doesn't infringe the copyright in Tetris because of this statute. It's called the "idea-expression divide", and as I understand it, it's roughly equivalent to the "functionality doctrine" of trademark law: just as a trademark can't be used as an ersatz patent, nor can a copyright. But good luck for a startup company to pay a lawyer to convince a judge of that.
Did you ask about pro bono or reduced rate representation?
I was not aware that this was available to people who intend to sell something.
Did you contact law schools in your area about free representation through a clinical program?
I was not aware that this was available. And where would I look? The local branch of the state university (IPFW) offers pre-law but no doctorates.
Now Cialis, as the product of tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in research and clinical trials, gets the chance to make a profit before knockoff labs are allowed to copy it, at the relatively-cheap cost of just copying the molecule. Invention gets rewarded.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
...And that's how I'd hope others behave, too. In the early days of MapReduce, though, it was a major breakthrough that enabled Google to produce a leading search engine. Without filing the patent on it, Google would have been at risk for anyone else to copy the infrastructure. My opinion is that patent protection helped Google grow significantly for a few years. After Google had made enough use of their patent, they licensed it away freely, choosing to counter the poor patent implementation. It's almost like they were trying to not be evil or something...
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Perhaps a better solution is to claim that derivative patents are a valid defense to infringement.
Hypothetically, consider an exception where you can infringe on a patent freely, if and only if there is no trivial workaround, and your improvements to the idea are themselves worth a patent. Perhaps better still is an arrangement where a court-determined percentage of royalties gets paid up the chain, as a form of forced licensing to other innovators.
As an example, a crane with an elbow joint might be worth a patent. A crane with a ball joint at the elbow (capable of reaching around corners) could be determined to be patentable in itself, as a novel and nontrivial idea in itself. A court may determine that the idea is 50% due to the elbow patent, and the ball-joint crane company pays 50% of their royalties to the elbow-joint crane company.
Once again, it's an implementation problem, and not the problem of patents themselves.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
And that's a good thing. More power to them.
Anyone can legally copy ideas. Ideas are not supposed to be patentable, not in the least. Patents are entirely about implementations, or at least, they're supposed to be. They are supposed to read on specific inventions, which may incorporate many ideas. But they don't give the patentee a 20 year monopoly on the idea, only on the very specific implementation.
Much of the problem of software patents, and the even worse business method patents, is that they often do effectively patent ideas -- which is not legal in the USA or more other countries.
-Dave Haynie
You should examine how many patents are actually created. You couldn't be more wrong.
I was a technical adviser during a multi-year patent suit between IBM and Commodore, back in the 1980s. They had thrown a stack of patents our way, going after patent licensing on the Amiga computers, as they had gone after Apple, Atari, the IBM Cloners, and pretty much everyone else. They were also pursing cross licensing -- they were very concerned about getting caught using someone's patent without knowing before hand.
Anyway, the IBM patent office, at least at the time, was a huge building in Boca Raton, Florida. They had some hundreds of legal beagles pouring over every work IBM did, looking for things that might be patentable. They were experts at gaming the system. For example, IBM had a patent on cut and paste between text buffers, granted in 1984. I would wager anyone here who was programming before 1984 used this feature in their programmer's text editor -- I had personally used it in TECO Emacs back at CMU in 1979. But no matter... the patent office didn't even have software engineers in those days, so they didn't have a clue about "obvious to one skilled in the art". In fact, all software patents granted before they had software-based examiners ought to be tossed out, just on general principle.
And the PTO, then or now, don't routinely look beyond the patent database for prior art, even obvious prior art. A patent is NOT supposed to be granted if there's prior art. And of course, anyone submitting the patent is supposed to list all of the related prior art they know as part of the application, but they also know where the PTO looks and where they don't.
So much of this stuff is a crock. And you would think, hey, IBM is a real technology company, not just a patent troll looking to buy patents for pennies on the dollar from the remains of failing tech companies (which is what most of them do -- they're not seeking out inventors to help, they're picking the bone clean from the carcasses of failed ventures). And they're gaming the system for all they're worth... and they can. IBM's patent department is a major profit center for them.
-Dave Haynie
Copying ideas is just life too. You acknowledge that someone beating you out of an opportunity is a result of competition. Better utilization of an idea by someone who didn't come up with the idea is competition as well. "So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned?" Because the idea is in your head, and nothing short of brain damage will remove the idea from your head. Ideas can't be stolen, only copied. Credit for creating an idea can arguably be stolen, and patents can be awarded fraudently, but ideas can't be stolen. The value of your copy of an idea will be greatly reduced if a patent prevents you from exercising it, but you still retain the copy of your idea. To put it in simple terms, the closest you can come to actually stealing an idea is to learn an idea from someone and then make them forget the idea. And it's only stealing if you do this against their will.
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You can argue that patents have a net benefit and are thus socially desirable under certain conditions, but it is without a doubt restricting competition, which is what I'm arguing. Toot your horn for patents, but don't spout the nonsense that it's part of a free (as in freedom) market.
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Actually, I know a hardware company that was sued into oblivion thanks to software patents: Aureal Semiconductor. Aureal had some very cool audio chips, back in the 1990s, as well as the best 3D audio API for gaming, and some other great stuff. Now, Creative Labs took it was a given that they were the only company allowed to work on consumer audio for PCs... particularly when so many other companies did it better. Sometimes they just bought the company, as they did with Ensoniq back when Ensoniq had the nerve to sell a $20 PCI-based audio card (AudioPCI) that was better that just about anything Creative Labs made on the ISA bus at any price. Aureal, however, did an even greater crime -- they made system level APIs, and better than Creative Labs or Microsoft's at the time. Creative sued them... and eventually lost on all counts. By then, though, Aureal had spent big bucks on legal defense, and their backers were scared away by the lawsuit. They failed... and of course, Creative Labs was there to buy up the Aureal remains, at fire-sale prices.
-Dave Haynie
It's hard to tell what role patents did play in Google's growth. It could be that they were actually vital to their growth, or their patents may have been entirely for defensive purposes, and were effectively a tax that reduced their ability to grow. Not to an extent that they couldn't succeed, but it might be that they could have become an even more powerful and/or innovative force without them. We don't know where Google would be in a world without software patents.
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I'm sorry, but when exactly did I say patents were a part of the free market, or even implied that a free market was related? What nonsense is it that I'm spouting?
Patents do not restrict a consumer's ability to choose solutions to their problems. Got a headache? Try Headache-B-Gone! Don't like that? Try No-More-Pain, from a different company, working with a completely different chemical.
If anything, patents protect the market, though it's in a roundabout, protection-racket kind of way. I won't bother calling it a "free market", since that term usually implies utter anarchy.
Without patents, there's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from simply copying new ideas, and applying their huge marketing budget toward promotion. The actual inventor did the work and spent the resources, but gets nothing while Umbrella Corp. gets all the profit. Umbrella Corp. also eventually gets the single effective voice in how the idea behaves, stifling future products.
With patents, the inventor gets a brief period of time where they get a monopoly on that one idea. During that time, they have a chance to promote their own product, and take full credit for its existence. There's nothing preventing Umbrella Corp. from creating their own similar-but-different product, but that means that Umbrella Corp. will be spending their own resources, and inventing something new.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
How about an example where a patent has stifled innovation
You can point to the MPEG LA as attempting to stifle innovation by claiming that Theora and WebM violate patents, if they do eventually sue and win, then it is quite obvious they are stifling innovation.
Oracle vs Google, if Oracle wins the lawsuit it will be stifling innovation.
All of the small companies that have died due to patents or all of the innovations that will never come to fruition due to patents. That's stifling innovation.
All the lawsuits flying about in the mobile space with Apple/HTC/Nokia, all of the lawsuits are attempts at stifling innovation.
It's very simple, especially when it comes to software. Any good product is a good idea that consists of using or improving on something that came before it in a specific way. If you remove the ability for people to say 'Hey, that's a good idea. But what if you did this with it?' then you stifle innovation. This isn't a case of making a derivative of a patent or implementing it a different way or what not that would be allowed. I'm talking about using an idea that is currently patented as a part of another idea. If you can't afford to license the patent, or have nothing of enough value to cross-license, then you simply cannot move forward with your idea. How is that not stifling innovation?
You mentioned capitalism and fairness. Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous. The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents, and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution. It's a mechanism that requires very complex areas of economics and psychology, and the basics haven't been changed that much since it's inception, which predates Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud, meaning that it predates anything reasonably considered modern economics and psychology. As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society, although to be fair, we don't have a lot of good scientific data on the effects of patents (many European countries adopting patents often came from monarchs arbitrarily granting monopolies to the more limited monopolies patents gave and WIPO and the like make not strongly enforcing US/EU patent and copyrights results in developing countries getting royally screwed in regards to trade relations.). In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money, with patents often being ranked as one of the least important elements.
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It's also hard to tell that if a butterfly had flown just a bit differently, Hurricane Katrina may not have happened.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that in a world with no patents, everyone might just play nicely, and love and care for each other, and never be greedy... but I'm not going to bet my future on it, and I certainly wouldn't waste my resources inventing something.
Patents are a very simple trade-off: protection of your idea, in exchange for public disclosure. By mitigating the risk of disclosure, there's more disclosure, and more innovation. The only problems come from a broken implementation.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
As usual, you don't answer the questions that get directly to the heart of your argument.
The value of the idea is gone when someone else patents it, and if they do that fraudulently, it is theft. The value of the idea is stolen, so for all practical purposes, the idea is stolen.
If you have a stalk of wheat, and I take the kernels of wheat and leave you the chaff and the stalk, do you still have any wheat?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Value and ownership are different things. I could set your car on fire, thus making it lose virtually all of its value, but that doesn't mean I stole your car. Something else you own could lose similar amounts of value simply by the market it is dying, but nobody is committing a crime when that happens.
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The question is whether or not a non-broken implementation does exist, can ever exist, or if patents are just something that may look good on paper (or may not even pass that), but fail in all real world usage. And no, a world without markets doesn't require playing nice. Competition is a big part of the replacement, and competitors tend to not play nice too often, and yet it's got a very good body of evidence for actually working to push innovation.
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Once again you try to blur lines that cannot be blurred. When someone else patents your idea in their name, they own it in all legal and financial senses of the word. You no longer own it.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous.
Capitalism is a system of economics based around private ownership of resources. Contrast it with economic communism, where the people collectively own everything, or socialism, where the state owns everything.
The free market is any system where there are no restrictions on who can buy or sell, or what can be bought or sold. Contrast it with a regulated market, where there are rules on the prices of goods, or who can buy from which companies, or where certain regions must be supplied from...
It is fully possible to have capitalism without a free market. A free market without capitalism is also possible, though it gets a little weird and requires some different definitions. They are entirely different concepts. Calling them synonymous is like greeting a pigeon with "nice doggy!".
The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents...
That example should be interpreted as "get a patent, and it'll keep Big Bad Corporation away from you. Don't get a patent, and take the risk of losing your market..."
Not having patents just means you're always taking the risk.
and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution.
Maybe that's why I have no hesitation in pointing out that the current implementation sucks.
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society,
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are not beneficial to society.
In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money
You mean like the GRiDPad? Or QDOS? Those are just off the top of my head. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why ideas fail, and being second to market isn't that important. Even if it were, it takes time to get enough investors to produce something. During that time, another (larger) company could launch their identical product first. Without patents, inventors get screwed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
He stole the PROFITS from the idea (with help from the USPTO), but not the idea itself. It's not like your father could no longer remember it. It's just that because of patents he couldn't use it.
I'm not blurring lines, I'm drawing distinctions. Your copy of an idea and a patent on the same idea are separate entities. The patent holder holds legal rights to it for 20 years, but your copy of the idea still exists, even if its value has been greatly damaged. 20 years later, you will have the legal right to use that idea, and so will everyone else.
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Would you mind showing me any of this evidence? Preferably something where a monopoly voluntarily gave up its position to let a newcomer make a profit?
You're talking about a basic equilibrium. If there are three companies, each doing different things, and each equally large, they'll compete evenly, and leave a choice for the consumer.
What about the little guys, though? The two guys who invent a new product in a garage? Before they can even get a manufacturer producing their product, the larger companies have the money and resources to produce it easily. The little guys get screwed. They made the initial investment in the product, did the work, solved the problems, and they get nothing. If they're lucky, somebody will mention them in a documentary in 50 years.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Evidence of competition spurring innovation, progress and consumer welfare? It's one of the CORE PRINCIPLES OF MODERN ECONOMICS War and natural selection are two good examples of competition resulting in faster progress. The rapid changes in the first browser war, the near standstill between when IE crushed netscape and when firefox became popular, and the incredible jumps in javascript performance when Chrome entered the arena. Vista was the result of limited competition, and the changes in 7 and the netbook craze were the result of Macs and GNU/Linux gaining ground. As for little guy, yes they are often screwed. They will often get screwed with or without patents, and most indications suggest that they will have a better chance without patents because the big players will have enough power to lock an up and comer out of the market, while they might have a meager chance to make it to the top if they kick enough ass when we don't have patents.
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The problem is Big Bad Corporation has patents. Many more patents than you. They've also got cross licensing deals with the other Big Bads that you'll never be able to get, meaning you'll almost certainly be a niche player at best.
The book Against Intellectual Monopoly is laden with real world examples of patents and copyright having no noticeable effect or a negative effect, as well as very well written logical arguments. It's a good read, and easy to find a copy of.
Okay, a product not sucking is pretty important as well, as is a market for your idea existing. Those aren't methods of protection. First mover's advantage and trade secrets are the biggest protection factors listed in most surveys, with patents being last outside of pharmaceutical companies, and this is the role of patents when patents exist. If there are no patents, then defensive patents, often cited as one of the most common reasons for acquiring patents, are not needed.
How exactly does one make an identical product if the product is not publicly known? Also, copying is only useful if it's a good product. If you attempt to make a clone of every product by every startup, you'll be wasting a fortune on failures, and if you wait to see if it's a success, then you will be at a disadvantage.
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I'm sorry, but your ideas do not work in the real world. You don't own, in any real sense of the word, something that someone else legally owns. Someone has stolen that ownership from you if they have patented your idea as their own. It's the same as having someone defraud you of physical property and getting the legal ownership of said property. You can't use it. You can't sell it. It is of no use to you.
All you can do is point to it and say someone ripped me off. It was mine, but not any more.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
So in other words, no, monopolies don't give up power voluntarily. Competition alone doesn't help your argument much, either...
Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE, and a few million dollars in funding from Mozilla Foundation, itself funded by the Bank Of AOL. Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms.
Vista failed for more than just "lacking competition". Mac OS X was out for five years, with regular updates, before Vista. In fact, one of the biggest reasons Vista failed was because of Apple's advertising and some internal problems, rather than a lack of new features. It seems a big ad budget can override innovation.
Your last sentence is a four-line jumble of clauses. If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Now a free market isn't actually free, and regulation of covered physical area is fine, but not regulation of covered market segments...
Of course, a startup company will be a niche player at the start, like every other company. Patents should not guarantee every inventor will become a millionaire. Instead, they guarantee inventors get a chance to recoup their investment. Even a small toy company like Larami had a better chance to make a profit than a single guy building pressurized water guns from PVC pipe.
Looking through that book, conveniently available online, it has a lot of examples of patents doing nothing. It has a lot of examples where ideas got copied by people who had common goals. Examples of patents actually hurting society are extremely rare, and usually coupled with the original inventors getting screwed.
Perhaps you'd like to show some of these "most surveys"? Let's turn to the ever-authoritative source, Wikipedia. Pulling out a few key points here, I see that reducing price to try to build a market reduces profitability. While Microsoft can afford to waste money on the XBox, I don't know any guy in a garage with money to spend like that. What else? Investments in future needs early, before demand actually rises. Also a great idea, but also requiring lots of money that inventors probably don't have.
What about disadvantages? It seems the biggest problems are with other companies copying research, and general market risk. Either the inventor gets screwed, or everyone does. Seems this first-mover advantage is bad for inventors, as well.
Assuming the inventor has a few million dollars in their back pocket, they might be able to fund manufacture themselves. Who's going to do it though? They'll need employees, and supply lines, and advertising, and a small army of other people who all get to see the product before it's public. With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE"
That may be true, but what I was saying was that when there was competition, progress happened rapidly. When there was no competition to speak of, there was virtually no progress, and when a decent amount of competition appeared from Firefox, progress started again.
"Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms."
Actually, Google's breadwinner is trade secrets, and you again aren't getting my point. It doesnt matter how Google made its money, just that they brought more competition to the market
1 big browser in the market = no progress
2 big browsers in the market = some progress
3 big browsers in the market = lots of progress.
Maybe you can pick up on the pattern. More competition is very strongly correlated with more progress in the browser market.
Vista sucked because XP dominated, and MS wasn't motivated to make a good product anyore. When Vista bombed, and people starting using non-Windows operating systems a lot more, MS put forth a lot more effort because sitting on their laurels would be very bad for them.
"If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents."
You didn't read it right. Most of the time, under any situation, startups will get screwed. It sucks, but this will most likely never change. However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
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Here's an example. I own the knowledge of how to play 'Blackbird' on a guitar. You cannot take that knowledge away from me short of inducing brain damage.
I didn't write the song, and I don't hold the copyright to the song, but I have a copy of the knowledge of how to play the song in my head. I also have a copy of the song on a CD. You actually could steal that copy from me. And FYI, I didn't obtain the knowledge through any kind of theft.
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Quite a few are cited in against intellectual monopoly, and the 2008 berkeley survey was another recent comprehensive survey.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of reduced efficiency in quite a few markets, including pharmaceuticals and chemicals, which is where the argument for patents is generally seen to be at its strongest. The decreased efficiency wasn't always as drastic as it was with Watt and the steam engine, but being less efficient than competition counts as 'harming society.'
Yes, big firms have the advantage of lots of resources. They also often have difficulty quickly adapting. Both of these are true with or without patents, although patents tend to result in greater consolidation of firms, and thus having the big firms be bigger. And of course, bigger firms have more money to use inefficiently and less ability to adapt. "With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company." That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
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Most of the "patents" issued would have failed on several counts already: most specifically because they've all been done before (forget the legal term, something like "previous use"). One recent example was MS getting a patent on a GUI window prompting for permission to execute something requiring admin permissions. It's been around for ever in the Unix world and in other operating systems as well.
If you look closely at virtually all software patents, they've been done before in exactly or very similarly ways. Every software engineer knows this.
The fact of the matter is that patenting software is like patenting math. You can't write a new software program today without a legal team. A very sad situation indeed.
With software, everything moves faster. Keeping software patents around for decades isn't practical. My personal preference is that software patents be cut back to 5 years or so. It's enough to provide a fighting change for a new company, but not so long as to hinder development.
Ideally, when software gets submitted for patent protection, the examiner should tell the submitter:
"It looks like you are seeking protection for a software product. You have come to the wrong office. What you need to do is produce a software application in a programming language of your choice and then submit it to the Copyright Office so that your particular implementation of this idea is protected. Software is already protected by copyright, not copyright and patents. Sorry, you can not eat your cake and have it too."
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So what? What's that have to do with this discussion? Nothing. You're comparing apples and oranges.
You learning to play Blackbird isn't a copy of Blackbird, it is Blackbird. You might have learned it by ear, or from copyrighted sheet music of which you purchased a copy, but it's still "the" song, not a copy of it, when you play it, whether you play it very well or very poorly.
In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. Sorry, but that's just plain stupid. It's an intellectual attempt to prove something that has no basis in reality and comes across as pure nonsense.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
So where is any evidence that patents eliminate competition?
However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
If it's a good patent, one is enough. With a proper implementation (no broad patents), the big company's patent on toothpaste tubes can't possibly affect your patent on a starter motor. With a patent-is-proof philosophy in the courts, having a patent on your product could indemnify it against other patents. Again, those are implementation details.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Your mistake is that you are confusing ownership with possession.
They are not the same thing, you know.
Realize this and re-read the posts you responded to as well as the ones you made yourself. Things will become more clear to you, and hopefully you might also become a tad less arrogant, and believe me, you would sure benefit from that.
Good luck.
Meanwhile, there's a fair amount of evidence in favor of patents as well. Perhaps you could point our a specific study that supports what you're saying? Saying "go read this propaganda book" doesn't contribute to the discussion much.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of...
There's pretty conclusive evidence that the world is a tetrahedron sitting on the back of a giant marmoset. Of course, I'm not going to give references, either.
That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
So after spending their money on researching a product, an independent inventor must spend even more to investigate the leak, and maybe prosecute the guy who leaked the information for... breach of contract? With no real chance of getting an income from his work, all he can do is go after a small fine? The big company can just consider that fine a "finder's fee" for the new product, and pay more for the information. The inventor has no way to go after the company that's profiting from his idea, so he's still screwed.
Of course, the inventor could just implement draconian security policies, and not allow anyone to leave diagrams on whiteboards, or notebooks on desks, or talk with anyone from other departments, but that takes even more money.
After all of that, it seems simpler and more reliable just to have restrictions on copying ideas.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Your mistake is that you are confusing ownership with possession.
They are not the same thing, you know.
Realize this and re-read the posts you responded to as well as the ones you made yourself. Things will become more clear to you, and hopefully you might also become a tad less arrogant, and believe me, you would sure benefit from that.
Good luck.
How do you possess something without owning it? You don't unless you control it.
From Meriam-Webster online dictionary:
As you can see ownership is a synonym for possession, and it also means that if you don't control the property in question you don't have possession of it either. When someone else patents your idea you certainly don't have control of your own idea, so you have neither possession nor ownership of it anymore.
Either way your attempt at obfuscation is refuted completely by the definition of the words themselves.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
"In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. " Yes, and that's how ASCAP feels as well. The notion of ownership of all implementations of an idea is the artificial thing, and dishonest behavior in that area would be fraud, not theft.
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This is a hypothetical situation where a lone inventor has created a mind-blowing breakthrough without stepping on any of the patented techniques of others. This virtually never plays out in the real world. Even the inventions and inventors touted as the biggest breakthroughs, such as the lightbulb, were often just an improved implementation of an existing idea, and often not even the best combination of known techniques.
You can argue that if patents were very narrow, then you could get around the patents of the big dog easily, but the big dog can get around your patents too.
No advantage of the patent system doesn't go both ways except for the advantages that a non-practicing entity has by virtue of not having any chance of infringing. The only winning move really is not to play.
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Having attempted to read a number of patents in the last N years I am convinced that the boilerplate much increased the signal to noise ratio. It might be a good thing to remove such junk.
More apropos is that patents need to be published on the date of filing. Too often patents are edited over a period of years... and the initial patent is fully lost in the edits. If the idea is not in the initial filing well it is not there.
Software patents have come a long way from the AT&T patent on the SUID bit. That patent included both a hardware (physical model) and a soft model. They may have put it in the public domain because it was 'obvious' and in the design of existing systems but that more than makes the point that patents are a weapon.
Patents are also designed to provide a monopolistic advantage so the holder can produce their idea in a protected context. Patent trolls that produce NOTHING do not meet that fundamental component of patent law.
To that end for a company to prosecute a patent they must specify what product they produce that depends on it if they wish to claim damages.
i.e. the law was designed to enable productivity -- legal activity that inhibits productivity should be disallowed.
Sorting comes up over and over and makes an interesting touchstone for thinking about patents.
Start with a bubble sort. Patent that method then patent a quick sort. The quick sort if held by the same company could/ should/ would eclipse and "free" the older bubble sort as it provides an advantage. A company that held all patents could wield a very heavy hammer: Insertion, Selection, Bubble, Shell, Merge, Heap, Quick, Quick3...
But note well (N.B.) that sorting itself is not a novel idea as any child learning the alphabet and alphabetical order should be able to attest.
At another level a mathematical proof while novel does not prove the underlying conjecture/ idea to be novel. Today many algorithms are like proofs in that they validate and clarify the underlying idea or conjecture.
Now back to the AT&T SUID patent and the infamous one click patent. How many historic vending machines have a one click/ one button model?
It seems to me that physical models TRUMP software models and that it is obvious that modeling the physical world is a natural thing to do with graphics. Folk do it all the time playing "solitaire".
It's like déjà vu all over again.
If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 years? New companies spring up all the time, and some of them even do well.
As a personal example, my company's doing quite well, and yes, we have our own patent-pending technology. We've met our competitors. They are not happy about what we can do. Our patent application includes language limiting the scope to our specific field, so when it's public, it will be a drop-in solution for those who aren't our competitors. Seems to me that's a pretty decent compromise to accommodate a broken implementation.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 [wired.com] years? " Because patents aren't quite so bad as to bring society to a total halt. Is that concept so hard to grasp? Also, there were quite a few countries that didn't have patents during a large part of that time. Venice is not a particularly good example to use, anyway, since it is no longer autonomous.
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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There are a few inaccuracies in the NetworkWorld article. The applicable test in the Bilski patent litigation is the "machine OR transformation" test. An invention doesn't have to include both, in order to be patent-eligible. Also, I don't think the machine involved in the test has to be "specifically invented" for a certain process. That's why software has remained patent-eligible; as long as some machine -- e.g., a computer -- is used in the process, then any software is potentially patentable. OR, if a process is transformative, then it may also be patent-eligible.