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Ridiculous Software Patents: a Developer's Nemesis
StormDriver writes "Have you ever thought about patenting a pop up note, an online poll, a leaderboard in an online game, or a system where you open apps by clicking icons? I have some bad news for you – it's impossible. Not because the claim is stupid, it's just that all of those things are already patented. And it's all fun and factoids, until one day you find yourself in the role of a software start-up."
Ask a lawyer if you should pay a lawyer to do something for you, and what do you think the answer will be?
Be smart, just get on with it. Axiomatically, you'll only become a target for a lawsuit when you're already successful. You can pay a lawyer then, if you like.
Or alternatively, pay an accountant. Set the company up so all the liabilities are here and all the assets are there. Ignore patent trolls, ignore any court judgements, and if and when anyone with a badge does ever come to collect, point them at the Pile-O'-Debt and tell them to knock themselves out.
This isn't theoretical - I've already been though a few employers who were set up in exactly that way. One of them simply 'phoenixed' the liable part of the business overnight: rename it, put it into administration, start a new business with the old business' name, and "re-hire" all the employees. Only the company number changed. Apparently perfectly legal stuff, at least in the UK.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
One day we won't be able to do anything, patent trolls will scour the net and keep innovation at bay.
I date back to Z80 Assembly as the preferred programming method. I had developed some very interesting and unique things. I never thought of patenting them, and I shared them on bulletin boards and in print with joy.
Now, with my many years of experience, because big business has laid lawyer minefields with software patents, I don't even think of publishing my own programs. When I do work, it's as a contract consultant to a giant company (who also has me tied up in 2" of contracts that I can never work for anyone else)
I'm thinking my next venture will be a hot dog stand. A good hat dog is as illusive as it is tasty.
Software patents serve no one but giant companies, and only to stifle innovation. Exactly the opposite of their stated purpose.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
anyone can patent almost anything these days for a few thousand $$$. it's suing people who you think ripped off your patent is hard. takes lots of money and years of time
just ask i4i, kodak, apple, oracle, google, MS and others. you need to pay lawyers almost 24/7 and have employees always available for discovery motions and depositions
I agree the patent system is broken, and in the computer world it needs to have significantly shorter terms. But it's worth noting that many concepts (and the methods for implementing them), which seem "obvious" today due to their ubiquity, may not have been so 10 or 20 years ago.
Hell, many cultures never discovered the wheel, or would have developed much later if they hadn't been introduced to it by their neighbors.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It's a hurdle for everyone who is interested in starting a personal business but guys like Larry Page at Google or even Richard Branson didn't get where they are by thinking inside the box, find out what's already been done and look for a gap in the market.
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
I honestly think that this will be one of the things that brought USA down. You keep transfering all your money to a couple of law firms instead of investing it in making stuff. Sad...
Not a european developer's nemesis. Because, software patents are not recognized there, due to higher level of common sense and less greedy control over society.
this picture painted in your summary and the articles, is the picture of what american capitalism did to software. a feodal minefield in which you either work for a bully stronger than you, or dont work at all.
Read radical news here
I've never understood how things became so abstracted with software patents. I suppose it's because in the real world mother nature does most of the foundational work for us, whereas in the software world everything has to be done from scratch.
Since we all seem to agree that you cant patent wood, or fire, or dirt wouldn't it be logical to extend this to the software realm? No more patenting drivers, utility libraries, or user interfaces since these can be seen as materials. You may only patent the unique functionality of the software you made by using those materials. And like all patents, it has an expiry date.
It surprises me no one looks at it this way.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
TFA has a really badly broken link!
Check the link for "any form of Linux kernel".. it points to "file:///C:/Users/kpiskorski/Documents/Notka%20o%20patentach/Pwn2Own%20finished:%20Mac%20hasked%20in%205%20seconds"
WTF?! Pwn2Own.. Mac Hacked??! WTF!?
Programming is like composing music: you learn from the examples of others and you build upon it to improve the industry.
Imagine if someone had patented the 4-chord progression used by most pop songs.
Maybe that's a bad example. How about the standard blues form?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Start-ups shouldn't care about patents. You will only get sued if you actually start earning money with your start-up ... then you can pay the lawyers or the royalties.
Some people are abusing software patents, and the PTO isn't doing anything to stop it? This is the first time I've heard about this and I'm shocked!
How many people know about this? This is an outrage!
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!
I recently ran across a startup called Monvee, they developed an application to "help people discover what is getting in the way of their spiritual growth and then craft a plan to address it". Whatever, not my cup of tea, until I saw the "Patent Pending" at the bottom of the website. Really, you're patenting a way to grow spiritually? A search of the USTPO database found their application, Method and system for virtual mentoring. From TFPA:
The present disclosure is directed generally to a method of and system for virtual mentoring including in one embodiment, an internet based software and computer implemented system to assess, analyze, and provide individualized recommendations to a user to identify a specific attribute or skill to improve and recommend particularized actions and resources that are designed to help the user improve the identified skill.
Not only are there a number of systems that do this, but any patent attorney in their right mind would have found all this simply by searching for "corporate mentoring software". Oh and maybe try a search for "cognitive behavioral therapy software", psychologists have been doing the same thing for years.
Just not under the name of God.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
As long as this debate's been around, Slashdot still hasn't figured out that people like StormDriver have no idea what they're talking about?
None of those patents likely cover the broad concepts StormDriver says they do. What does he base his conclusion on, their titles? A more accurate, but still woefully incomplete analysis would read: Ever thought about patenting (or implementing) the idea of:
1. A computer-implemented method for interpreting data received from a mouse to minimize the need for clicking the mouse when using a graphical user interface which includes a plurality of window types, the plurality of window types includes a subset of windows designed to be activated only by a double click, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a single click; determining if the single click occurred on the subset window type; sending a double click signal, if the window is the subset window type, to activate the window.
Well be careful, because depending on what all those words mean, you might not be able to. I'm sorry, but how does all that equate to "a system where you open apps by clicking icons"?
Look at patent claims, not titles.
I hope I'm wrong but I find it entirely credible that in the not so near but also not too distant future writing programs -- be it for yourself, for OSS, or for small commerce -- will become an unlawful underground activity. All software and information will be controlled by a small group of huge stock enterprises, the sole survivors of the first international patent and copyright war. Unless they work for one of those giants, programmers will have to meet conspiratively in old cellars, private apartments, and unknown bars but often these meetings, which are only announced by mouth to mouth propaganda, will be interrupted and dispersed by violent police raids, often resulting in people getting killed, arrested, or being sued for statutory damages of 75 trillion dollar.
Hopefully, if this is going to happen it will be a bit like Half Life 2 (except, perhaps, for the aliens).
My mind went to a weird place, but it made sense, when I read the title a smidge wrong.
Software patents are the largest obstacle to innovation in the world. The Government exempts itself from all patents - it can infringe all it wants since the laws do not apply to them. I want the same protection, so M$ or $ony can't come after me with their cadre of bottom-feeding lawyers trying to suck every penny out of me. This is why America is a dead-end for innovation and any type of leadership in the world today. Too many lawyers and other parasites looking to suck money from any innovative idea.
There are patents for things that are impossible, but if someone ever comes up with a way to actually teleport, you'll have to pay someone that patented the idea. What a crock!!!
>>> Hell, many cultures never discovered the wheel, or would have developed much later if they hadn't been introduced to it by their neighbors.>>>
Oh my, so the wheel was not discovered simultaneously everywhere? And people were learning from each other?
You are credited with an analytical breakthrough.
1) Incorporate (protects your personal assets). :)
2) Form an "S" Corporation (so you can pay yourself, you know CEO type pay).
3) Do what ever you want because the company can crash and burn, but hey you got your money
A nice spin on this (aka ENRON), don't actually pay employees, give them stock options out the wahzoo.
Then give yourself another bonus for saving the company money, wink wink nudge nudge.
Don't you just love capitalism.
That's why most of us just ignore them.
Nothing new under the sun... Just more of the little suckers, kind like chiggers.
The article is misleading and heavily biased.
It starts off with some grandiose claims that things we take for granted are "patented" such as popup notes, etc.... and then links to some patents as "proof".
While the titles of some of these sound scary: "information pointers," - the title isn't what is patented. I could title my invention "air" if I wanted to (as long as the Examiner doesn't object - which they sometimes but not always do), but that doesn't mean i've patented air.
Look at the claims... The claims define the scope of what is patented.
For example, the "popup notes" patent:
. In a data processing system having a video display, an output device, and an input device, a method for providing an information pointer, comprising:
(a) displaying a cursor on the video display;
(b) displaying one or more objects on the video display;
(c) in response to a user using the input device, positioning at least a part of the cursor over at least a portion of a selected one of the objects that are displayed;
(d) in response to at least a part of the cursor being positioned over at least a portion of the selected object, outputting dynamic information about a further action with the selected object over the output device;
(e) allowing the user to select to turn off the outputting of the dynamic information; and
(f) overriding the user's ability to turn off the displaying of critical information.
So unless you provide both an ability to turn off the popup note and also override the ability of the user to turn off the notes, then you aren't infringing. Perhaps something to think about next time your designing your poptips system, but not quite so scary is it?
The other cited patents are similar in that they all seem to require some limitations not mentioned by the article that makes the patent not quite so scary.
"Nothing like the smell of FUD in the morning," right?
The article continues with more unsupported, broad, grandoise crapola:
"If you develop an application and want it to be fully legal, I have to disappoint you. You have no chance to come up with anything, that won’t be in breach of at least one patent, as they now exclude you from use of most basic techniques. Most likely, you’ve already broken a dozen patents just by thinking about your app. Every Tuesday, the US Patent Office publishes some 3,000 new patents, many overbroad, generic, or just plain ridiculous. Piles of them created a legal maze, impossible to navigate even for companies employing armies of cloned, genetically engineered super-lawyers. Just take a look at the paper-storm blowing in the face of Google’s Android."
Apparently the "Chris" that posted this is a patent attorney who also reads 3,000 patents every day to know that many are "overbroad, generic, or just plain ridiculous." (Not only that, but not all 3,000 patents are software patents - which is what he's complaining about)
He continues: "Microsoft is a patent giant of IT world, and holds 17258 valid patents, even though it didn’t develop a single important software innovation over the course of all its history " REALLY? I know MS isn't loved in this crowd, but to say they haven't developed a single important software innovation in 30 years is ridiculuous.
Seriously, I understand people don't like software patents around here, but come on.....
Imagine if someone had patented the 4-chord progression used by most pop songs.
That was invented by Johann Pachelbel in the 1600s. If he had patented it... EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MODERN POP SONGS COULD STILL EXIST. People often seem to forget that patents don't last forever. Yes, they might slightly slow down progress in IT now that the area is so new (just a few decades old) that nearly everything is new by default. That doesn't necessarily hold true in the long range.
You know, software patents get churned out everyday since years ago and will continue to be churned out years from now. Frankly I'm pretty sick of slashdotters saying so and so patents are obvious and trivial. They're only obviously because someone else has done it first! If they were actually obviously then why aren't you now patenting the stuff that you will have been declaring obvious 10 years from now? If all these patents were obvious then why are "obvious" patents still being issued everyday? They should've all been thought of by now right?
The only reason you think stuff is obvious is because someone else has thought of it first and they deserve to be paid for their ideas and inventions.
Come up with some original shit of your own and stop copying other people's crap.
I thought the cool part about computers was that everyone already had plenty of ideas what they could do with one and people could also create the software.
But it seems even though e-mail was imagined long before the Internet and everyone who heard of it thought "how cool would that be? I'd want it!", only the first person to create e-mails would be allowed to make such software.
In my opinion, software should not be patented. Those who are the first to create a software should just deal with the competition instead of asking the law to prevent any competition. So how would they compete then? They could compete by offering better service. How many software out there are never updated or otherwise improved after release? Offer better updates, better support, better features, etc. to attract customers. Not only will it make you more deserving of the money you earn, but it will improve technology.
When I buy software, I want it to last a lifetime. I want to see updates. I don't want to buy a voice-recognition software for $100 and then buy another one 5 years later because the company stopped making updates for the first. Companies that don't just make software but take care of the software they make will always be my first choice - it's a guarantee to me that my money is well-invested into something that lasts in the long-run.
And no, I do not for a moment believe that patents motivate people to innovate and invent technology, whether it's software or hardware. You see, right now I wouldn't try to make and sell TVs because I doubt I could offer better service/quality/prices than the biggest TV manufacturers. If I never built TVs before and am just starting, at first I could only offer small screens and no colors. Nobody would even buy from me and I would never have the money required to improve my TVs.
But if I invented a new device - for example a kind of 'smell-printer' which mixes a few basic aromas to produce an infinite number of smells, the purpose being to add smell to the sound and image of TVs - customers would not have high expectations since this device is new. It would be easy to create and sell a basic model of this kind of device. Some companies would quickly study my device and make their own and thus compete with me, but since we're all starting from scratch I could still hope to be one of the biggest smell-printer makers. (Or, if I think big corporations with plenty of money would have no trouble improving my device 10x faster than I can, thus killing my start-up as it barely hatched, I could just sell my device to one of those companies for a few millions).
Bottom line, even with competition and no patents I am still way better off innovating than making what has already been done many times. And so is the customer, since competition will force companies to improve their products and offer ever-increasing quality and ever-lowering prices.
And what's the point of patents anyway when a few companies can sue everyone else for infringement? I mean, the majority of people can not innovate, so it's in their interest to vote AGAINST patents. They're the majority, so if they voted they would win. Just shows that the system is a failure if it can't be democratically supported.
What with all the development tools that keep "programmers" twenty layers away from any actual instructions that are executed by a processor, it's not like anyone ever actually develops software anymore anyway. All we do now is snap pre-prepared modules together to help further one manufacturer's strategic platform or another's. Computer science is dead. It was killed by allowing corporations to supplant it with entire lifetimes worth of arcane proprietary API annoyances and app store rule navigation and mindshare tricks and allowing them to call them "innovations" and to patent their "ideas".
so, most innovative software firms are based in the u.s. ? microsoft, oracle, ibm et al ?
are you aware of the innovations that are done in europe ? no. because they are not touted to greedy shareholders to play the share game. yet, most of the contributions to linux code that a lot of the names you name there use, come from especially scandinavian countries ?
its not that u.s. companies are more innovative - its that much more drum is being drummed over these stuff in that country, than any place else.
japanese have created fscking androids almost. how much has it been drummed ? yet, you see random american company doing press releases over some 'innovation' like dragging some item from your mobile device to your home theater device with a single click or something.
Read radical news here
Patent Application to be submitted perhaps actually submit this and see if it goes through.. the actual patent to be (not the makeing of the patent) Step 1 think of something trivial to patent Step 2 get patent for trivial Idea Step 3 ??? Step 4 Profit!
I forgot my password can I have yours
hmmm...so you are saying that all patents are bad? That if one comes up with a truly novel idea there should be no way to stop microsoft/cisco/google/ATT from just swooping down and stealing it? If so, then how could any new venture ever succeed? Get an idea developed and into the market and WHAM - microsoft sees that it is good and builds their own - no need to deal with or compensate YOU...and without patents, there would be NOTHING you could do about it. Why would anyone invent and develop anything anymore - or maybe you are a trust-funder who doesn't need to earn a living? Feel free to donate your ideas, resulting from years of education and experience, to the greater cause but
I'm not telling YOU my current great idea...UNTIL I patent it, thank you very much.
The real problem is that the current patent-reform is being promulgated by those very big guys (who spend lots of $$$ on congress) to prevent the little guys from ever owning anything again...now that they are on the boat, they're pulling up the ladders. The patent system may need work - it hasn't grown staff-wise to keep up with the workload, if some patents shouldn't have be approved it will come out in court, and though the USPTO actually makes $$ it isn't allowed to keep it to increase efficiency - but let's not kill the golden goose that has led to one of the most innovative eras in history. I heart Thomas Jefferson.
-just saying
You are only a target when you enter the market of the patent holder, and actually become more successful then them.
Also, the whole "patents stifle innovation" what rubbish!!!!!
If you duplicate someone's IP, that is NOT INNOVATION.
If anything patents encourage innovation because you have to think outside the box to do something that someone else has patented. Creating a new and novel approach to doing something that is already patented IS INNOVATION.
But a large percentage of those software patents will never be an issue for anyone writing software. Like whoever owns the patent for clicking an icon to launch an app will have a very hard time trying to uphold that patent, and definitely will not go after some small startup, especially since if you are sued for millions and don't have it, you just declare bankruptcy and they spend more on legal fees.
Software patents are non-issues 99% of the time. It is largely a game played by the big boys in the industry, Microsoft, Apple, Google.
In the meantime, if you come up with something that is not covered under a patent, patent it and then sue one of the big boys if they infringe on it, you can play the game too.