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."

Comments

So don't worry about it

[Rogerborg]

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.

Re:So don't worry about it

[Riceballsan]

Already succesful and fully profitable are 2 completely seperate things. It isn't unheard of for a software package to pick up enough of a following to draw the guns before making enough to simply pay off the authors past due mortgage payments, and even profitable dosn't mean a lawyer is going to do you much good. Lets say somehow microsoft had a patent for something blatently obvious that was used in a game that say made 100k in a year, after expenses cost of living etc, this start up has 25k left to pay a lawyer to deffend himself, from microsofts 2.5 million they decided would be worth investing into eliminating a threat before it was big enough to fight back.

This is right.

[kurt555gs]

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.

Re:This is right.

[pieterh]

"Software patents serve no one but giant companies, and only to stifle innovation. Exactly the opposite of their stated purpose."

However, that was always their purpose. It's always been the largest firms (particularly IBM pre-2000 and Microsoft post-2000) that expanded patent law into software, and that bought the most patents. Small firms have never mixed innovation with patenting, it's contradictory. You can either hold patents and sue others, or you can make products and avoid patents. Trying both means you are sued systematically unless you are in a field with practically no patents, e.g. a technical patent on a fashion item like a shoe.

Patents are inherently anti-competitive, this is well known in the patent industry, where people who actually make products and innovate are considered as a kind of food source for higher level patenting predators.

In software, the food source seems endless, which is why no-one's worried. But in other industries, it's already tipped so far that basic research is throttled in the US, EU, and Japan, and other countries are easily taking a lead.

All patents are bad, they all allow one entity to control the use of an idea in the market, they all act to restrict competition and they are all inherently anti-free market. There are no good patents.

Re:Devil's advocate...

[pushing-robot]

Fortunately, patent terms haven't ballooned the way copyright terms have. Patents now cover up to 20 years from the first filing date (which can be many years before the patent is ultimately issued). In most industries that's pretty reasonable, but in software 10-20 years can be an eternity.

It seems like the best approach would be to change the patent term to whatever the length of a "generation" is for a particular industry, consulting experts in a given field to determine what that epoch may be. In automobiles, it might be twenty years. In software development, it might be two.