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Ask Slashdot: Reducing Software Patent Life-Spans?

Posted by timothy on from the getting-rid-of-seems-the-obvious-answer dept.

seattle_coder writes "Many have advocated for the elimination of software patents. The arguments generally are that software patents are handed out too easily, and that they're too difficult and expensive to fight. Some say that patents just plain don't make sense for software, which is such a dynamic technology. Given that the standard patent lifetime is 20 years, and software changes so rapidly, is the life-span the problem for software patents? Would reducing the software patent lifetime to 5 years or even less be the thing to do?"

3 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Better to eliminate them altogether by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We shouldn't be able to patent software for the same reason we can't patent mathematics. Copyright protection is sufficient and suitable for software.

    1. Re:Better to eliminate them altogether by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "A patent on software coupled with a specific underlying machine is about as far as patents should be allowed to go, and only because of the modern reality of industrial processes and control equipment."

      That argument was shot down over 100 years ago, in court cases regarding to player piano rolls that controlled machines... the pianos.

      The courts ruled (quite properly) that the "software" -- the rolls that controlled the pianos -- were simply expressions of written music, and therefore the appropriate law for protecting them was copyright law, not patent law. They reasoned that a written work is a written work, no matter what physical form it may take, and regardless of whether it controlled a machine... a piece of punched paper telling a machine what to play did not fundamentally differ from a printed piece of paper telling a human musician what to play. It was exactly the same music, only the physical form had changed.

      Recent years have brought nothing new to the table. There is no real difference between a piece of software (which is ultimately written by human beings) telling a computer what to do, than an English translation of the software telling a bunch of people with pencils and paper what to do. The only real difference is speed... nothing fundamental has changed at all.

  2. Not a great solution by cjonslashdot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, the lifespan of patents is a big problem.

    But in software, things change so rapidly that patent protection for even five years is an eternity: by then, it is game over.

    The fundamental problem with software patents is that companies patent simple ideas. The Amazon one-click purchase patent is a prime example. These kinds of ideas should be considered "obvious" by the USPTO, but unfortunately these kinds of things are routinely patented. The result is that there is a minefield of patents around every simple idea, every basic thing that one can do in software. Anyone who wants to create a startup company around a software product is at great risk, and instead of investing their time and energy into product development they now have to invest it in legal research. That is not a very good state of affairs for an industry that thrives on innovation.

    If patents are to be allowed to exist for software, the bar for what is not obvious should be much, much, much higher than it currently seems to be.