BT Sues Google Over Android

phonewebcam writes "British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents. The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the U.S., relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android. If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce."

Comments

I'll be watching this one

[msobkow]

There's one big reason I'll pay attention to this one:

filed in the state of Delaware in the US

Patent trolls file in Texas; serious patent holders file in Delaware.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they are patent trolls, somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group

Re:I'll be watching this one

[JonahsDad]

I don't think they are patent trolls, somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group

Depends on your point of view. This is the company that sued (and lost) claiming a patent on the hyperlink.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2000/12/18/bt-sues-over-hyperlink-claim-2083266/

Re:I'll be watching this one

[goombah99]

I don't think they are patent trolls, somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Group

Depends on your point of view. This is the company that sued (and lost) claiming a patent on the hyperlink.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2000/12/18/bt-sues-over-hyperlink-claim-2083266/

I was wondering the same thing. But the article said most of these patents were filed in the 1990s and were products of it's research department. This lends some credibility that these are not rushes to patent the obvious in a new context but rather very early research that perhaps deservedly should be rewarded for pushing technology forward.

But it does remain to be seen. A patent on deciding if you have enough bandwidth to stream or download a file sure doesn't sound like much of an innovation.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[lostmongoose]

This lawsuit smacks of "Holy crap, our patents are about to expire and we've done nothing with them! Let's see if there's someone we can sue over them."

Re:I'll be watching this one

[chrb]

It is also a company that has had an Research wing for the past 91 years: BT Research. And even before that, their (Post Office) engineers conducted research into fundamental technology advances during the 19th century.

BT may still be considered a patent troll (depending on your point of view) but understand that they are very different from the usual trolls - this is a company that has historically sold products developed from its own research, and which has a history of conducting research into communications technology that spans the better part of a century.

Before it became BT, the research wing was part of the Post Office. They carried out research with Marconi in developing fundamental wireless communications technology in the 1890s. One of their researchers went on to develop Colossus, which was arguably the world's first programmable computer, and pivotal in the war effort. In the 1940s and 50s they developed designs for the first all-electric telephone exchanges.

So no, not a typical patent troll.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[sjames]

They're not professional patent trolls, but they do like to dabble. They also rattled the sabre in the '90s when they blew the dust off of some vague patents of theirs about an information retrieval system and attempted a desperate contortion to try to get royalties from the entire www.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[poetmatt]

not when they quote Florian Mueller in the first few paragraphs of the article, they don't. Questionable patents should have told you that outright - this is driven by pure greed.

Re:I'll be watching this one

[mjwalshe]

As a BT employee at the time - they where on very shaky ground on this one. - The claim was based off of some arcane functionality used in PRESTEL ( a video text system) and totally ignored the prior art from 1947/48 Vadavar Bushes description of memex was a far better description of a hyper link.

Internally all the techies thought this was a stupid idea.

I used to work for PRESTEL and had not come across this supposed hyperlink functionality.

Yet Another Reason...

[d3ac0n]

Why allowing Software Patents is foolish. It destroys innovation and rewards established players and those with deep pockets. (It also allows the established players to pick the pockets of others, whether they are deep or not.)

Abolish software patents. Software should be covered under copyright as it is written material. Patents are for physical objects. Not the written word (or code).

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Theaetetus]

Why allowing Software Patents is foolish. It destroys innovation and rewards established players and those with deep pockets. (It also allows the established players to pick the pockets of others, whether they are deep or not.)

Software patents have been around for almost 30 years. You say they've destroyed innovation - do you have any evidence? I think computers have advanced pretty far since the 80s.

Patents are for physical objects.

The very first patent category mentioned under 35 USC 101 is "process". Are "processes" physical objects? That line has been in the statute since the mid-1800s, so patents clearly are not just for physical objects.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[d3ac0n]

Except that "process" in the patent system refers to manufacturing processes. Still tied intrinsically to the physical world. Modern lawyers have shoehorned written software into the patent world by calling it "A system or method or process".

I'm saying we should disallow this and eliminate all software patents.

You say the software world has done pretty well under patents, I say that so few companies were writing software until the last 10 years that almost nobody ran into issues with it. Back in the '60's when software was first allowed to be patentable they were still using PUNCH CARDS and computers filled whole rooms! Maybe 100 people on the PLANET could write software, and most of them knew each other, so patents weren't an issue.

Now that software is everywhere we are running into the hard limits of the patent system and innovation by anyone other than the giants is suffering.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, so believe me, my opinion is not formed from some communistic desire to eliminate profit. My desire is to unlock the potential of software and software writers to bring us new and innovative ideas and allow the little guy some room to join in without the big guys monopolizing the market.

I want everyone to have a chance to maximize their profit through honest marketplace competition, and to stop the minimizing of that marketplace by the artifice of patents.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[0xdeadbeef]

do you have any evidence? I think computers have advanced pretty far since the 80s.

You pathetic humans are still using computers with your fingers.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Theaetetus]

Except that "process" in the patent system refers to manufacturing processes.

[Citation needed]. The statute doesn't say "manufacturing process," it says "process". If Congress wanted to restrict it only to manufacturing processes, they could have at any point in the past 150 years.

Still tied intrinsically to the physical world. Modern lawyers have shoehorned written software into the patent world by calling it "A system or method or process".

No, we haven't (and yes, I am a patent attorney). There are no patents that claim "A system or method or process." A claim has to be directed to a single statutory category, by definition.

I'm saying we should disallow this and eliminate all software patents.

Yes, but you haven't said why. I understand you hate software patents, but you haven't come up with any good reasons to abolish them. Your statutory argument (process=manufacturing process) is incorrect, and your procedural argument (patent attorneys somehow game the system, contrary to the law) is based on a false premise.

You say the software world has done pretty well under patents, I say that so few companies were writing software until the last 10 years that almost nobody ran into issues with it.

... so few companies were writing software in the 1990s?!

I don't mean to be insulting, but really? The 1990s dotcom bubble? The growth of open source software? The founding of Slashdot, for chrissake?

Back in the '60's when software was first allowed to be patentable they were still using PUNCH CARDS and computers filled whole rooms! Maybe 100 people on the PLANET could write software, and most of them knew each other, so patents weren't an issue.

Yes, and patents have existed this entire time. And look at where we are now. IF we were still using punch cards, then you'd have a good argument that software patents stifled innovation. But we aren't. You're agreeing with my point - software has advanced incredibly far over the past 40 years, so any claim that software patents stifle innovation has a really high bar to jump.

Now that software is everywhere we are running into the hard limits of the patent system and innovation by anyone other than the giants is suffering.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, so believe me, my opinion is not formed from some communistic desire to eliminate profit. My desire is to unlock the potential of software and software writers to bring us new and innovative ideas and allow the little guy some room to join in without the big guys monopolizing the market.

I want everyone to have a chance to maximize their profit through honest marketplace competition, and to stop the minimizing of that marketplace by the artifice of patents.

You still haven't showed that the marketplace is minimized.

I know you want it to be true that software patents are horrible things, but so far, you've only got the circular argument, "software patents are bad, therefore software patents are bad." And your evidence leads to the opposite conclusion - you've said "look at how far we've advanced since the 1960s, and the already-lightning pace of software development is increasing even over the past 10 years... so therefore software patents (which have existed the entire time) are bad, or something."

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[vadim_t]

Have you ever thought that if so many people who work in the field are against them, then maybe they have a point?

I'm a software developer. I look at this mess and feel very glad that at least this insanity didn't get here yet. And I'm going to do what I can to keep it that way.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[vadim_t]

Personal take:

My job is to get things done. When I have a task to accomplish, I want to accomplish it by the most efficient and quick way possible. Patents get in the way by doing it so there are solutions I can't use and must work around for no good technical reason.

That could be a tradeoff if there was something in them for me, but there isn't. Patents are mostly useless for single developers and small companies, so from my point of view they're always a weapon that can be used against me, but that I can never wield.

Since there's no reason for me to support them, I don't.

Wider take:

Looking at the industry, software patents horribly fail at the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" they're supposed to be doing. They're instead used as WMDs and to force negotiation. Look for instance at the current mess in the phone area: Both Apple and Samsung are warring with each other, but both already have existing products. Meaning, the "progress of science and useful arts" has already happened, and all those patents are getting used for is for trying to remove the other's product from the market, which would result in diminishing the "progress of science and useful arts", going against the stated intention.

Patents are a means to an end, that being said progress, not an end in themselves. If progress is already happening, then patents aren't needed, and if patents result in the rolling back of said progress, then they're actually being damaging.

They don't bother understanding the enemy as it were - as evidenced by the oft repeated fallacy of quoting the abstract instead of the claims, or failing to look at the file history - and instead just write mad. I don't respect that approach, or lend its arguments it much weight.

This in my view mostly unimportant. The way I see it, software patents are horribly failing from the general point of view. The important thing is the cumulative effect they're having, and it's heavily detrimental. If things are obviously wrong at the high level point of view, then people not getting the low level details right doesn't suddenly make the overall situation good. It just means that people see there is a problem but are failing at finding the right cause for it.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[jez9999]

No one is forming cogent, well-thought out rebuttals to the "problem,"

Oh, yeah, I should've remembered to link to the various software products that would've existed if software patents hadn't been around to show how things would've been better if software patents hadn't been around.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Anthony Mouse]

To the extent developers feel otherwise, I haven't seen a calm, and rationale counter-argument.

The obvious problem if you're expecting citations to caselaw or statutes is that developers don't know anything about that stuff. They see the results, they don't like them, they complain about it.

But let me see if I can help you understand the frustration:

Let's put software patent holders into three classes: Larger practicing entities (e.g. Microsoft), smaller practicing entities (start-ups) and non-practicing entities (trolls). The problem is this: Consider what happens in the interaction between members of each class.

It sounds like you already agree that the trolls are a problem, so l won't expound upon that other than to say that it's a serious problem when actual innovators can be stopped in their tracks by an army invincible trolls that never have to defend and so can keep attacking until they win.

So let's consider the interactions between the two remaining classes of software patent holders. The least problematic is interactions between two smaller companies, because there basically aren't any; neither is worth the other's time. But neither do these non-interactions provide anyone any benefit. They just don't happen at any scale. Next least problematic is the interactions between two larger companies, because they generally just cross-license. This isn't the most serious problem, but it does have the tendency to create a wealth transfer from smaller large companies to larger large companies, since the latter naturally tend to have more patents, and that can be seen as undesirable. (The largest companies have enough advantages, thank you.) Moreover, it creates a large inefficiency, because most patents are just used in cross-licensing negotiations to cancel out the other guy's patents, so that the whole exercise becomes a giant waste of resources because each side would be better off if neither had any patents (because they didn't exist) than to have to file, prosecute and negotiate only to came to the same result: a cross-license that cancels out the respective efforts of each company with those of the other.

But the most serious problem is the last: Interactions between major companies and start-ups. This is where the patent system is supposed to make up for itself, by preventing a large company from copying the little guy's product with impunity. The problem is that because of the way software patents work, and the way software works, unlike in other industries you just can't make a significant product that doesn't infringe major companies' software patents. They have too many that are too broad, and even if you think you can win you certainly can't afford to litigate it as a small company. So you the patent system is worse than nothing for the little guy, because it allows larger companies to crush them with patent litigation at will. If the larger company wants to infringe their patents, all they have to do is hang the threat of litigation over them before the larger company starts infringing, which puts the little guy over a barrel and allows the larger company to extract a license. Or just force them to accept a buy out for millions instead of billions. The only way a smaller company can defend itself is by discontinuing its product and becoming a patent troll, which as far as I can tell is the single most abominable result possible.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[psxndc]

First, thank you for your well-thought out response. I sincerely mean that, and I really do appreciate actual debate on this. You raise some fair points, although I disagree that smaller companies interacting doesn't benefit anyone; they may form a partnership based on a mutual use of their respective technologies and establish a market foothold that neither could individually.

Second, and I realize this is a little unfair to raise it at this stage, but I don't see how software patents are special or should be treated with any differently than any other technology. None of your examples hinge on the technology being software - those scenarios apply in the biology world or semiconsiductor world as well. Why is it that software patents specifically should be abolished? Or are you arguing that the entire patent system should go?

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[mjr167]

I am currently in the process of filing a software patent because management directed me to. If you asked me, I (and everyone else who worked on the software) would tell you that our software is stupid. Anyone else who sets out to solve the same problem we did would probably end up solving it the same way. It is not innovative. We were told that the success of our project is measured by the amount of IP filed and so we made some crap up to look like IP so management would be happy and we would look successful. The reality is we have crap. Management, however, decided that our idea was great and sent it off to some patent lawyer who is currently trying to make it look innovative and unique. The best part is, another company already has a patent for a product that already does what we did, but they did it the correct way, not the cheap dirty way that doesn't really work.

That is why the software patent system is broken. We, the engineers, know the patent is crap. We, the engineers, get paid nice bonuses for filing IP and our projects' success are measured by how much IP we file each year. Ergo, we want to be successful, well paid engineers, so we file crap IP and management somehow buys into it. A patent lawyer then gets paid a boatload of money to make the crap idea look good, and I seriously doubt cares if the idea is crap or not. In then end a lot of money is going to be wasted and if someone else sets out to solve the same problem we solved and stumbles across our obvious solution, they are going to get sued.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[DM9290]

Software patents have been around for almost 30 years. You say they've destroyed innovation - do you have any evidence? I think computers have advanced pretty far since the 80s.

Straw man. The issue is whether 'software' has advanced, not "computers".

Computer hardware is not protected by software patents. Computer hardware is protected by patents on physical devices and physical processes.

The majority of profound changes to computing over the past 30 years have been in HARDWARE and in public software that is not covered by patents.

Your argument that "computers have advanced pretty far" is misleading and irrelevant.

I would not claim software patents have "destroyed innovation" but the onus for proving that software patents are justified is on the party who is making that claim. If you are merely claiming that software patents are LAWFUL, then perhaps you are correct, but if you are claiming software patents actually ENCOURAGE software inventions, you have no evidence and you need to provide it.

Patents are a limitation to freedom of expression and thus every single patent must be justifiable and every single law granting patents must be justifiable on the basis that it actually truly encourages the advancement of the art and knowledge into the public sphere and not merely the enrichment of private pockets.

You could probably find many software developers, myself included, who would say that software patents have done absolutely NOTHING to encourage us in this art.

The best evidence in favor of software patents would be if the vast majority of software writers (the people who actually practice the art), come forward and ask the state to grant us such monopoly rights. But it was not us who asked. Who are the famous computer scientists who made the most significant contributions to this field who have claimed it was patent law that encouraged them to invent software?

To lay people it hardly matters whether or not there are patents on certain technology. Patents are intended to encourage the CREATORS by giving us incentives. But software patents are shackles on us as well. The creators who are the ones who are advancing the art, are the ones who should be asked, not patent trolls, not patent lawyers. The purpose of patents is NOT so that anybody can make money. The purpose is to advance the art. The artists are the ones who know best what assistance the government can give (if any) to this objective.

PS: for the record, I'm in favor of copyright over software. (but limited to 14 years or something like that -- not the current absurd term of 70 years after death).

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Missing.Matter]

That money is going on lawyers and paper pushing, instead of research, development, and manufacturing something new.

It's not a zero sum game. If that money weren't spent on lawyers it might be spent on marketing. Or executive salaries. I mean, look at Apple; they're sitting on billions in cash. It's not like they're not investing in more in R&D because they're busy suing everyone. They invest as much as they need to and no more.

To enter the market at all and survive you need to be Google sized, and even then it's troublesome to say the least.

It's not like eliminating software patents would change this. Entering the cellphone market is still a giant task. You need supplier relations, distributors, manufacturing, high cost of R&D, regulation compliance, and to top it all off there are hardware patents still! Any company willing to invest in those areas are going to be able to brave software patent litigation.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[oxdas]

I will take a crack at why software patents are bad.

#1 - Purpose. Patents, at least according to the U.S. Constitution, exist to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Traditional patents achieve this by requiring enough information in the patents application to allow a person skilled in the art to replicate the invention. Most modern software patents don't include code or other information that would allow someone to replicate their efforts. Therefore, they are not fulfilling the purpose of a patent.

#2 - Idea vs. Implementation. Since 1994 and Alappat, software patents have been granted on ideas and Mathematics. If I designed and built a new fusion engine for cars, would I be granted a patent on the very concept of fusion "on an automobile?" This is a problem with software. There is an infinite number of ways to create any piece of code. If patents only covered specific implementations (already covered by copyright), then circumventing the patent would be trivial. Only by granting patents on the idea itself, do patents on software have any relevancy.

#3 - A recent development. The nefarious kinds of software patents have only been widely issued since 1994. It takes time for there to reach a critical mass of these kinds of patents to begin to hinder innovation. The question for software patents is not "Have they hindered innovation?", but rather, "Are they hindering innovation?"

I like patents. I don' t like software patents because I can't conceive of a system that would be relevant and yet not grant monopolies on ideas. I believe as more and more ideas are monopolized, innovation, at least in the U.S, will become increasingly difficult. It is an important issue that needs to be addressed. For the record, I don't blame the USPTO for this mess. I blame the courts for issuing unconstitutional decisions and Congress for not rectifying the situation.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[psxndc]

Not true. Patents on software cover specific ways of doing things, the same as sparkplugs. Using your example, Amazon's one-click patent is not on the idea of all one click shopping, it is on a specific way of doing it. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:

under control of a client system,

displaying information identifying the item; and

in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;

under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,

receiving the request;

retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and

generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and

fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item

whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.

If you do something that is different than any of these steps, e.g., you do use a shopping cart model and periodically the cart object is polled and processed, then you aren't infringing the patent (this is not legal advice). I am just spitballing here too. Or if you don't "retrieve additional information," in response to the click and instead load it at the beginning of the session, you don't infringe the patent (again, not legal advice). And that's without me even looking at the file history to see what other concessions they made.

They didn't patent the idea of one-click, they patented a specific way of doing it. You can license the patent or just choose not to use the Amazon one-click method.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Anthony Mouse]

You raise some fair points, although I disagree that smaller companies interacting doesn't benefit anyone; they may form a partnership based on a mutual use of their respective technologies and establish a market foothold that neither could individually.

Sure, they can form a partnership if their technologies are complementary, but couldn't they do that regardless of software patents?

Second, and I realize this is a little unfair to raise it at this stage, but I don't see how software patents are special or should be treated with any differently than any other technology. None of your examples hinge on the technology being software - those scenarios apply in the biology world or semiconsiductor world as well. Why is it that software patents specifically should be abolished? Or are you arguing that the entire patent system should go?

Software is a different animal because it has effectively zero reproduction costs. The consequence is that you get the kitchen sink with everything. There is no feature that must be left out because it costs too much to manufacture.

It means that everything is infringing everything because everything includes everything. If you invent a new brake disc for a car, you don't include a free car with every brake disc you sell. In software, you do, because including the rest of the car has no cost. You can include every kind of car and truck ever made, every different kind of tire, the road, a garage full of lifts and tools and a variety of petroleum refineries and electrical generating stations to provide fuel for the various cars. All by just including a few libraries. And users expect these things. Your competitors have them. Which makes the surface area for possible infringement expand to completely unmanageable proportions.

It breaks an assumption the patent system is built on, which is that non-obvious combinations of prior art stuff are unlikely to be created at random. When you can combine everything with anything for free, getting those otherwise unlikely combinations without even trying suddenly becomes extremely likely. Independent invention becomes the rule rather than the exception. Which leads to all of these problems.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Rob Y.]

This has become a much bigger problem recently, because the patent office has been rubber-stamping patents of the form 'do this thing that's always been done, but do it on a mobile device'. Or '...do it with a gesture on a touch screen'. I agree that the mobile device (i.e. the method of supporting TCP/IP over a cellular system) may well be patentable. Likewise the physical multi-touch screen should be patentable. But email over cellular IP is not even an innovation - it's email (there have been 'push' communications before). And patenting specific gestures is like patenting new words in the language.

So, it may not be that 'software patents are always bad patents'. But they are bad patents in so many cases, that, without a better way to sort the good from the bad, abolishing them does less harm than continuing to grant them.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[vadim_t]

You view it as "working around for no good reason" but the exclusivity right granted by patents are how they are supposed to promote the useful arts and sciences.

But see, I don't think useful arts and sciences are being promoted.

You having to work around it means you have to come up with a new and different way of doing it. If it's worse, and the person that has the patent came up with THE best way to solve a particular problem, shouldn't they be rewarded for that ingenuity?

No. Absolutely not.

Patents are supposed to promote the useful arts and sciences, period. They're not a reward, nor an inherent property right. Their only purpose is to incentivize creation: so that I don't stop working on something new due to a fear of it being immediately copied by some conglomerate. If both me and the other guy would have done the same work without patents, then patents are unnecessary. And anti-conglomerate protection by patent is pretty much inexistent.

We're currently in a situation where people avoid entering markets because of the mess with patents, which shows that the situation is precisely the reverse of what it should be.

If it's not THE best way to do it, maybe their patent will force you to find a better way, thereby promoting the arts and sciences.

That however doesn't seem to be happening in the software market. There are a precious few things I would consider really worthy of a patent. The vast majority of code is either a straightforward solution to the problem being solved, or some sort of ugly hack, and those get patented anyway.

Removing existing products from the market doesn't have any impact on the promotion of arts and sciences; designing around the existing patents is what causes that.

By "promotion of arts and sciences" in this case I understand "more stuff to choose from in the market". Thus the ideal case is where I can choose to buy the Galaxy Tab, iPad, and 20 other products. One of those managing to remove the rest from the market is undesirable for me as a consumer, and I have no reason to support such a thing.

As I've said in response to others, I don't see why software should be treated any differently than any other technology area. You haven't given me a reason they should.

Because, like I said, patents are a means to an end. They're a tool like sanctions, tax breaks, tariffs, subsidies and such. When a subsidy is granted to farmers due to a strategic interest in having a domestic food supply, nobody expects the rest of the country's industry to receive the same subsidy. Same here. Just like not all industries need subsidies, not all industries need patents.

Aside from that, I'm not convinced that patents are needed at all, but: I'm not familiar enough with the other industries to say that for sure, and that seems like far too ample of a subject to properly discuss here. I'm just concentrating on what I'm most familiar with and the original topic of the discussion.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[hrimhari]

Yes, and patents have existed this entire time. And look at where we are now. IF we were still using punch cards, then you'd have a good argument that software patents stifled innovation. But we aren't. You're agreeing with my point - software has advanced incredibly far over the past 40 years, so any claim that software patents stifle innovation has a really high bar to jump.

If I understand your argument well, you're saying that because software advanced so much in 40 years with patents, then patents must be great for innovation of software.

If that's the case, how come other patentable things like car parts didn't advance as much? WHERE IS MY FLYING CAR?

Seriously though (wait, was I joking? Anyway...), I can't help but imagine two situations:

First, if we were still using punch cards and/or software had not advanced as much as it did but still advanced, how would we be able to tell that it could not have advanced much more without patents?

Then, how to tell if all this advance we did have would not have happened in 20 years instead of 40 if there were no patents?

Maybe it's time to do some real science and show examples where patents helped or hindered innovation so that the argument can continue.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[BlueStrat]

To the extent developers feel otherwise, I haven't seen a calm, and rationale counter-argument.

You mean nobody has mentioned to you that software shouldn't be patentable simply because software should be protected by copyright since it's a set of instructions that in essence are no different than a book?

Why can't a book be patented instead of copyrighted? If you take the same book of instructions and call it "software" it magically becomes patentable? Why is a book of instructions for building a house not patentable, but a program that provides the same instructions for building the same house patentable?

Maybe we would be better served by an "Occupy the Patent Office" movement. Or an "Occupy Congress" movement. Or both.

Strat

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Asklepius M.D.]

Your "calm, rational counter-argument" might be more widely read if you'd post under a registered ID. That said, I'm replying in the hopes that your post elicits a response. I agree that software patents should be invalid on the grounds that 1) algorithms are mathematical constructs, and 2) source code is already protected by copyright. While the patent system in general may have other flaws, these are two that meet the OP's request of applying specifically to software.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[hazydave]

Software is fundamentally different. You may have one or two fundamentally original ideas in a typical hardware system. Something really complex, maybe a few dozen. Any non-trivial piece of software is likely to have thousands. If I really did have to pay a 1% license fee on a thousand patents just to release my application... well, you can see the problem.

And on the other hand, software is already treated different than other technologies, and that only to make patents easier to get. In a hardware patent, you have to describe the preferred embodiment in very fine detail, including circuit diagrams. Software patents get away with increasingly abstract block diagrams. They were at one time required to include source code, but these days, not to much. So you really don't even know if your program infringes on a patent, because you never really know the preferred embodiment. This is why so many software patents seem to claim ideas, which are of course not even slightly patentable. My design only infringes your invention if I'm doing the same exact thing you're doing in the same way, not simply the same general kind of thing.

This also violates the basic premise of patents. Patents exist to give the inventor a temporary monopoly on a specific invention in return for the details of that invention being revealed. The goal is one of general benefit to society; the side effect is specific benefit to an individual. When the patent is no longer able or necessary to advance the state of engineering, it shouldn't exist.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[scot4875]

Yeah, except that the conflict of interest isn't anywhere near equivalent.

Patent attorney: if patent system exists, patent attorney has a job. If patent system doesn't exist, patent attorney doesn't have a job.

Software developer: if software patent system exists, software developer has a job (demonstratably -- in fact we have this situation right now!). If patent system doesn't exist, software developer ... still has their job. Maybe you can argue that the job might be easier if we get rid of the software patents, and in that there's some sort of conflict of interest, but you'll still have a really tough time convincing me that the level of bias is even remotely equal.

--Jeremy

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[hazydave]

The problem is, software patents don't really cover ideas. They actually cover specific implementations. In theory, anyway, they're no different than any other kind of patent.

In practice, they have been what amounts to an exemption from the need to include the actual preferred embodiment of the invention. So software patents have intentionally vague descriptions, flow charts, block diagrams, etc. that, while covering the preferred embodiment of the invention (one would hope), will also cover thousands of variations that would not infringe a properly written patent. Because of its complexity, and large companies pushing hard to not have to include source code, the software patent is really a mutant form of patent these days, very, very different than others. They need to go. Or judges need to be much more critical of vaguely written patents. There was never any intent for a software patent to be able to cover an idea, but that's the way they're flung around by the patent trolls these days.

It's also the goal of the patent writer (I've written a number of them) to seemingly claim nothing when writing the patent, and then be able to claim the world once the patent's granted. This is enhanced in software patents by the fact that the patent only loosely describes the invention, as mentioned above. But it's a flaw in all patents that there are two standards. When a patent is examined by the PTO, the examiner's main focus is on the description of the invention. They look over the claims, only to (hopefully) ensure they're backed up by the described invention. Once granted, the claims are what becomes interesting... an infringement suit will tell you (eventually.... they do like to play games) what claims you're actually supposed to be violating.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[vadim_t]

If you do something that is different than any of these steps, e.g., you do use a shopping cart model and periodically the cart object is polled and processed, then you aren't infringing the patent (this is not legal advice). I am just spitballing here too

And right here is a problem. You, even as a lawyer, must add that disclaimer because you don't really know for sure if that's going to fly or not.

Even if I paid a lawyer and asked them that, I would probably get told that even if it is found not to infringe, they still can drag me to court over it, and subject me to all kinds of unpleasant things like injunctions until the matter is resolved. A non-multinational can't afford this.

So the most likely result is: I will not implement anything of the sort, even if I'm sure I've got a completely new take on it that's not covered by the patent. And thus the progress of arts and sciences suffers, because attempting to innovate in the field is risky, and the safest thing to do is not to touch anything related.

They didn't patent the idea of one-click, they patented a specific way of doing it. You can license the patent or just choose not to use the Amazon one-click method.

No, they effectively claimed ownership of the idea.

Apple licensed it, B&N added a second click and still got sued. So Amazon seems to control the idea in its entirety right now. Your workaround with polling seems to be inexistent, probably due to seeing how well B&N's attempt at a workaround went. Mom & Pop's web shop certainly can't afford to go that way.

Still, that doesn't answer the fundamental thing: What the heck is the point? Do you seriously think that it's such a new idea that unless it could be patented, nobody would have spent the effort on developing it?

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[russotto]

Additionally, I disagree that most of the changes over the past 30 have been in hardware. My network keeps getting faster and faster even though I'm still using the same Cat 5 cables.

Really? 10BaseT only goes back 22 years. Cat 5 cable only 21 years. The modulation schemes that allow 100BaseTX and 1000BaseT date to 1995 and 1998. And that's just the endpoints; router hardware has improved as well.

That disclosure encourages innovation, because the CREATORS don't constantly have to re-invent the same thing. If I come up with a novel sorting algorithm and keep it secret, you have to waste time re-inventing the same thing if you want to more efficiently sort stuff. If I publish, you can now spend your time working on the next innovation.

Except software patents don't work that way. It's easier in the software world to reinvent than to license. Especially when the license-holder isn't interested in making money from licenses, but rather wants to "destroy" you as Steve Jobs said he wanted to do to Android. But you can't safely re-invent either, because so many common techniques are patented by overbroad patents. A patent you might never have heard of on some common technique invented and re-invented 100 times can bite you in the ass.

Re:Yet Another Reason...

[Chibi Merrow]

I am deliberately ignoring the 'it's really just math'

Except you really can't.

In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a patent for a process should not be allowed if it would "wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself"

Quicksort is rather clever... And I agree, if anything in comp sci ever was patentable, that probably would be the best example. But it was discovered in 1960, long before this crazy notion of software patents existed. And at the time, it was rightly recognized as math, which isn't patentable.

And it's just further example of "You can't create a new algorithm, Knuth (or, in this case, Hoare) already published them all." :)

What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent cited in the article as an example of BT's amazingly valuable innovations:

Deciding whether to stream music based on whether the phone is using a wifi or cellular connection.

Why the fuck is that patentable? Seriously, I just looked up "obvious" in the dictionary and it gave that idea as an example. That's not an invention or a technology. What the fuck, America?

Re:What the fuck?

[icebraining]

U.S. Patent No. 6151309

Claims
What is claimed is:

1. A service provision system for use with a communications network to provide a plurality of services to a network user, wherein data relevant to the plurality of services can be made available to the user dependent upon the location of the user within the network, and the user can select one or more services to be provided, said system including

control means comprising a plurality of software agents, individual agents of said plurality comprising data relevant to service provision the network,
updating means for updating data held by at least some of said software agents on a point-by-point continuous basis as the user changes location within the network,
the control means maintaining and communicating the updated data made available to the user and responsive to selection of a service by the user to trigger a process for providing the selected service to the user.

2. A system according to claim 1 wherein said communications network comprises at least in part a mobile communications network and the user has access to said mobile network.

3. A system according to claim 2 wherein the control means is responsive to transfer of the user between cells of the mobile network, said cells having different resources to offer in respect of services to the user, to update data made available to the user which is affected by said transfer.

4. A system according to claim 3 wherein at least one of the services potentially available to the user is affected by bandwidth availability in the cell in which the user has access to the mobile network, and the control means may update the data available to the user in terms of either availability of such service or the price at which it would be available.

5. A system according to either of claim 3 or 4 wherein at least one of the services potentially available to the user involves the downloading of data to the user, which downloading is affected by bandwidth availability in cells of the mobile network, said system further comprising means to store data requested by the user as a consequence of selecting a service, the control means controlling downloading of said data to the user such that it is stored at times that bandwidth is not available for said downloading, and downloaded subsequently when bandwidth becomes available.

6. A system according to claim 5 wherein the control means includes means for tracking the location of the user with respect to the mobile network for the purpose of downloading the data to the user by means of appropriate routing through the communications network or networks.

7. A system according to claim 1 wherein the data relevant to the plurality of services includes real-time pricing data such that the user can take the real-time pricing data into account prior to selecting a service.

8. A system according to claim 1 wherein:

a plurality of said individual agents are each allocated a facility for offering a common service,
each of said plurality of individual agents holding real-time data in respect of its allocated facility's capacity to offer the service, and
the system selects one of the allocated facilities on which to base notification to the user of current conditions under which a service might be provided.

9. A system according to claim 1 wherein at least one of said agents comprises means for storing an updatable business strategy, and the system accesses said business strategy prior to making cost-related service data available to a user, such that said business strategy can be applied to said cost-related service data to modify the data appropriately.

10. A service provision system for use with a communications network including a mobile communications sub-network to provide a plurality of services to a network user having access to the

Re:What the fuck?

[realityimpaired]

http://www.patents.com/us-6151309.html

Earliest date on the patent filing is April 1994, and it was issued in 2000. It appears to be describing Digital PCS, and sending data over the cellular network.

Everything it's describing can be done (and indeed has been done) on a TDMA network. TDMA was accepted as a standard in 1991, and I know for a fact (because I had the service) that Bell Canada was selling Digital PCS in 1993. While it didn't include some of the later claims (like real-time pricing information), it did have e-mail, SMS text messaging, digital telephony, and location services. (and as an aside, typing an e-mail out on a 2-line, 10-character fixed-width LCD display was teh suck)

Re:What the fuck?

[Raenex]

Sigh. You need to look at the actual claims. That line just describes what the patent accomplishes, not how.

Yes, this is said in nearly every Slashdot story about patents. Yet in almost all cases, the how is obvious once you know what the idea is, and the only things the claims do is describe it in an obscure fashion.

Probably Silly Question, but....

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Why doesn't British Telecom file suit in their own country? Serious patent holders would, at least in my guess, have a home turf advantage.

Re:Probably Silly Question, but....

[bhunachchicken]

"Why doesn't British Telecom file suit in their own country? Serious patent holders would, at least in my guess, have a home turf advantage."

Probably because it would eventually be referred to a court in the EU, and the judge would simply tell BT to fuck off.

Re:Probably Silly Question, but....

[maroberts]

Also probably because the patents are registered in the US, and Delaware happens to be where most companies are registered (incl Google, according to the action).

Its probably easier to win a patent case in the UK than in the US, but a US judgement will allow them to knock on the doors of other companies (hello Apple) and get royalties.

On the other hand, the lasttime BT tried to pull this off they crashed and burned rather ignominiously,

Re:Probably Silly Question, but....

[advocate_one]

because they're US patents...

Re:Probably Silly Question, but....

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

They can only sue where the patents are valid. If it's US patents - they have to sue in the US.

Britain har been much more restrictive in allowing software patents. So I doubt they got british patent
for those 'inventions'.

 

Poor summary of the patents

[vlm]

Here's my poor non-lawyer summary of the patents for those too lazy to look them up.

Busioc granted in 2000 seems to be a troll patent on anything that reacts to detected network characteristics. TCP window size control since the 80s seems to be prior art, although anycast root DNS servers from the 90s would appear to be a close second.

Mannings1 granted in 1994 seems to be a troll patent on anything navigational that relies on a base and mobile part. Like LORAN from the 60s, or any of the moon shots from the 60s where the capsule relied on the IBM 7094 mainframe to run the calcs back home.

Titmuss1 granted in 2002 seems to be a troll patent where the the contents of a list depend on the location of the user. Like my Garmin GPS-12XL "nearest waypoint list" from the 90s, or any brick and mortar website with a "find the closest store" functionality.

Gittins granted 2003 seems to be a troll patent where you have a database server accessed over the network that has user based permissions. Like any mysql installation. It seems to be a pretty good description of the DB2 IBM mainframe server I was tangentially involved with about 20 years ago (%^&# source route bridging SDLC by mac addresses still gives me nightmares)

Mannings2 granted 2003 seems to be a troll patent where you have a Mannings1 system plus the result depends on the type of vehicle. Apparently providing different "walk" vs "drive" route results is safe because my shoes are not a vehicle, but providing "car" vs "boat" results would be a direct violation of this patent.

Titmuss2 granted 2004 seems to be a troll patent where a distributed architecture and network is used to store location information. Basically, any computing infrastructure storing location information that does not have an obvious single point of failure; The CLR/DLR circuit layout system from my previous telecom employer would seem to be a pretty good example of an infringing product; of course that was from the 1980s, and Ma Bell had much older networked location aware systems. Remember ma bell's weird V+H coordinate system? I do.

I believe this is a pretty accurate non-lawyer summary of the patents involved.

Re:This does not affect only Android...

[surprise_audit]

According to Fosspatents on blogspot.com, one of BT's claims includes: "Following a login or the transmission of an authentication token, Google "offers the list of items that the user is entitled to access", and retrieves any such items at the user's request." Doesn't that pretty much cover *any* web server where you login to gain access to whatever your account entitles you?

There has to be more to this

[dell623]

These are such broad patents that there is no way Google are the only ones infringing, and there is no sound reason to only sue Google. This sounds suspiciously like someone is suing Google through proxy. Unfortunately with all the big media companies having nothing more to say apart from regurgitating whatever Florian Muller puts out, and he is too exultant about Google getting sued again to care about anything else, I don't see much hope of someone digging deeper.

Re:There has to be more to this

[Xest]

Try e-mailing BT's chief exec, Ian Livingston directly and ask him:

ian.livingston@bt.com

Perhaps he'll just fob you off to the PR or legal department, but he's responded to me before when I've had issues with his company and has actually been really good in helping me out. I e-mailed him on a Saturday morning when I wanted a second phone line reenabling and their sales Team told me there'd be no engineer cost, and then they sent me a £120 engineer bill and their support folks insisted I'd have to pay it. Within an hour, despite it being a Saturday he'd replied personally via his Blackberry and CC'd his PA telling her to get someone to sort it for me and they did. He also got things moving when their engineers were dicking around unable to fix a line at my old house for months.

I can't promise anything, but of all the CEOs I've attempted to contact he's been the most helpful and willing to respond personally which is more than can be said for the likes of Amazon's UK boss such that I had to get the office of fair trading to rule against them on a complaint to sort out the problems I had with them (Guaranteed next day deliveries turning up 2 weeks later, twice, and not willing to refund delivery). Might be worth a go to express your concerns, but be polite, be reasonable in expressing your concerns and write your e-mail well.

Everybody wants a piece of Android's action

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This seems like the new business model:

1. Find a large volume successful product.
2. Convince a court that it infringes on "your" patent.
3. Settle for "a few cents" per item sold, as the Mafia say, "a piece of the action." Like a "tax."
4. Profit, for someone else's work.

I do not like these developments. Soon the royalty fees on an Android will cost more than the device itself.

John Carmack on Software patents

[BlackSupra]

>The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it
>with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally
>used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years
>ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
>
> On software patents, Quoted in "John Carmack: Knee Deep in the Voodoo" Voodo Extreme(2000-09-20)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

Re:John Carmack on Software patents

[icebraining]

Carmack posted a better message about software patents right here on /. : http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745

Re:Because it was british

[Ensign Morph]

I mean, take a look at Apple's "If it's black and rectangular, it's ours" patent.

The ipad injunction involved a European "Community Design", an appallingly stupid concept which is actually considerably worse than patents. There's no obviousness or prior art test AT ALL, they're simply granted automatically upon payment of the filing fee. It's absolutely guaranteed to be abused like this, in fact as the link shows Apple have a program that spam-registers designs which they have no intention of even using, just to make life difficult for their competitors. It's hard to escape the conclusion that it's simply a cynical device to collect those filing fees, with the negative effects on business and consumers being somebody else's problem.

Oh, and the extremely generic community design they used for the ipad thing was filed in 2004, 6 years before the first ipad announcement.

Re:Here we go again...

[geminidomino]

It's the same thing as last season, they just replaced the side characters. It's like watching "24"