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Apple-Motorola Judge Questions Need For Software Patents

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-boys-go-on-home-now dept.

imamac sends this quote from a Reuters report: "The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple's smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all. ... Posner said some industries, like pharmaceuticals, had a better claim to intellectual property protection because of the enormous investment it takes to create a successful drug. Advances in software and other industries cost much less, he said, and the companies benefit tremendously from being first in the market with gadgets — a benefit they would still get if there were no software patents. 'It's not clear that we really need patents in most industries,' he said. Also, devices like smartphones have thousands of component features, and they all receive legal protection. 'You just have this proliferation of patents,' Posner said. 'It's a problem.' ... The Apple/Motorola case did not land in front of Posner by accident. He volunteered to oversee it."

12 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Oblig: TED Talk by scorp1us · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Johanna Blakley's TED talk

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    1. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by codewarren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are ignoring the counter argument that it was patents which allowed the US companies to create medications in the first place. Medications that are cheap today now that patents have expired, only existed because the US made it profitable for companies to develop them in the first place.

      (I'm not saying this is definitely true, just that you've acted as if the argument doesn't exist and "making drugs cheap" is an obvious solution)

    2. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's your proposal for funding drug research?

      Funded via NIH and public universities... in other words, exactly the way we fund it now.

      The difference would be, the public (who already pays for the research) would be the direct beneficiaries of the research, instead of pharmaceutical companies getting to claim a monopoly on what should, by all law and rights, be public domain.

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    3. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by cdecoro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      the idea of profiting from others' pain is so WRONG, I can't even get my head around why we allow such evil practices

      Profit from other people's pain? The pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs I take every day, Merck and Pfizer, are profiting from RELIEVING my once-substantial, and now nearly non-existant pain. I am thankful every day that we have companies committed to such "evil" practices.

    4. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by FictionPimp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I never see cures advertised. Only maintenance drugs. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like drug companies don't want cures, they want dugs that mask symptoms that you need to take for the rest of your life.

      Is it better to cure aids or to let someone live on a daily pill with aids?

    5. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by Applekid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I never hear about Lipitor maybe I never bother getting a cholesterol screening and then die of heart disease at 37 instead of going to my doctor at 35 and saying, "Hey, I heard about this Lipitor thing and that men from age 35 should have cholesterol screenings."

      One should go to the doctor yearly. This is a healthy habit, right up there with brushing your teeth and exercise and cooking food thoroughly.

      The only point of marketing to the mass public is to make them think they want something. They want someone who's feeling a little down today see a commercial for an anti-depressant and say "hey, *I* am feeling down, maybe I'm clinically depressed, clearly I need this pill." They should only be marketing to doctors, and even then it shouldn't be by giving away swag and lunches to a doctor and their staff, it should be a just-the-facts operation. This medication treats xyz better than this other one, just look at these reduced side effects.

      What I'm getting at is that you're doctor should already be running the blood work and should be bringing up your cholesterol levels up to you. That's why they're licensed: they are acting as your agents regarding health.

      That's why sensible countries prohibit the drug industry from advertising.

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    6. Re:Oblig: TED Talk by drunken_boxer777 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I see this objection a lot. As someone with quite a bit of knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry, medicine, and basic research in biology, let me try to explain the problem: creating a cure is insanely difficult. Why?
            1. It usually requires permanently altering cellular anatomy or physiology/metabolism, and homeostasis won't let you.
            2. Many diseases have genetic components, which would require altering DNA to cure.
            3. We don't have the technology to carry out #1 and 2.

      In a disease state, the body's homeostasis has diverged from a "normal" state. Homeostasis is a robust process, meaning that it can take a lot to change it; usually it occurs slowly over a long period of time. Taking a pill that temporarily alters that homeostasis doesn't reset it to normal. Think freshman chemistry: equilibrium and Le Chatelier's principle. You changed the equilibrium, and the disease state homeostasis fights to go back to what it was.

      As for genetic components, cystic fibrosis should be the easiest disease in the world to cure: it's caused by having two copies of a bad allele for a potassium channel that result in misfolded proteins. Insert at least one good copy into the genome and voila! A cure! Yet nobody has ever demonstrated success with gene therapy in humans. Which leads us to the third point...

      We just can't figure out how to get gene therapy to work well. We also can't figure out how to permanently move a diseased homeostatic process (e.g., insulin resistance) to a normal state.

      It's not that the pharma companies don't want to. Patient compliance with medication is horrible. If you tell a patient to their face that they will only live 3 more years if they don't take this pill every day, versus 10 years if they do, the average patient will only take the pill about 180 days of the year. So, if a drug company could sell a cure at the same cost as a lifetime of one-a-day pills (which they could), then they would absolutely do so. It's guaranteed money, like a magazine subscription versus buying a copy off the rack whenever.

      Besides, many scientists at academic and government research institutions would rather find cures for diseases, yet are unable to. Unless we pull out the tin foil hats and speculate that they, too, are on the payroll of the pharma companies, it should be clearer that there are other reasons cures don't happen.

  2. He volunteered... by Gideon+Wells · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On one hand, I agree with him. On the other, we have a judge who volunteered apparently just to make a stand in this case. How long before "receptive" judges start volunteering to argue for the other side...

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    1. Re:He volunteered... by WillDraven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is a bit of a difference between "I'm taking taking this persons side" and "the fact that you're both in court over this at all is stupid."

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  3. not a fan of... by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Interesting

    patents, but what about a compromise? What if software patents and electronic patents were only valid for like 2 years, that in the computer world is more than enough time for you to recover your research money without hampering the development of future tech. I would prefer none but I think this would be a fair compromise.

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  4. Re:As much as I agree, that's not the task of a ju by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually he is doing what a Judge should do, he is examining whether software should fall under patent law. This examination and interpretation is under the purview of the judicial branch.

  5. Re:As a software programmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You would be protected sufficiently by copyright, a patent means something else.

    Look at it from this perspective, using patents the way you want limits the software industry by saying only this company can make any kind of a software that does this. This has a very negative effect on the industry because they last 16 years. Additionally, patents are supposed to be qualified to protect inventions and that those are unique and not easily thought of by others. By comparison, thousands of programmers have already created applications that partially duplicate everything that is in existence in someway now. So the real question is... are you really creating something new, or are you just trying to write software and use a legal methods to force your relevance instead of just being better at it than the programmer next to you?