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Prominent Pro-Patent Judge Issues Opinion Declaring All Software Patents Bad (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: A lawsuit brought by the world's largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, and handled on appeal (as are all patent cases), by the notoriously awful Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) may have actually killed off software patents. The ruling came from a judge that has ruled over patent cases since the 1980s, and it appears he's been born again into the anti-software patent world. Judge Mayer pointed out that the First Amendment says that "some" patents should not be allowed. The whole concurrence is worth reading, starting with the First Amendment argument -- which is kind of fascinating in that it goes well beyond what most people had talked about in the past concerning software patents. Judge Mayer makes the point that basically all software is unpatentable because software is "a form of language," which we don't patent: "All software implemented on a standard computer should be deemed categorically outside the bounds of Section 101. ("Section 101" is 35 U.S. Code; 101 is the part that governs patents.) The central problem with affording patent protection to generically-implemented software is that standard computers have long been ceded to the public domain .... Because generic computers are ubiquitous and indispensable, in effect the 'basic tool []' of modern life, they are not subject to the patent monopoly. In the section 101 calculus, adding software (which is as abstract as language) to a conventional computer (which rightfully resides in the public domain) results in a patent eligibility score of zero .... Software lies in the antechamber of patentable invention. Because generically-implemented software is an 'idea' insufficiently linked to any defining physical structure other than a standard computer, it is a precursor to technology rather than technology itself."
I'm speechless. Is that patentable?
That actually aligns neatly with the current UK approach, where standalone software can not be patented but the combination of physical technology and the software needed to operate it can.
Next stop: Algorithms.
Because Texas.
Is this Judge in Texas, and how does this change of opinion affect his prior rulings?
I completely disagree with the assertion that software is not a technology... the term technology encompasses any application of knowledge to problem solving. Yet I agree with the conclusion that software should not be patentable... I don't know how I feel.
You left out "male". I think I've been triggered. Please include a warning next time. k thx.
of something reeeeally good! Tired of seeing all the see-saw patent wars between the big guns and the sniping by the gd patent trolls.
nt
Welcome to election season. DOn't expect it to last past november 8th.
That's cis male to you.
Finally they are starting to understand!!
Slow clap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Higuita
This judge has started climate in hell.
Say no to software patents.
Get rid of them all.
A check just cleared or a check just bounced.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"software is "a form of language," which we don't patent: "
No, we copyright it. And copyrights last forever...
(so long as Disney has nickel to bribe congress to extend copyright laws)
No sig today...
This will set no precedence as it was a separate but consenting opinion (IANAL). That was mentioned in the techdirt.com article, but only at the very end of it. It is still significant as the judge in question has actually lead the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) during some of its worst years. Worse for software, specifically. So this is a hard about face from someone that was at the forefront of enabling software patents from the bench of the CAFC. While it won't actually change much, it is good to hear/read.
As a developer, I'm okay with that.
It means I can implement the best algorithm I can imagine as long as I take the time to implement it myself.
We no longer have to invent contrived ways of to make algorithms not look like the most obvious solution just because somebody patented it.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In order to copyright it you have to publish. Binaries aren't subject to copyright.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
Copyrights aren't inherently bad for users because they can be turned into copylefts. They are what powers the GPL. The user needs Free Software — not mere Open Source, which only means you can see the source, and does not tell you what you can do with it. Without software patents, Free Software would only be more powerful, and capable of doing more of what the user needs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Have you seen the wars between Sun/Oracle over the Java API? Not even Java code, the Java API.
Bottom line: Copyright still involves lawyers and lawyers can think up reasons to make you miserable no matter what common sense says.
b) Usually the lawyers with most funding will win.
No sig today...
IANAL but as I see it, the US courts have a history of repeating the first ruling made, regardless of its usefulness. US courts have protected software patents; until someone questions the relevance of that, the ruling remains.
To be honest, I envy y'all. You get to experience my brilliance in a way I never will. You're welcome.
All software patents are illegal. Patent law states that algorithms cannot be patented. Why don't the courts have to obey the law?
Don't stop where the ink does.
By extension, nothing can be patented. Any idea or concept which is currently patented is expressed through language. I agree that the code itself should not be patented as it is indeed a form of language, but the implementation or methodology by which an application achieves an end result is the true value that needs to be protected; not the package it comes in. All that being said, I'm definitely in favour of open source happy-happy code sharing instead of patents and copyrights.
At this point there is very little novel invention that can be done with only a standard computer. Let's say Theranos created a really slick USB device that lets a user do a blood test from their computer (stop laughing, it could happen). 90% of the cool stuff that is patent-worthy is going to be in the device and the software that actually drives the device. The part that interfaces with the OS and UI is the boring part.
In order to copyright it you have to publish. Binaries aren't subject to copyright.
Not true, in the U.S. something is copyrighted the moment it is created.
In order to get statutory damages and attorney fees, a work must be registered with the Copyright office.
17 U.S. Code 412 - Registration as prerequisite to certain remedies for infringement
In any action under this title, other than an action brought for a violation of the rights of the author under section 106A(a), an action for infringement of the copyright of a work that has been preregistered under section 408(f) before the commencement of the infringement and that has an effective date of registration not later than the earlier of 3 months after the first publication of the work or 1 month after the copyright owner has learned of the infringement, or an action instituted under section 411(c), no award of statutory damages or of attorney’s fees, as provided by sections 504 and 505, shall be made for—
(1)
any infringement of copyright in an unpublished work commenced before the effective date of its registration; or
(2)
any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration, unless such registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work.
You say copyright and then you say patent; pick one. This Judge is saying it's not patentable but he did not say that a specific implementation could not be copyrightable. If someone reverse engineers your software and then re-releases it as his own I'm guessing you can still sue for damages.
-SaNo
Software is a description of a machine - something that takes input, does some processing, and produces an output. That middle part - how the machine works - should certainly be patentable *if* it is truly novel. The issue is that the best implementation is often the simplest, and simple is often obvious, which isn't necessarily patentable (i.e. a bubble sort shouldn't be patentable because out of 100 programmers more than half would likely come up with a bubble sort-like implementation)
You can bet patent trolls and corporations hoarding patents to intimidate rivals and startups will be outraged and harrass their congressman. WELL FUCK THEM. Give those patenters the Fargo Woodchipper treatment.
Want to know how bad software patents are? Read Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright & Software by Ben Klemens He describes how big multinational called up startup and said GIVE US FUCKING MONEY YOU BITCHES because you've violated patents 728917 9387128 and 823823 and insert more random numbers here. Startup went through them methodically and showed they hadn't. Multinational retorted WE HAVE THOUSANDS OF PATENTS SO IF YOU HAVEN'T VIOLATED THOSE YOU HAVE VIOLATED SOMETHING ELSE SO GIVE US MONEY YOU BITCHES. Startup gave up and wrote multinational a big check. https://www.amazon.com/Math-Yo...
Software Patents are a racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is all predicated on "Language" not being patent-able. My software patent did not specify a language that was used or include source code. If this holds up, are functioning devices the only thing that can be patented? There is no requirement to provide source code with your patent application (or machine code either)...
I claim magic smoke as a key component of any electrical device. (programmable or not).
Hurricane went bye-bye... still a windy day by the Beach
Plenty of prominent pro-patent plaintiffs protest this proclamation!
Software is an intellectual creation, so it must have the same protection as other creations of the same kind. For an example, music or literature. E.g. if someone copies a chess engine (not in the public domain) and tries to profit from it, he/she should credit and pay the creator.
You're saying that what you're PROTECTING is the language used to describe the invention. As such, design patents (e.g. buttons, curved corners) etc. aren't affected. Mechanical patents also.
But patenting "writing a bit of software to do X", for any particular X, which is what software patents are about would be like trying to patent "using English to describe this procedure". Which is - quite rightly - unprotectable.
End result is good, precedent is bad.
Software is not just language. In it's end form software is a configuration of electronic switches that creates a unique output. Hardly comparable to Chaucer.
>Any half-assed hacker can reverse engineer your code
Reverse engineering is, in fact, one of the hardest forms of engineering and projects that reverse engineer are generally filled with some of the smartest brains we have- because it's very hard. You think the wine devs are idiots ? Yet it took them more than decade to get out of alpha !
>He can then replicate your software in 1/10th the time it took you to develop your software
If what my software does is so simple that somebody can replicate it in 1/10th the time it took me to do it - then he's the better programmer and he deserves to win in the market place. My best defense, in fact, is to use a free software license in the first place - so it's to his benefit to rather add his features to *my* product where we can both profit than to go and create his own. Even then, sooner or later even the greatest code gets replaced by better stuff. By your reasoning - it was a horrible thing that nginx was developed because apache came first ? The fact that nginx does the core jobs apache did with a far more elegant design and has become the dominant product by being better doesn't matter ?
You must be truly incompetent as a programmer if you are *this* afraid to compete on the merits of your product - that even with a first-to-market advantage you are this convinced any "half-assed-hacker" can make something better than you did... it sounds to me like, rather than wanting patents to put a dead-weight on the global software economy - you may be better off seeking a different career, one more suited to your particular talents - none of which, apparently, involve writing software.
>exactly the the reason patents exist
No. That is not at all why patents exist. The reason patents exist is right there in the law. To promote open disclosure of how an invention works. Quite the opposite of what you think - it's to make sure you will have MORE competitors than you otherwise would. The reward for letting the world copy your invention, is having a brief time where nobody is allowed to. One of the major problems with software patents it the absolute lack of disclosure actually - I've yet to read a software patent include full source for an implementation of the idea - and nothing less than a working source implementation can count as 'blueprints' for a software program.
>Software is not languages. Software uses languages
Novels are not languages. Novels *use* languages... so by your reckoning I'd best run off to the patent office really quick to patent "Romance novels. Soft-porn for housewives with sloppy plotlines and lots of sex scenes using vague euphemisms" before somebody else does ! If nothing else - I may be able to sue Barbara Cartland's estate to oblivion. Hey it's first-to-file - who gives a fuck that she died after spending 50 years 'inventing' romance novels before I got the patent right ?
> you can program software using 1s and 0s. Which language was used there?
That would be mathematics. Which is, in fact, a language - and unpatentable all by itself anyway. You may want to study computing theory - if you think software is anything but NOT pure and unadulterated mathematics on every level it's because you don't actually know what software is. Only what we try very hard to make it pretend to be.
> Technology often consists of processing steps, which are patentable
Having to disclose the steps involved in using a machine does not make the steps themselves patentable. Which is the most charitable way to interpret the complete bullshit you just spouted. No, 'technology' consists of real, physical things - machines and devices. Processing steps - a completely abstract set of ideas is not and has never been patentable, software was an abberation in this regard - and the Alice verdict was basically the supreme court telling you just that.
> and so should software.
So what are you ? Patent lawyer ? Patent troll ? Since those are the *only* people who have ever benefited from software patents. No prog
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
This would have more impact than the presidential election. Software patents are a shackle on all programmers outside of megacorps that hold the patents.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Yes, my cis is male. And my bro is female. You got a problem with that?
"you can program software using 1s and 0s. Which language was used there? No language -- it's a sequence of numbers"
Why's a sequence of symbols not a language in that case
Copyrights give lower level of protection for lower level of innovation and creativity. Whereas patents give higher level of protection for a much higher level of innovation. [...] As a creator, I want the strongest protection, whatever is applicable.
After twenty years, patents give zero protection.
If someone reverse engineers your software and then re-releases it as his own I'm guessing you can still sue for damages.
On what legal basis, other than patent infringement?
Nonliteral copying. It worked for The Tetris Company.
You, sir, merit mod points which I am lacking at the moment.
Also, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Personally, I'm OK with software being patentable provided a couple of changes to the way they are currently awarded. First, a software patent must be truly novel to be patented. Taking something we already did without computers, and making a program that automates it should not be grounds for copyright. Also, taking something that programmers have been doing for decades and all of a sudden deciding to patent it shouldn't be awarded a patent. Perhaps the patent office should hire some actual people versed in software and computer systems development to help determine of some new patent application is actually something we haven't all been doing for the last 20 years.
Secondly, a fully working codebase should be submitted with the patent application such that, when the patent is expired, we actually have a record as to how the patented software was actually implemented. You shouldn't just be able to describe what the software does to be awarded a patent. A fully working code base must be presented so that the patent office can determine that you've actually done something novel and that you've actually made software that does what you say it does.
Thirdly, software patents should be shortened to make up for the fact that software evolves at such a fast pace. 5 years should probably do it.
Personally, I think all patents should be shortened. The world moves at a much faster pace than it did 100 years ago. It's completely possible to come up with a new invention and have worldwide adoption within 2 years, and the product even often becomes obsolete within 5 years. Maybe something like apply for patent, you have 5 years to bring it to market. If you don't have a significant marketable product, then patent expires. If you have a product, you get another 5 years to sell it. Maximum patent length is 10 years.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Copyrights are not bad for users in the long run.
Without a copyright on software... There can be a bunch of ripoff copies copied blindly where the software provider will have no way of supporting it.
GPL is a form of copyright. Where the maker expresses their will for the code to be shared and altered. Without copyright on software that would allow people to misuse GPL code, without any form of recourse.
Also giving the creator control of their creation will allow them to create more. Otherwise you can invest millions of dollars in development for someone to rip off and give away for free.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd best run off to the patent office really quick to patent "Romance novels
I think a business actually tried "plot patents" and got shot down. See "What's the Story with Storyline Patents" by Ben Manevitz.
Hey it's first-to-file - who gives a fuck that she died after spending 50 years 'inventing' romance novels before I got the patent right ?
The "first to file" change affects only "interference", or conflicts between two patent applications. It does not diminish requirements under "novelty", or conflicts between a patent and published documents in the prior art.
Copyright written material that can't be transformed into real things
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Seconded!
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
In order to copyright it you have to publish. Binaries aren't subject to copyright.
Not true, in the U.S. something is copyrighted the moment it is created.
A finding of copyright infringement requires that the alleged infringer have had access to the copyright owner's work. Perhaps one might capture the essence of "you have to publish" as a proposed amendment to the copyright statute to presume lack of access in cases where the alleged infringer lacked access to source code (which the GPL defines as the preferred form of a work for making modifications to it). One possible exception is if the program's output separately qualifies for copyright as an audiovisual work, as in the case of a video game.
Software is not languages. Software uses languages -- you can program software using 1s and 0s. Which language was used there? No language -- it's a sequence of numbers. Software languages exist to simplify the translation of processing steps into 1s and 0s, which is the actual software. Technology often consists of processing steps, which are patentable, and so should software.
It seems it depends on one's definition of language. Language is used to convey information. It's just a sequence of letters, or sounds. So it could also be a sequence of numbers as well. Indeed, you could replace the alphabet with numbers 1 - 26 and it would still work, as long as people learned the new system.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
So? Source code has always been copyrightable.
1s and 0s are not a language, just like letters are not a language. They are building blocks of a (written) language. 1s and 0s in a sequence would form an instruction, much like letters form words. Instructions in a sequence would form a program, just like words in a sequence form a sentence. Fundamentally, programming is implementation of an idea regardless of what language you do the programming in.
The problem with patenting "processing steps" in this case is that the processing steps you're talking about patenting are things like, "Add 1 and 1," or, "Move data from memory address A to memory address B." And strictly speaking those would be patentable if they weren't already clearly in the public domain. The processing steps you really care about patenting are fundamentally high level things. And this doesn't try to invalidate such patents. At worst it says that adding "using a computer" to the process doesn't magically make it a new process.
A world without software patents? WOW, software would probably jump 10 years into the future overnight!
Your list of 1s and 0s is nothing more than a recipe. How does that even qualify for copyright?
Machine code is a language you dufus.
Not to mention that oracle deliberately hid discussions left behind by sun pre-acquisition that granted google permission.
And strictly speaking those would be patentable if they weren't already clearly in the public domain.
With that argument, you could say that anything using screws to hold it together isn't patentable.
That's how it is in Europe, and always has been. Software is a unique work and covered by existing copyright laws. Patents, however, can't be applied to software products because it's absolutely fucking stooopid.
Numbers ARE symbols, and they ARE members of a language.
No, the firmware on the device.
> Any half-assed hacker can reverse engineer your code
You have just described WHY something shouldn't have been granted a patent to begin with.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Software is just a set of instructions, the ruling is simply acknowledging that. You can patent a multi-tool, you can't patent how to use the pliers on the multi-tool.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
The thinking behind having a patent law are roughly as follows (apologies for huge post, BTW)...
Innovation is discouraged where people who innovate, and pay costs for innovation, have their market stolen by others who copy them; or who are required to keep commercial secrets, running the risks of betrayal, or of trade secrets dying with them inventor (reputed to be what happened with the 'purple of Cassius' deep red stained glass).
The innovation may not necessarily be 'invention' as we know it. if you bought new techniques into your country by studying what people were doing abroad, you deserved to recoup your research costs over a finite time. You could patent an idea in the UK that had been patented elsewhere up until 1968. This is not a UK eccentricity - before international patent treaties, many other countries had a similar approach. So, the idea that a patent was something that exclusively covers something that you thought up is just about 50 years old.
The idea that you could only patent a solid object or a physical process is more recent. This change happened about 1985 to 1995. People could patent something physical, but the physical thing could include a programmed processor. Then people tried to patent the particulars of the processing side, or patent the program as stored on memory as a physical thing, usually as an additional claim as an alternative to some dedicated processor which could be patented under the previous law. I was working in Canon on patents at the time, and saw it happen bit by bit.
There is no abstract reason why patenting a non-physical thing such as an algorithm should necessarily be a bad thing. In practice, there was relatively little established prior art experience, so cunning people were able to patent things that have been common knowledge for a long time, but have no known inventor. Again, this is not new: the Gillette company was threatened in 1913 by a latter-day patent troll patenting their safety razor, which was not protected in US law unless someone could find written evidence that was acceptable in court to prove that Gillette were the owners. Gillette won in the end, but the 'Gillette Defence' is still a term for the enormous cost of proving something in court even though everyone knows it.
The patent is a restrictive rule: it restricts the rights of everyone but the inventor. We may support such laws in the short term to encourage invention and innovation, but this support should always be tempered by a reluctance to restrict the rights of others. There are exceptions to patent law that allow people to use specific drugs for other problems not covered by the original patent. This is intended to allow re-use of existing compounds, rather than requiring the invention of a second-best compound to get around the existing patents.
In then end, the case for or against allowing software patents hangs on whether they do more harm than good. The experiment since they came in is almost exclusively against them. Software is usually well-protected by obscurity for several years because reverse engineering is hard. An imitation product will always lag behind the true one, provided the product is still being developed. If you wanted a logical argument against software patents, you might argue that the Church-Turing thesis covered a machine that could calculate anything that was calculable, and so should anticipate and cover all possible programs. This judge is arguing from a different direction, but the argument has similarities, but with the human mind is replacing the Turing-complete machine, and language is replacing algorithms. Judges can't just call laws into existence, even on the grounds of extreme obviousness, but they can put put ideas such as this, and they will become law if they stand the test of time.
Let's all hope they do.
Still not *nearly* as bad as patents though. Even a copyrightable API simply means you can stop me from building a software library that's a drop-in replacement for yours. It stifles competition, but not innovation. Google could have easily made Dalvik use a different, but functionally equivalent, standard function library, it would have just made it that much more difficult for Java programmers to adapt to using it.
Patents mean you can stop me from distributing software that's completely my own design and work, even if I never knew your software existed, or even if you never wrote any software at all, just because it uses ideas that you also had, and managed to get accepted by the patent office.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Thirded.
Where is software patentable?
It has been in the US until recently, though they seem reluctant to declare that it's ended. It never has been in the EU.
How about elsewhere?
But that still revolves around using the exact same piece of code, since in this case you can't really rewrite APIs. That can still be a problem, but its scope would be dramatically reduced compared to software patents.
Copyright is also much more stringent than patents. Software *should* be under copyright, and absolutely not patentable.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
As a developer, I'm okay with that. It means I can implement the best algorithm I can imagine as long as I take the time to implement it myself. We no longer have to invent contrived ways of to make algorithms not look like the most obvious solution just because somebody patented it.
While I agree copyrights are better suited to protecting software, there has to be an allowance for the software equivalence of fair use. For example, if you an I independently come up with algorithms that are very similar, or identical, neither of us should be able to make a copyright claim against the other. There needs to be clear guidelines that say x% of similarity is OK but if there is more than you may be violating someone else's copyright. screens and displays are a bit easier to decide since designers generally don't just do things the same way; but possibly code code similarly, especially if they have similar backgrounds and experiences and are using the same tools and languages.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
I wouldn't say that. Copyrights encourage people to write things because they can get rewarded for it; users get access to things they may not have if copyright didn't exist. The holder can always let others use the material while still being able to limit its use if they don't want it to be used in certain ways; or they can release it under some sort of GPL or CC license.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Buy that man a drink
If someone changes the names of the characters in Harry Potter and then tries to publish, he'll get laughed out of the publisher's office because it's still plagiarism.
Copyright affords plenty of protections, but would still allow competition where patents stifle competition.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm sorry to hear you no longer have any source code at your programming company due to it being stolen.
Since as a software company lacking any source code what so ever, I suppose they will be shutting their doors today and go out of business due to the theft.
I guess they should have had a better door or lock, not that I'm blaming the company for being the victim of a break in. It's just a suggestion for next time.
Off site backups of your data might have helped too. At least then you could replace all that missing stolen data and get back to work.
I think you'll find that people have been patenting aspects of software for many decades. I'm sure you know this.
One may claim copyright on software but it probably doesn't fall within the realm of copyright, which is intended to cover literary and artistic works (e.g. music, films, plays, paintings, etc).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Would this require software companies to open-source non-hardware specific software?
Isn't it weird that a single piece of software can be protected by patents, copyrights and trade secrets at the same time?
No, 1s and 0s are an abstraction used to represent a signal in two states. The CPU knows nothing of 1s and 0s.
Regardless, you already admitted software is a sequence of numbers, i.e. maths (which is a language). Also unpatentable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Richard Stallman has been advocating this for some time. Here is an example in a Wired article from 2012.
I thought it was called IP, INTELLECTUAL property.
>You just need a human being to fill in variable names, function names, comments etc.
You mean the hard part then - the part that converts a bunch of cryptic functional steps into a conceptual model that can then be learned from so that you can write your own software using the same concepts, but none of the decompiled code. Because after all the decompiled code is a trivial derivative work of the original, and thus fully protected by copyright. As would any code that simply "paraphrases" the original code with only trivial differences.
There's a reason why reverse engineering was never particularly common in the software world, even before codebase sizes exploded and patents got in on the action. If you wanted to do it without walking into a legal minefield, you had to implement "clean room" techniques wherein one group reverse engineers the original and documents the functionality without the implementation details, and then hands that documentation off to a second group who've never seen the original, and can thus re-implement the functionality from scratch without risk of accidentally incorporating copyrighted details.
Unless your software did something truly amazingly clever and innovative, it's going to be easier to just think up a way to do the same basic thing than it is to reverse engineer exactly how you did it. Most of the innovation in software comes of dreaming up new things to do, not in figuring out how to implement them. And, if you did come up with something truly clever, odds are good that it's basically an idea or mathematical algorithm, and thus ineligible for patent protection anyway.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I agree
The patent system isn't in place to keep B from profiting from A. The patent system is in place to, and I quote,
So first, to address your concern: can software authors profit from a truly new software idea without software patents? Sure we can. The software industry thrived prior to software patents. We can see by the "limited times" portion of the above that unlimited profit was not the goal. The inventor was to benefit somewhat, so society could benefit. So the question I would ask here is, do patents really benefit all authors and inventors? I think it's pretty clear they benefit all wealthy authors and inventors, and screw the small ones sideways with barbed wire. But that's just my opinion - as a small author and inventor.
Second, without patents, can science and the useful arts progress without software patents? Same answer: Yes, and that was also made obvious by the time prior to software patents, and for that matter, by the progress made since then by those who have not availed themselves of the patent system.
Third, can you "secure for a limited time the exclusive right to software author's respective writings and discoveries"? Yes. Copyright takes care of the writing end, and rather overwhelmingly at this point. You wrote the c code, and if someone takes it, you can show that. In addition, a new invention can't be reverse engineered until it's public, which points emphasizes the value of both trade secret and secure development.
Finally, I contend that patents, as clumsy, difficult, expensive legal procedures prone to repeated trips through the courts, are a tool that provide considerably more leverage to large, wealthy players than to "authors and inventors", and as such, they do more harm to the general level of creativity and useful conceptual churn than they are worth to society in general, which is clearly the actual goal of the above constitutional clause, as specified by the opening: "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
I think the judge has it right.
Sadly, this was a concurring opinion, not a majority opinion, and as such it has no legal weight. Those of us who agree can only hope that his concurrence serves as a springboard for (eventually) convincing the others on his bench, or that the case is appealed to a higher court, and such convincing happens at that level, despite being completely free of incoming legal weight. I wouldn't hold my breath, frankly. Big money has a way of tilting the playing field rather consistently. But it's a single ray of light in an otherwise very dark situation, and I'm happy to admire it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You know what, if you "have to invent contrived ways of to make algorithms not look like the most obvious solution just because somebody patented it" then by extension because an invention is:-
Not something that somebody familiar with the art would have made given the same initial constraints.
That algorithm is not worthy of patent (if any ever were). Now, saying that and blindly infringing it because you disagree is whole new can of lawsuits.
Does this finally mean that all those codec & crypto patents can be dispensed with in cases where there is no existing physical embodyment stated in the patent?
Yep, it requires access, and that's a fair point. If I make my own implementation without having copied yours (which is obvious couldn't have happened if I had no access to it), I don't see why you should have any rights to stop me from using it.
you can program software using 1s and 0s.
No, you can't.
At worst, you've just got a big number.
At best, you have a programming instruction that's represented in binary symbols rather than some other kind of symbols.
Back in my 6502 days, I used a disassembler where I entered the hex instead of the assembler instruction names; hex "A9" is functionally identical to asm "LDA", which is functionally identical to binary "10101001". "1010100" was nothing, not was "010101001". Only when used in some specific combinations of 8 bits did the bits actually do anything. Individually, the bits have no meaning; you can't program in individual bits.
There are esoteric programming languages out there that work on 1's and 0's, but even in those, the bits are an encoding system for higher-level concepts.
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>
Patents mean you can stop me from distributing software that's completely my own design and work, even if I never knew your software existed, or even if you never wrote any software at all, just because it uses ideas that you also had, and managed to get accepted by the patent office.
That's true.
OK, it's a huge difference if this becomes accepted as law.
It's very unlikely that an independent developer would write exactly the same code or create exactly the same API as something else that already exists.
No sig today...
The GPL does not encourage copying and sharing. The GPL is a source of discouragement: it serves to lock out various kinds of sharing, specifically, if I add something to the code, I cannot share the results of that work unless I give away my work on it. It's nothing to do with the sharing of what was out there in the first place; that is in no way affected in its ability to be shared or copied if I add something and do whatever with it.
What the GPL actually accomplishes is say that "here is some code; we give it to you under the condition that you are coerced into giving away what you write as well." It's not about sharing the original code; it's about sharing any new work product of the recipient WRT that code. It's free as in "I'll give you this, but only if you give me anything back that you enhance or change if you want to share or sell", with the coercive addition of "if you don't give me back anything you enhance or change and you attempt to share or sell, you can be dragged through the legal system naked, backwards and across broken glass."
As a software author, I consider the GPL a neon-lit sign to "stay away, stay far away." As someone who actually wants my work to be shared, I release it with no conditions on what you may do with what I wrote, or anything you might add or change, except that you can't say that I, and others, can't be restrained in any way from continuing to share what I wrote freely. Because then my code will actually be free to share. I make no representation about, or claim upon, your code -- because that would be a dick move. Which, as no doubt you see coming, is exactly what I consider the GPL.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"So I'm screwed if I can rely only on copyright protection."
Not really. And if you are worse off then lobby for other protections.
Either way, you can't screw everyone else.
Then his statement that software is a "precursor to technology rather than technology itself" totally hosed his argument. Perhaps his next argument will be that generic computers can't be patented either.
As a creator, I want the strongest protection, whatever is applicable.
Neither copyright nor patent gives you that at the moment.
Could you mount a lawsuit against a big company? Protecting yourself requires money and time. The government isn't watching your back and sending the police around to arrest violators, you have to do all that yourself.
No sig today...
Plus, copyright is still subject to 'fair use' exceptions. So no loss on the API front.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
There needs to be clear guidelines that say x% of similarity is OK but if there is more than you may be violating someone else's copyright.
I think copyright already has some amount of "fair use" in it. At one point during the famous SCO vs. Linux lawsuit, some header files were contested because they were identical. Given their content (essentially some constants defined in a publicly available book), the header files were not considered copyrightable because, essentially, there is no reasonable way to make the header files any differently; any independant implementation would end up looking the same. If you and I independantly come up with the same algorithm implemented in nearly identical code, copyright offers enough room for interpretation to have experts voice their opinion on how likely it is those implementations were copied, developed independantly or whether there's any reasonable wiggle room for implementation choices at all.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
I was overgeneralizing. Neither are universally bad or good. It's that generally, the bad parts of patents mostly affect developers whereas the bad parts of copyright mostly affect non-developers.
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If software can't be patented, donations can be made to create a special law that allows those patents.
I understand how some people hate software patents because of the trouble patent trolls cause by dragging everyone to court. But how do you protect the little guy who spends a lot of time and effort to build something novel only to have some big company like Microsoft or Apple steal the idea and put them out of business the minute they start to get some traction in the market? It is amazing how something becomes 'obvious' after someone builds it for the first time; yet no one did for decades after it was possible to do so. Someone can pour their life savings and years of work into getting a small startup off the ground. It is a huge risk so why would anyone do it if it can be stolen away? If you don't protect the rewards for innovation, why would you be surprised if innovation slows or stops completely?
FORTH
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah. It's too bad this was a concurring opinion rather than the majority opinion, and thus apparently doesn't establish precedent.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
> Have you seen the wars between Sun/Oracle over the Java API? Not even Java code, the Java API.
Only corporate giants would spend millions arguing over who owns a contract.
There is - the fact that copyright only covers explicitly doesn't cover ideas or functional aspects. They cover only the specific presentation, not the information content. A cookbook publisher can for example copyright a particular presentation of a recipe, but NOT the recipe itself.
Algorithms, being functional, are ineligible for copyright, so in the absence of patents I can safely use the same algorithm as you without restriction - even if I had to decompile and reverse-engineer your code to figure out how you did it. What I *can't* do is actually use any part of your *code* in my product without your permission. I have to write my own code from scratch. And if reverse-engineering your code was necessary, then I should probably have someone else do that part and only look at their final functional documentation so that there's no chance that I might accidentally plagiarize your code while I'm implementing the same functionality.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nthed.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Any half-assed hacker can reverse engineer your code
Reverse engineering is, in fact, one of the hardest forms of engineering and projects that reverse engineer are generally filled with some of the smartest brains we have- because it's very hard. You think the wine devs are idiots ? Yet it took them more than decade to get out of alpha !
Part of that, mind you, was because they had little to no money and were working part time. How do you think Zynga cranks out their own versions of whatever the hot new game on the App store is in two weeks? Because they've got a team of a dozen full-time paid programmers reverse engineering the code.
Perhaps OP's hyperbole should be toned down to "any company with sufficient resources and motivation can reverse engineer your code," which, I'm sure you'll agree, is true.
>He can then replicate your software in 1/10th the time it took you to develop your software
If what my software does is so simple that somebody can replicate it in 1/10th the time it took me to do it - then he's the better programmer and he deserves to win in the market place. My best defense, in fact, is to use a free software license in the first place - so it's to his benefit to rather add his features to *my* product where we can both profit than to go and create his own.
Use a free license so you can both profit? What are you going to do, make it up in volume? \_()_/
Your best defense is a patent, though you may not like them for various moral reasons. Regardless of legitimate complaints about patent abuse and patent trolling, patents are useful when a giant company swoops in and blatantly steals a feature from a small company and says, "what are you going to do, sue us?" Microsoft learned that from lesson from i4i.
You must be truly incompetent as a programmer if you are *this* afraid to compete on the merits of your product - that even with a first-to-market advantage you are this convinced any "half-assed-hacker" can make something better than you did...
Or OP's a competent programmer, but in an industry that lacks proprietary format lock-in and where the market is quick and fickle. Like, say, mobile games. NimbleBit certainly weren't incompetent programmers, but their first-to-market advantage didn't help them against Zynga's giant cross-marketing arm. Nor did Liam Bowmers, creator of Castle Clout, see a dime for Angry Birds.
As noted above, a company with the resources to devote can reverse engineer your product within a couple weeks. More difficult product that you've been working on for years to solve problems? They'll just hire more engineers. Your first to market advantage is going to be negligible, because your head start will be tiny, and they can spend lots of money on marketing, since they don't have to pay people for years to solve the problems you did when they can just take your solution.
exactly the the reason patents exist
No. That is not at all why patents exist. The reason patents exist is right there in the law. To promote open disclosure of how an invention works. Quite the opposite of what you think - it's to make sure you will have MORE competitors than you otherwise would. The reward for letting the world copy your invention, is having a brief time where nobody is allowed to.
Here, we're in agreement. The point of patents is to encourage people to give up trade secrets. Otherwise, we would end up with crappy proprietary format lock-in, intrusive DRM, and highly restrictive licenses like the one AutoCAD uses to keep people from selling older copies of their software.
One of the major problems with software patents it the absolute lack of disclosure actually - I've yet to read a software patent include full source for an implementation of the idea - and nothing less than a working source implementation can count as
It's exactly like English works, the meaning of pedant does not come from p+e+d+a+n+t and not all combinations are valid. If you can't program computers with 1s and 0s you can't write English with a-z. You can't learn English from looking at a keyboard, but nobody claimed you could learn to program from knowing it's all 1s and 0s. Except you, in the strawman you cut down.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What the hell do you think a language *is*, other than a set of symbols and rules for manipulating them?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Almost everything is obvious AFTER it has been invented, not before. Hard == patentable and easy == not patentable is a moronic principle.
I plead the FIF. F-I-F, fifffffff.
and those behind that will just continue creating more and more roadblocks for innovators, not fewer.
and a seat on the bench (I'm a patent lawyer).
On what legal basis, other than patent infringement?
Copyright infringement, of course. You did put "you can't reverse engineer this" in the licence, right? Absent the licence, there is no legal reason why said reverse engineer is allowed to have your code.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Big companies were approached multiple times, none thought it worthwhile. After many tens of thousands of dollars of development (in a literal garage) it was shown to be very profitable when a customer of said big companies placed a large order with us. It could have been easily copy-able by taking apart, running the pieces through a laser scanner and reproduced on a CNC machine. They could have gotten a new money saving device no-risk, for free. No development costs
Hit the nail on the head. But just one little comment...
You're welcome.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Other than som electronics, are there any physical or mechanical items that cannot be laser digitized, run through a piece of software to turn into gcode and then automatically be duplicated on a cnc machine.For $100k, I could set up a shop to duplicate most physical objects. Why would I hire 5 engineers for two years to design something that could be copied and put into production and sold for the cost of materials in a month?
Which part of this has to do with software patents?
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When I was in college, software was considered unpatentable, because a software program is an algorithm, and algorithms were unpatentable because they are essentially a "law of nature" or "scientific discovery". At some point the law changed to accept "business method" patents (which led to the "with a computer" patents). Imagine if someone had patented the concept of "an interrupt" or "DMA" or "UART", how everything would be completely incompatible - or there would be a small handful of oligarchies running hardware just as they do software. Oddly enough, at the same time as software patents were being enforced, Intel lost its case that its 8080 instruction set was patentable; the finding split the difference between the DESCRIPTION of the instruction set and the IMPLEMENTATION. So direct cloning of an x86 chip would be prohibited, but making a new chip that implemented the same instruction set (and a few more besides) allowed Zilog to make the Z80 just slightly better than - and upwardly compatible with - the 8080. This begat CP/M, which begat the personal computer industry, which was brilliantly co-opted by the IBM Personal Computer (note the capital letters, that makes it COMPLETELY different). And then in turn IBM lost control of the "IBM-compatible" computer market, which at this point is defined by the motherboard specification from the *software* company.
or proof through independent replication of the patented item via the patent indicates that most patents should be deemed invalid even if they ARE for a patented object, since most patents are actually broken forms of the 'protected invention' as produced.
The entire point of the patent system was to ensure independent replication of a patented mechanism or device could be produced upon expiration of the monopoly period, which hasn't been true for most patented objects in over a hundred years.
Smokey Yunick is famous for bragging that the patents on the hot air engine he and another guy were working on were incomplete (he claimed trivially, so anyone in the field could figure it out, but a clear violation of patent law!) There are dozens or hundreds of other similiar violations of patent law going on every year. These violators need to be punished with at minimum fines and a revised patent application that is verifiably accurate to their produced items, or if the violation was so long ago that the patent has expired, then forfeiture of all patent proceeds to be returned to licensors, or the patent office if licensors can no longer be found.
Patents are bad for makers, copyrights are bad for users.
Right On!
Oh, ah, which ones are we again?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
N+1thd. Just plain right and righteous. You win the internet today.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Yes, I'm sure. I have no problem with B profiting off A's work, as long as A is rewarded if that's the idea/invention model A wishes to use, and society agrees to hand over X of value for Y invention / idea.
I get the impression that you are offended by people doing well if they didn't specifically do work to do well. I am not. I am offended by people prevented from doing well because others put up artificial barriers in a society that, at root, has more than enough largess for everyone to do well.
If you invent something, and you want to monetize it, I wish you well. I don't wish you the ability to prevent others from doing well. Clear?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Dissolution, even?
I would bet a million bucks that it will be over ruled.
They're just idiots. 1's and 0's arranged as symbols to convey meaning is generally accepted as a language since it uses symbols to convey a meaning. It even has a name: Binary Code. If they want to claim it's not Binary Code and merely equations resulting in direct action by hardware... well... you can't patent a mathematical equation.
What took you so long to go public Judge? We have stagnated under these ridiculous software patents, ask Dr. James Baker how well software patents worked for him.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Speaking as an idea / product creator (of a considerable number of new things, BTW), I think it's perfectly reasonable to monetize an idea or discovery such that it benefits society at the same time that it benefits you substantially. I don't think it's a net positive for society if you act to restrain others from acting to benefit society.
No one is a slave in such circumstances. If you decide not to do X, no one is forcing you to. If you do, then by all means, get it out there and make a reasonable amount off it if that's practical. if the idea is truly of great magnitude, it won't be trivially reproducible. If it is simply a clever, basic realization, it will. In the former case, it is more deserving of reward, as it took more work, and it will be that much easier to monetize for those very reasons, assuming you don't actually hand out the source code and/or the theory; in the latter, anyone else in a similar position might have come up with it, and to me, that makes it of very little value in the first place. XOR a cursor onto a screen? Oy.
There's another thing. Software is a lot more like writing in that the hard infrastructure required can be close to zero (food, shelter and environmental control.) Whereas if you make hardware, the investment is almost always significant, and often is required to be very significant. In such a case, more protection seems reasonable to me, or those things simply won't get done. Whereas software... we already know that software is generated in massive reams under almost any imaginable set of circumstances, no protection seems to be required at all. Not that protection doesn't confer additional benefits, it does; but it clearly isn't required to secure the advances the constitution speaks of.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Are you really okay with that? Any half-assed hacker can reverse engineer your code. He can then replicate your software in 1/10th the time it took you to develop your software. You can't sue him for copyright infringement since the clone's implementation details vary from yours.
Kindof like I can read Harry Potter and then create a new book based on it where only the names have changed? Or maybe I could write a book called "Ron Weasley" and have the book from Ron's perspective but everything else being the same? Harry Potter has no patent protection but both of these would not be allowed. There are some "fair uses" for copyright. Fan fiction is a gray area but even that if I tried to publish a full length novel based in the Harry Potter universe then I would likely end up in court. Copyrights and patents offer very similar protection with slight differences in enforcement but for most parts would be virtually the same.
Most of the things we are willing to give our money for were once only a thought in someone's mind. Going from mind to finished product is a long and hard road, filled with failures implementing even very good ideas. Do you really think mankind could have progressed as it did in the last 100 years if those insightful people could not profit greatly from their risks and efforts?
With that argument, you could say that anything using screws to hold it together isn't patentable.
No, with that argument you're saying that you can't patent something simply because it's held together with screws. I get it, a lot of you guys are upset that you may have to keep working for a living rather than do something once and get paid forever, but it is the way of the world for most people, after all.
Pretty much every pro software patent argument in the comments to this post works at least as well as an illustration of why software shouldn't be patentable to begin with. In the end, the only real argument for software patents seems to be "I'll make more money for less work if they exist." Sorry, but that's not actually a good reason for them.
For a pro-patent judge to entirely reverse a long-standing judicial opinion is bad enough. To do it based upon the fundamentals of patent law is much worse. Where has this judge been? When you form a judicial opinion on individual patent applications, the fundamentals are supposed to be considered settled. The judge only has to consider the fundamentals once, or indeed never if higher courts have already ruled.
The big push to patent everything that started around the turn of the century lead to not only software patents but also process patents - both of which are evil because they suppress innovation by the larger population, effectively blocking small businesses and individuals (who can't afford patents or to litigate patent disputes) from pursuing their ideas which before this ruling would run the risk of overlapping any number of patents in a web that was impossible in practical terms to identify fully.
Some here have argued that not having patents allows others to take your ideas and benefit from it. But there is nothing that says you have to open source your code. You can keep your code private - in which case others would need to develop their own solutions. To the uninformed that is called 'competition' and is a good thing for the market and your customers.
Overall - the good of being free of patent litigation for software outweighs any good achieved through patents by patent trolls and the litigation we've seen. The efforts in litigation add nothing in terms of competition or creation of new and better products for customers - and is a net drain on everyone except the pocketbook of the lawyers involved. I am happy to see some sanity is starting to prevail on this subject.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
It's very unlikely that an independent developer would write exactly the same [...] API as something else that already exists.
Unless of course they want to interface with the original...
What about the SMALL ARTIST? They create songs and the bigger players/studios can just copy the tune -- in fact it is extremely easy for movies, TV, and anybody else to copy the tune or simply a part of the tune.
So... copyright exists so the kids of some dead artist can sue some other artist because a few seconds of similarity between songs.
It's about time a judge finally learned something. Any honest CS or linguist has been saying for decades that software is a language. You can't patent a plot device but that is what we are doing.... along with owning biological discoveries. Claiming that progress wouldn't happen, completely forgetting how much better it was before we became crippled in restrictions, added costs and lawsuits.
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Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Yeah but you can make your own romantic comedy, locked room murder, etc. all day long as long you are not copying someone else's work verbatim, or closely paraphrasing. You can even make your own mouse based cartoons so long as you don't copy Mickey too closely.
With software patents gone crazy like they have where every little method or data structure being patented we've come to the point where you almost can't code anything without being sued these days.
I only hope that the software patent is finally done away with sooner rather than later.
English isn't patented, but books are, articles are, any form of published writing can be copyrighted. If we're using similar logic for computing, then you may not be able to patent programming languages, but you can patent a result of a comprised set of written code.
...exactly the the reason patents exist
No. That is not at all why patents exist. The reason patents exist is right there in the law. To promote open disclosure of how an invention works.
Yes. And if your Patent "Fails to Teach" – that is, if no expert in the art (field) can duplicate your invention using your description – your patent can be ruled invalid.
Usually the lawyers with most funding will win the money.
FTFY
People.
Honeycombs.
Anything thing not uniformly solid.
Anything not uniformly hollow.
So, lots.
Also patents and copyright are different, and neither stops anyone from making their own copy.
So what are you ? Patent lawyer ? Patent troll ? Since those are the *only* people who have ever benefited from software patents. No programmer has ever found them anything but a massive risk. No programmer has ever benefited from them. Many have been bankrupted by them - but it wasn't usually other programmers bankrupting them.
Individual inventors and small businesses with software patents benefit from this, though you'd probably lump them in with "troll." When a license pays your employee's salaries another few months, it benefits you.
people patent techniques. for example, signal processing technologies. it makes no difference to them whether you implement them in hardware, or software.
if by 'software patents' you mean techniques for which software is the only expression, and that there is no underlying idea, then say that.
This Judge is saying it's not patentable but he did not say that a specific implementation could not be copyrightable. If someone reverse engineers your software and then re-releases it as his own I'm guessing you can still sue for damages.
Exactly. There are many protections available, and even if one specific protection isn't available to you in one situation does not mean that all other protections are also unavilalbe.
Also, in the full ruling note that the "software patents" they are referring to are basic addition of doing something on a computer. Note that if you still create an original process then a patent is still fully acceptable. If someone were to figure out some amazing new sorting algorithm or amazing new pathfinding algorithm or whatever, the patent on the process is still acceptable; what isn't acceptable is taking something and adding "On a computer..." or "On the Internet..." If you create a process then it exists on a computer and off a computer, anywhere you can do something.
Specifically they write in the ruling that the '610 patent is an "On The Internet" addition, the '142 patent is an "On a Networked Computer System", and the '050 patent is an abstract idea with the expected results (receive identifiers, test for a match, output values responsive to a request). The first two were shot down by the SCOTUS with the Alice ruling, the last one shot down forever ago.
If you make a new process worthy of patent protection --- meaning a process that is non-intuitive, or that gives unexpected results when applied -- those patents are still valid even if you happen to implement them on software, they just need to be applicable as a process generally.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Right, but copyright functions significantly different from patents. If you write a novel about green monsters from space invading earth and dying because of disease, and I write a similar novel with essentially the same story line but do not copy any passages from your book word for word, both works stand on their own, and mine is not infringing on yours.
Similarly, if I write code that executes online transactions, and then you write code that executes online transactions without copying my code, both should be allowed, and copyright would allow this, whereas with patents, I could sue you for patent infringement (as has happened) for duplicating the effect of my code (rather than copying it word for word in whole or part, which is what copyright protects).
Disney on the other hand has trademarked Mickey Mouse (and likely it's other characters), which gives them rights to the characters in perpetuity (similar to what the heirs of Edgar Rice Burroughs "Tarzan" did to protect that character) but Steam Boat Willie etc will become public domain.
The length of copyright is also out of hand (life plus 70 plus years). It is annoying, but it is not damaging the productivity and stifling innovation like software patents have been, since it is a much more limited, narrow scope than patents.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
As an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac, I stay up all night wondering if there really is a dog!
Nothing, but the previous comment said patent and not software patent and so many people here are against patents in general.
'Imagine if someone had patented the concept of "an interrupt" or "DMA" or "UART"'
Other than the people who did patent UARTs and DMA systems?
The problem with most arguments against software patents specifically that that they are made by people who cannot supply a rigorous definition hardware and software.
I can start with the same RTL source and produce the following systems:
1a. RTL loaded into a simulator and run against a canned data file.
1b. RTL loaded into a simulator and run with a breakout box for real asynchronous i/o
2. RTL compiled to a native binary, run with a) canned data file and b) i/o breakout box
3. RTL synthesized to a gate level netlist and a) run in an STA with canned data
4. RTL synthesized to a device level netlist and run in a circuit simulator
5. RTL compile to FPGA programming and loaded into a hardware emulator with real i/o
6. RTL synthesized, placed, routed, fabricated, and packaged; and run in a system with real i/o.
Which of these implementations are patentable? All? None? Is the original RTL patentable? If it is not but some of the implementations are, at what point does it become patentable?
Even here, that average poster has no experience with creating hardware and thus never thinks very hard about what it is. What is the difference between hardware and software? If you cannot say, then you cannot reject just software patents.
This concurring opinion did not get enough votes (only 1 of 3) to become law. It is a demo of a stance the court could adopt some day in another case.
When a proposal like this doesn't get adopted, they call it dicta.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
>Software implemented by a machine, however, is no longer just mathematics - like the transmission, it's a bunch of interconnected parts configured to produce a particular result.
Nope. There is a huge difference. Software never becomes a physically manifested thing. Not even if you hardwire it into a circuit. It's always JUST a mathematical function. We go to great lengths to disguise this (to make programming easier) but it never changes. Basic computing theory proves you wrong. All software is nothing but basic mathematical formulas. You can replicate every program that has ever been written and will ever be written and every version of that program that will NEVER be written with a simple counter because EVERY program is nothing but a long number and programming is nothing but a set of skills for finding the useful numbers faster than by counting.
Interesting question - if I wrote a counting algorithm that compares each number to the in-memory version of microsoft outlook and - once it matches - writes it do disk - would that count as a 'copy' ? A clean-room reverse engineer ? Or a dirty reverse engineer ? It's entirely possible (though it's likely to take a LOT longer than just writing my own e-mail client).
When you can create a transmission by counting for long enough - only then will your analogy be true.
>Hundreds of what you'd call software patents are being issued every day, and judges are upholding them
Yes because of a series terrible supreme court decisions between 1980 and 1994 by judges who had never even operated a computer let alone understood what they were ruling over and were being fooled (just like you are) by the efforts to disguise the mathematical nature of software. The reversal of that process has just begun - with the Alice ruling as we now live in a world where judges have had computers around them for decades, and have had enough contact with the concept to be able to educate themselves, hell we even have judges like Wiliam Alsup who are, themselves, highly regarded programmers. That's starting to force a rethink and that rethink is happening. Lawyers can no longer fool the judges so easily. We're just at the start of that. But the actual constitution, national and international law as written have, in fact, NEVER allowed for software patents - judges who thought it did were simply wrong.
>I think you're going to have to eat that "never has been and never will be" statement.
Nope, because what it meant and what you claim it meant had nothing to do with each other. Clearly you are a good lawyer, but I studied logic - and you don't fool me so easily.
> aerospace patents shouldn't exist
Bad choice of example - since aerospace patents were a complete fucking disaster. The only country that had them was the US and the result was that by the start of world war I the US had the least aerospace development of any nation despite having had a massive head-start in powered flight. Their planes were terrible compared to what Germany and England was making. It was so bad that the government enforced a legislated settlement to end the patent war just so the US could actually make planes for the war somebody would sell. And damn good thing they did to - or when the US joined the war later their aerial combat abilities would have been so far behind Germany's that it's likely Germany would have won the war.
Plenty of studies have suggested that patents have a nett negative effect on research and the economy. It may be debateable that in *some* industries they are more good than bad. For all the downsides pharma patents DO guarantee that eventually generics get on the market, one could argue that those ultimatley save more lives and money than are lost while patented drugs cost a fortune.I don't have the numbers to conclude it either way - but there at least a clear upside exists, I just don't know if it's really bigger than the downside. In most industries no such upside exists and interestingly innovation usually accelerates once a patent expires.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Okay, now make that the standard for all of them - that way at least when they expire we all get a working version.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I remember the roots of both of these issues. When I started programming, software was not patentable. We wrote heuristic Mainframe software that produced physical layouts for microchips from the logical design specifications. The company fought to get it protected by patents.
The company also decided to build the PC using outside vendors for the microprocessor and operating system, which led to anyone being able to clone the PC.
Copyleft is a workaround inside the copyright system, it is only considered good because it's almost a loophole which helps us keep some software code free from proper copyright.
In an ideal world, it wouldn't be needed nor wanted
In an ideal world, it wouldn't be needed nor wanted
I'm not sure that's true. Without the GPL you wouldn't get source code. You'd have the right to make changes, but not the ability. Oh sure, some devices are simple enough and based on sufficiently well-known components that making your own software is quite possible, but for others it's not so simple.
If copyright didn't exist, some people would wish that it did so that they could use a license that forced code release to customers (under terms under which they can use it) so that their code couldn't be used by someone who wouldn't release back their changes to any paying customers — which might include the original developer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, with that argument you're saying that you can't patent something simply because it's held together with screws
And you're saying that things made with screws can't be patented. Novel algorithms deserve patents.
Using Google as an example, their PageRank algorithm was awarded a patent and it's pure software. Everything about it was novel at the time - nobody else was doing anything like it. I would argue that this deserves a patent.
On the other hand, the idea of a search engine based solely on keyword search would merely be searching "but on the Internet" and not deserve patent protection.
You can argue against bad software patents without preventing any financial reward to real innovation.