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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."
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.
Next stop: Algorithms.
Algorithms shouldn't be patentable in Europe either as they are in the same ballpark as mathmatic formulas which can't be patented.
It's a sort of non verbal communication.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"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...
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.
That doesn't follow. A patent is described using an expression of language, but you're patenting the invention being described, not the description itself. So you can still patent stuff, you just can't patent your patent of the things you patent.
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/...
>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 *
A patent should have enough detail that someone else can easily recreate the patented item.
You can still patent an implementation of it, it just must be fully formed and described in the patent and include something other than software. The software by itself is not patentable.
I don't feel sorry for the rent seekers trying to prevent others from creating similar solutions. Not even in the slightest.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
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.
Your education is lacking. I was making a joke about the concept of privatives, you apparently don't know what a privative is.
Hint the answer to ALL these questions is "no". A privative means a word that describes a concept that is only defined by the absence of something else. "Cold" is a privative", so is "sober" or "dark". 0 is a bit tricky.
Oh and you are flat out wrong about the definition of atheism. Atheism is defined as the absence of believe in any god. Everybody has an absence of believe in some gods. Most people, in fact, have such an absence for all but one god. Atheists have no belief in any god. Part of the joke is that the "abstinence as a sex position" is often used as an analogy to explain how atheism differs from religion.
It's not a religion - it's abstaining from religion.
Atheist generally do not deny the possibility of (a) god - just the extreme unlikeliness (and with a fair amount of certainty that, if one does exist, no religion on this earth knows a thing about him) - but atheists believe only what there is evidence for and if they find evidence that a god exist, will believe in him. They just refuse to do so in the absence of any evidence whatsoever.
Agnostics differ by degree - in remaining open to a highly unlikely possibility with no evidence. That's like saying "Russel's teapot might exist". Sure there's no evidence it doesn't - but just because somebody can imagine something does not make it real.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *