Actually, it's to give inventors an incentive to publicize their inventions so that (after a lapse of time) the inventions will become public domain. That's the sole purpose, the raison d'etre. The alternative would be inventors keeping their ideas as trade secrets as the only possible defense against competition, and that would be worse for society as a whole because other inventors would then be unable to build on the work and advance the state of the art.
(It's not only keeping things secret that could happen, but just not bothering at all because you know someone with more capital, access to channels, or plain dumb luck will be able to come in and eat your lunch once you have slaved for years cooking it.)
But that was just parenthetical. The real point I wanted to make is that there should be a requirement to directly argue from the raison d'etre why you should be granted a patent. The "non-obvious" thing has obviously failed miserably. I think that someone should argue it from this question:
"When would this idea have been publicly revealed had the would-be patentor not come forth with it?"
The idea of the patent is to get intellectual capital into the public domain faster than it would otherwise be. We give you a limited time monopoly in exchange for the revelation of your grand idea--but why do we want you to reveal your grand idea so badly that we are willing to give you the right to keep us from making it ourselves for a time? Well, the only way it makes sense that we would give you a monopoly on it would be that we value your disclosure of the idea. Why? So that we, one day, can use it ourselves, without having to pay anyone for it.
Ok, now, if someone just happens to be the first to get to the patent office with an idea that would inevitably come out within the next 20 years, we should say "no thanks, it's clear that any average human will consider this obvious in 5 years."
It can (almost) never make sense to grant a patent on an invention that will be obvious to everyone in less time than the term of the monopoly. (I say "almost" because there could be something time-sensitive, like a cure for AIDS now that we know will be obvious in five years--go ahead and give them the patent because lives need to be saved (or don't, because more will be saved later--but whatever, there could be time sensitive exeptions)).
For example, one-click. Everyone is selling stuff online, and human interface concerns are going to dictate that you make that as easy as possible, voila, one-click. No patent for you.
Now, someone comes along and says "I just figured out that you could turn a refrigerator motor into a fusion engine with common household objects", we say "well, those common household objects and refrigerator motors have been around for some time now. I guess if it were going to happen within twenty years it would have surely happened by now. Here's your patent, buddy."
I have thought of things that require nothing other than what has existed for years, in a business that has been around for years, and yet no one has done it. I think something like that ought to be patentable--there is an obvious case I can make saying "if this intellectual capital was going to come into the public domain on its own, it would have done so by now". On the other hand, when we all are starting to get two-way tv wrist radios and someone with early access to it or just a reasonably bright individual says, "Hey, you could use these for commerce!", there is no way that you can argue that people aren't going to just think of that without the patent guy's help.
I know you can just call this a restatement of the non-obviousness criteria that already exists (leave it to me to restate the nonobviousness criteria). But the problem with 'isn't that obvious" is that it can easily become "well, gee, I sure never thought of something like that". But if you put some concrete background to it like "hmmm, do I think this idea would get into the public domain faster with or without the patent?", you have a whole different mindset. You can ask yourself historically if people have been putting two and two together in ways very analogous to this, and if it's reasonable to think that they would think up "internet + auction" within 20 years. If you can argue that, then you should say "nope, sorry, no patent for you."
Remember that non-obvious is already a judgement call, and it doesn't seem to be applied very well right now. Non-obviousness itself, as the parent points out, isn't really the point--the point is whether it is advantageous to us, the monopoly granting public, to get the idea disclosed. If it looks pretty darn sure that it's an idea that will make its own way into people's heads without disclosure, it should fail the test.
I get the impression that he doesn't care what people think, and has become extremely bored with all the incredulous people saying "what the hell are you thinking", etc. Looks like he found ten minutes to answer the questions--the fact that the/. community spent hours tyring to think of an mod up funny ones would be the least of my concerns if I was about to do what he is about to do.
He might have been put off by the dumb questions, and some of the questions would have probably taken hours to answer well.
maybe they reasoned that their work was keeping said slaves alive. We should all remember that it is easy to judge someone, but hard to know what is really going on inside their head.
PS Everything I know about this is in the post I replied to, so, no, I don't know what I am talking about to even the slightest depth. Lots of things happen in war and it's really weird that we have all these rules about what is basically a killfest. How many innocents died in the firebombin of Dresden? It's nust not that easy.
I don't really have an agenda. I can't remember the name of the guy that told me that, or even exactly what he said. He was working with another guy I knew on some mathematics presentation/rendering/calculating stuff that looked really cool to me but never took off.
Like I said, I thought it was great. I was surprised that anyone that had worked on it would be frustrated with it. Maybe I mistranslated what he said. It was right after they let them all go, and he told me that one of the guys had given up on it ever being transparent. That's all I can remember.
I heard other rumors--one was that none of the interested buyers was willing to pay what Apple thought it was worth. Another was that Jobs took an eMate home and fell in love with it, prompting hime ot want to keep the technology so that Apple could go with it. (Having had an eMate and fallen in love with it, this was believable to me.)
It's not that I don't believe Jobs could be that petty--I'm just saying that there are alternative possibilities. If it's really important to you I can track down the name of that guy for you:). (But seriously, send me and email and I'll look him up. I'm curious about it now.)
I hated that the newton was killed, probably not as much as you, being as close to it as you were, but I was at that time hoping to find work developing for the newton full time. Every time I look at a Palm I just shrug and say "they're not there yet". Maybe my exploration of the alternative possibilities is because I really hope deep down that it will come back. If it was killed solely on account of ego it's not likely to. I guess we can always pray.
the newton division was losing money, a lot of money. One of the developers doing the handwriting recognition had recently thrown up his hands and decided that it would never be transparent (I thought it was great, but..).
Finally, when the new CFO was brought in, guess how much cash apple had in the bank? One month's worth. They really truly were almost in a situation of not being able to make payroll.
You certainly may be right about his reasons. After I heard all of the above, though, I was less enamored of that conclusion.
or, they'll elect idiots, allow legislation to get passed that craps all over their rights and cause really stupid television shows to get really high ratings.
someone once told me that they would go into honky-tonk bars, load the jukebox up with quarters and play 4'33" over and over and over again.
apparently this would result in a rise in temperature.
Re:Hidden Slashdot posts
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
no, what I'm saying is (a) [this is an aside] that when you are on the front page and you wonder if there is a way to search this beast, you have to figure out that "older stuff" is the link you need to hit.
It is possible to make it so that everything appears on the front page, but the option that does that is not well named.
Collapse Sections (show stories from all sections, unless specifically excluded)
"Collapse Sections"? I would think of it as expanding sections...I don't know. I think for a brief moment I understood what "collapse" meant in this context, but it has gone away.
Re:vi on Solaris 5.7 still crashes!
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
mark not set
(I always use mm, too, though, so I forgive you:)
Re:Powerbuilder's Toolbar
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
funny that you say that, because mozilla had a bug a lot like this--a dialog box wouldn't go away until you clicked the button _and_ moved the mouse by a pixel.
Re:I spend a lot of time on this one
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
I didn't see any problems, ran the code and worked as expected. any more details? did you have problems with char/int interpretations?
I tried this and it did what I expected (as written here, garbage come out for v, if you toggle the commenting you get 6): #define OP_MULT '*' #include <stdio.h> int main(void) {
int v;
int a = 2;
int b = 3; //int op = '*';
int op = '-';
switch(op) {
case OP_MULT://operator *
v = a*b;
}
printf ("op is %c, v is %d\n", op, v); }
Re:Hidden Slashdot posts
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
hear, hear. not to mention that "search" is "older stuff" (maybe that's innovation?), but I was wondering for a long time why this happened, and finally figured out what the heck the options actually meant. However, I don't complain, because they let me filter out Jon Katz. Everything else is a trivial annoyance by comparison.
If I were going to try to answer this lawyerlessly, I would say you're fine as long as they didn't patent the solution. And if they did patent it, then the engineer in question should probably know about it because he was one of the inventors, right?
Tell the guy to chill. What's the probability that the other company will ever know? I mean, it's not like you're asking questions about it on a widely-read website or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
...but it's already there under "URL".
actually, that's not all that informative. I think you can look at old_index.html to get to the underlying ideas.
(It's not only keeping things secret that could happen, but just not bothering at all because you know someone with more capital, access to channels, or plain dumb luck will be able to come in and eat your lunch once you have slaved for years cooking it.)
But that was just parenthetical. The real point I wanted to make is that there should be a requirement to directly argue from the raison d'etre why you should be granted a patent. The "non-obvious" thing has obviously failed miserably. I think that someone should argue it from this question:
"When would this idea have been publicly revealed had the would-be patentor not come forth with it?"
The idea of the patent is to get intellectual capital into the public domain faster than it would otherwise be. We give you a limited time monopoly in exchange for the revelation of your grand idea--but why do we want you to reveal your grand idea so badly that we are willing to give you the right to keep us from making it ourselves for a time? Well, the only way it makes sense that we would give you a monopoly on it would be that we value your disclosure of the idea. Why? So that we, one day, can use it ourselves, without having to pay anyone for it.
Ok, now, if someone just happens to be the first to get to the patent office with an idea that would inevitably come out within the next 20 years, we should say "no thanks, it's clear that any average human will consider this obvious in 5 years."
It can (almost) never make sense to grant a patent on an invention that will be obvious to everyone in less time than the term of the monopoly. (I say "almost" because there could be something time-sensitive, like a cure for AIDS now that we know will be obvious in five years--go ahead and give them the patent because lives need to be saved (or don't, because more will be saved later--but whatever, there could be time sensitive exeptions)).
For example, one-click. Everyone is selling stuff online, and human interface concerns are going to dictate that you make that as easy as possible, voila, one-click. No patent for you.
Now, someone comes along and says "I just figured out that you could turn a refrigerator motor into a fusion engine with common household objects", we say "well, those common household objects and refrigerator motors have been around for some time now. I guess if it were going to happen within twenty years it would have surely happened by now. Here's your patent, buddy."
I have thought of things that require nothing other than what has existed for years, in a business that has been around for years, and yet no one has done it. I think something like that ought to be patentable--there is an obvious case I can make saying "if this intellectual capital was going to come into the public domain on its own, it would have done so by now". On the other hand, when we all are starting to get two-way tv wrist radios and someone with early access to it or just a reasonably bright individual says, "Hey, you could use these for commerce!", there is no way that you can argue that people aren't going to just think of that without the patent guy's help.
I know you can just call this a restatement of the non-obviousness criteria that already exists (leave it to me to restate the nonobviousness criteria). But the problem with
'isn't that obvious" is that it can easily become "well, gee, I sure never thought of something like that". But if you put some concrete background to it like "hmmm, do I think this idea would get into the public domain faster with or without the patent?", you have a whole different mindset. You can ask yourself historically if people have been putting two and two together in ways very analogous to this, and if it's reasonable to think that they would think up "internet + auction" within 20 years. If you can argue that, then you should say "nope, sorry, no patent for you."
Remember that non-obvious is already a judgement call, and it doesn't seem to be applied very well right now. Non-obviousness itself, as the parent points out, isn't really the point--the point is whether it is advantageous to us, the monopoly granting public, to get the idea disclosed. If it looks pretty darn sure that it's an idea that will make its own way into people's heads without disclosure, it should fail the test.
Also used by juries in the North to let slaves go ahead and run away even though that act was clearly illegal.
Or, so I heard.
(Repeating rumors _is_ what the internet is for, issn't it?)
if you put a credit in your .sig, people might be led to watch the show, and that would be good for everyone.
mike
I'll say two things for him--he is not anonymous, and not a coward.
...he's too busy to be funny
/. community spent hours tyring to think of an mod up funny ones would be the least of my concerns if I was about to do what he is about to do.
I get the impression that he doesn't care what people think, and has become extremely bored with all the incredulous people saying "what the hell are you thinking", etc. Looks like he found ten minutes to answer the questions--the fact that the
He might have been put off by the dumb questions, and some of the questions would have probably taken hours to answer well.
I was disappointed, too, btw.
maybe they reasoned that their work was keeping said slaves alive. We should all remember that it is easy to judge someone, but hard to know what is really going on inside their head.
PS Everything I know about this is in the post I replied to, so, no, I don't know what I am talking about to even the slightest depth. Lots of things happen in war and it's really weird that we have all these rules about what is basically a killfest. How many innocents died in the firebombin of Dresden? It's nust not that easy.
I don't really have an agenda. I can't remember the name of the guy that told me that, or even exactly what he said. He was working with another guy I knew on some mathematics presentation/rendering/calculating stuff that looked really cool to me but never took off.
:). (But seriously, send me and email and I'll look him up. I'm curious about it now.)
Like I said, I thought it was great. I was surprised that anyone that had worked on it would be frustrated with it. Maybe I mistranslated what he said. It was right after they let them all go, and he told me that one of the guys had given up on it ever being transparent. That's all I can remember.
I heard other rumors--one was that none of the interested buyers was willing to pay what Apple thought it was worth. Another was that Jobs took an eMate home and fell in love with it, prompting hime ot want to keep the technology so that Apple could go with it. (Having had an eMate and fallen in love with it, this was believable to me.)
It's not that I don't believe Jobs could be that petty--I'm just saying that there are alternative possibilities. If it's really important to you I can track down the name of that guy for you
I hated that the newton was killed, probably not as much as you, being as close to it as you were, but I was at that time hoping to find work developing for the newton full time. Every time I look at a Palm I just shrug and say "they're not there yet". Maybe my exploration of the alternative possibilities is because I really hope deep down that it will come back. If it was killed solely on account of ego it's not likely to. I guess we can always pray.
the newton division was losing money, a lot of money. One of the developers doing the handwriting recognition had recently thrown up his hands and decided that it would never be transparent (I thought it was great, but..).
Finally, when the new CFO was brought in, guess how much cash apple had in the bank? One month's worth. They really truly were almost in a situation of not being able to make payroll.
You certainly may be right about his reasons. After I heard all of the above, though, I was less enamored of that conclusion.
I agree! What's next? Reporting something borrowed as something blue? When will it end?
[OT aside--you mean "e.g.", not "i.e.". "e.g." is (roughly) "for example", "i.e." is (roughly) "in other words".]
or, they'll elect idiots, allow legislation to get passed that craps all over their rights and cause really stupid television shows to get really high ratings.
He's dead, did you hear?
someone once told me that they would go into honky-tonk bars, load the jukebox up with quarters and play 4'33" over and over and over again.
apparently this would result in a rise in temperature.
no, what I'm saying is (a) [this is an aside] that when you are on the front page and you wonder if there is a way to search this beast, you have to figure out that "older stuff" is the link you need to hit.
It is possible to make it so that everything appears on the front page, but the option that does that is not well named.
Collapse Sections (show stories from all sections, unless specifically excluded)
"Collapse Sections"? I would think of it as expanding sections...I don't know. I think for a brief moment I understood what "collapse" meant in this context, but it has gone away.
mark not set
:)
(I always use mm, too, though, so I forgive you
funny that you say that, because mozilla had a bug a lot like this--a dialog box wouldn't go away until you clicked the button _and_ moved the mouse by a pixel.
I didn't see any problems, ran the code and worked as expected. any more details? did you have problems with char/int interpretations?
//int op = '*';
//operator * ;
I tried this and it did what I expected (as written here, garbage come out for v, if you toggle the commenting you get 6):
#define OP_MULT '*'
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
int v;
int a = 2;
int b = 3;
int op = '-';
switch(op) {
case OP_MULT:
v = a*b
}
printf ("op is %c, v is %d\n", op, v);
}
hear, hear. not to mention that "search" is "older stuff" (maybe that's innovation?), but I was wondering for a long time why this happened, and finally figured out what the heck the options actually meant. However, I don't complain, because they let me filter out Jon Katz. Everything else is a trivial annoyance by comparison.
On my computer there's a thing called "gcc". IT seems to be something that causes people to write code with buffer overruns and stuff...
I think he might mean that something like this:
#include
int fp(void);
int main () {
int fp=3;
printf("fp is %d\n", fp);
}
int fp (void) {
}
would print something like this:
fp is 134513792
instead of
fp is 3
I thought I was BSD that was dead.
I've been paid a fair amount over the last few years to write sloppy code--I'm sure the number is a lot bigger than that...
I'm patenting it as you type.
If I were going to try to answer this lawyerlessly, I would say you're fine as long as they didn't patent the solution. And if they did patent it, then the engineer in question should probably know about it because he was one of the inventors, right?
Tell the guy to chill. What's the probability that the other company will ever know? I mean, it's not like you're asking questions about it on a widely-read website or anything.