I think that there needs to be some kind of general debate on a fix to the patent law that would be acceptable to both sides.
As I see it, the main problems with the current patent system are twofold:
A: They are often granted for ideas that do not involve a sufficiently inventive step.
B: They are often used to stifle innovation by refusing to license them to others in a fair way.
I am not sure how one would go about dealing with A, but I have been thinking about B, and can see several alternatives that would fix the problem quite easily.
In order to provoke debate, I propose the following ammentment to patent law:
Licensing of patents to third parties should be compulsary.
This licensing should be done through an easy, standard mechanism, allowing the third party to license several patents at once through the patent office.
The licensing cost should be registered, and not allowed to increase above the rate of inflation.
Licensing should be "per product installation".
Nobody, including the owner of the patent should be allowed to sell their own product for less than the combined value of the patents it uses, thus preventing inflated license costs.
This compremise would still allow open source software to use patents. Licenses would only be paid when someone new wanted to install the software, and not when source was passed around.
I don't think it would be practical, or desirable to abolish software patents all together as that would remove a lot of the motivation for companies to invest in research.
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As I see it, the main problems with the current patent system are twofold:
A: They are often granted for ideas that do not involve a sufficiently inventive step.
B: They are often used to stifle innovation by refusing to license them to others in a fair way.
I am not sure how one would go about dealing with A, but I have been thinking about B, and can see several alternatives that would fix the problem quite easily.
In order to provoke debate, I propose the following ammentment to patent law:
- Licensing of patents to third parties should be compulsary.
- This licensing should be done through an easy, standard mechanism, allowing the third party to license several patents at once through the patent office.
- The licensing cost should be registered, and not allowed to increase above the rate of inflation.
- Licensing should be "per product installation".
- Nobody, including the owner of the patent should be allowed to sell their own product for less than the combined value of the patents it uses, thus preventing inflated license costs.
I have an elaboration of this here.This compremise would still allow open source software to use patents. Licenses would only be paid when someone new wanted to install the software, and not when source was passed around.
I don't think it would be practical, or desirable to abolish software patents all together as that would remove a lot of the motivation for companies to invest in research.
Any comments?
As the old name suggests, it is a MIDI sequencer in the style of Cubase.
It is looking very promising, but at the time I last used it (a few months ago - so I may be out of date) it wasn't ready to replace Cubase.