You want to impose chaos. You want to force everyone to do things your way. (Which is the "everyone should do things their own way" way.)
Oh, come on. Now you are attacking the tenets of freedom, choice, and democracy?
We live in a pluralistic society. The norm is for rational people to disagree civily with one another. The solution is not to issue a fatwa that quells all dissent. The solution is to embrace the diversity of opinion and encourage discussion. You can't do that if you lobotomize everyone so that they think the same way. Monoculture is your enemy, Liberty your friend.
Again with the name-calling and false characterizations. A smarter person would not even respond, but I'm too dumb to resist.
You apparently can't see that code format standards have some use other than stroking the ego of those who create them.
Oh, I can see that they have some other use, even some minor benefit. I'm just claiming that the minor benefit is dwarfed by the harm done.
I really find the whole debate childish. Do grown men really still argue about where to put the curly braces, tabs, spaces, whitespace, etc.? About vi vs. emacs vs. Eclipse vs. DevStudio vs. NetBeans etc.? It's been so long since I was in an environment where that kind of thing occurred that I find it hard to believe this stuff still goes on. I guess I'm lucky, having quickly left the one company where this was an issue for greener pastures with more professional co-workers and more reasonable managers, where no one cared what editor you used or whether you K&R'd your braces or ANSI'd them -- where the only thing people really cared about was how you performed your duties and how good of product you and your team turned out.
Coding standards matter, even to the level of where to put the braces.
I strongly disagree. This is a problem only for the most unadaptable of people. Switching between one format and another while reading code is not only an extremely valuable skill (don't you ever consult code not written internally by your company, in textbooks, academic papers, open source?), but it just isn't that difficult (except to inflexible people who believe that their way is the only true way).
To not do so risks producing untidy, hard to read code.
Let's ignore the problems with the myth of untidy hard to read code being caused by code formatting problems and get to the real meat of the issue: code is hard to read iff it is either intentionally obfuscated (which really super-poor crazy formatting can fall into, but anyone who codes like that should be let go) or the code is structured poorly, which is entirely a code design problem, not a formatting problem. I've been around the block enough times to know which is the bigger problem, and it ain't formatting.
Seriously, if formatting is such a problem for you when you read code, then you should really familiarize yourself with tools like indent and astyle.
If everyone gets to use their favourite language, you'll end up with lots of code that no-one else except the author can reuse or debug.
I wasn't advocating that every individual member of a team choose their own language. Teams necessarily have to come to some consensus about the tools they will use to collaborate.
But that's a far cry from a top-down mandate that every programmer in the company use language X for every conceivable project, or that every programmer use IDE Y -- it's just not efficient or practical, and any gains achieved by such standardization are far outweighed by the attrition of excellent people that will flow towards freer workplace environments.
Name calling doesn't really address any of my points, now, does it? But I'll go ahead and address the primadonna epithet. In my eyes, a primmadonna is someone who is not only "always right," but who believes they are always right because they are superior to those around them. They are inflexible and, as you said, a pain in the ass to work with.
Do we agree so far?
Now, you tell me, who is the primmadonna:
(a) the person who believes that their code formatting rules are superior and should be forced on everyone around them, the person who believes that their manner of placing curly braces is the only true way and thus that anyone who doesn't do it that way is a 'pain in the ass', the person who believes that the language they most prefer is the one that should be dictated for all programmers?
or
(b) the person who believes that the people around them are sufficiently capable of making their own decisions about code formatting, and who is generally flexible when it comes to specific arguments regarding which language to use for which task, and who would never presume that his own preferences were as good of a fit for everyone else as they are for himself?
have you ever worked on a multi-developer project where one person insisted on using tabs when everyone else use spaces
Yes, yes I have. And it isn't a big deal.
I've worked on teams as small as 4 people, and as large as about 20. And it was never a problem. Maybe I'm lucky -- I've always worked with people who are adaptable and competent, and who don't get confused if someone used tabs in one file and spaces in another.
Here's the alternative that works just fine -- each developer has "ownership" of the code they write. And each piece of code is formatted as its owner pleases.
What happens when two developers need to work on the same file? As long as 'ownership' is generally understood, the developer who doesn't 'own' the file conforms to the owner's style, and just edits it in a way that is as conformant as possible. If the second developer doesn't do this quite right, the first can always clean it up later.
Once in a while, a piece of code slips from one owner to another. At that point, both the previous owner and the new owner will recognize that it has happened, and the new owner is free to reformat that whole kaboodle to his liking
Seriously, with tools like indent and astyle (not to mention IDE specific formatters), you'd think we'd be over this childish bickering about where to put the curly braces by now. It simply doesn't matter. Pretending that it does is wasting effort and time.
Here's how to tell that the people that surround you, um, how to put this delicately... 'lack critical thinking skills':
They advocate standardizing all software development on one language
They advocate standardizing all development tools in one IDE
They advocate standardizing all code formatting into one standard (tabs v. spaces, how far to indent, where to put the curlys, etc.).
They advocate standardizing on hitting '60' instead of '100' when you use the microwave and want to heat for 1 minute.
They advocate standardizing on one height for all adjustable chairs in the office.
Notice a pattern?
If there are enough people in your organization that this issue actually has to be debated, you might as well start looking for an exit -- the company is doomed to, at best, forever wallow in mediocrity. I'm not exagerating. This type of 'discussion' shows a serious disregard for reason, logic, and a lack of respect for wisdom. It's a serious indication that those spearheading the push have no clue what they should be doing in their roles -- they can't figure out how to do real work that would actually be valuable to the company, so they choose to waste their time on this.
There is something else at play here: whoever is pushing for this doesn't trust their developers to make sane decisions regarding development tools. Maybe that mistrust is warranted, maybe it isn't. Either way, you are screwed.
Now, if you were talking about a 5-man startup, it's almost a sure bet that you are all going to be writing in the same language, and you might even all be using the same IDE. Same if you are working in a small team in a larger organization. But a company-wide push to put all your eggs arbitrarily in one basket? Insane. For one, it means that the company will only attract (or keep) programmers who are not interested in developing new skills. And a programmer who is not interested in keeping their toolset current is generally a very poor programmer.
If Amazon had applied for a 'limited patent' (if they had been available), their patent term would already be up, today. As it stands, we've got to wait until, what, 2018?
I agree that the lower barrier might mean more patents of this limited sort would be applied for and granted, but that seems like a small price to pay for shortening the monopoly term from 20 to 4 years. It just means that all those low-quality ideas will have their patent monopolies expire that much more quickly.
In an ideal world (which is, by definition, one where I am the benevolent dictator:) ), I would make it one of my first orders of business to abolish patents. But, I'm sad to say, I am not ruler of the world, and there are a lot of people and interests who want to keep the patent system around -- and even a bunch who want to push it further to maximalize patent monopoly power. I'd gladly accept a compromise that gets us closer to abolishing patents (4 years instead of 20), rather than rejecting every reform that falls short of that goal.
so if I patent my nifty new super bode imaginging system, I can only enforce my patentent after I manage to get financing? hello, anybody home?
No. The proposed limited patents do not negate your ability to apply for a traditional patent, with traditional protection. You could still choose that instead.
Prior art isn't just previous patents.
Technically you are correct. Practically (and sadly), prior art is just previous patents.
As a matter of definition, the work that is done at universities is done in the open. Papers are published, websites are put up, interviews to the press are granted, articles are written in the campus news. Most academic research is not done secretly, squirreled away for years behind closed doors. That's the point of academia, and to a larger degree, science -- make your results generally known at the earliest possible time (so that you get credit for your breakthroughs) and give enough details so that others can duplicate the results. This openness is the bedrock of modern science.
In my case, the patent holder found my work via google. They then cease-and-desisted me. It was actually over some research I had done as part of my coursework, and I was no longer pursuing it. Unfortunately, others still were pursuing it, and I routinely had people email me for the software tools and data sets, all of which became unavailable after the patent holder made me pull them.
One of my regrets is that I didn't fight the patent holder. I was nearly graduated, was juggling a new job, we had just had a new baby, etc., and I simply didn't have time to fight. There was no way I could have fought alone -- I simply did not have the resources to support even a speedy litigation proceeding. But I probably could have employed the university to help me out, and I wish I would have, because I've since come to believe that the patent portfolio was on very shaky ground, and I might have been able to invalidate significant portions.
As for the matter of attacking you -- I didn't. I attacked your ignorant dismissal of an issue that is far more important and complex than the characterization you gave it. Nothing personal.
What you say is technically true, but that's not the way it works in real life.
As one who was 'cease-and-desisted' while in college performing research, I'll just go ahead and respond by calling "bullshit."
It is easy to sit back and say that this stuff doesn't affect you and that only the ignorant think that it matters, until you are negatively affected by it. And then you realize that you should have been standing up the whole while, making sure your voice was heard.
'Damages' may not be the right word, because it implies, once again, something to do with the marketplace.
Patent rights, as defined by current laws, have little to do with the marketplace. That is why, for instance, a 'patent troll' can collect royalties without ever producing a product whatsoever. In that case, what damages did I do to their product? Zero, because they don't have a product. But that isn't how the system is set up.
Patent holders are given the right to prevent anyone from practicing any of the claims of their patent. They excercise this right by either 1) demanding that any infringers cease their activities or 2) demanding that an infringer pay them a royalty so that they won't do #1.
In that light, 'damages' is whatever price the patent holder sets for the licensing fee. In this skewed (but legally entrenched) mindset, you did 'damages' simply by not paying the patent holder for the license.
Suppose I have a patent on selling iced chocolate syrup with chunks of mustard in it. And suppose that I've decided that anyone who wants to license this from me must pay $1,000,000 anually. Further suppose that you are a researcher at Berkeley and you've independently discoverd that a neat chemical reaction occurs when you put mustard with chocolate and that if this concoction is injected directly into the eyeball, it will cure diabetes. Suppose I get wind of this and demand that you pay me my royalty or stop your research. You refuse. A year later a court determines that you indeed violated my patent. What are the damages? Well, wouldn't I claim that you willfully infringed my patent and therefore that you should pay me licensing x 3? And regardless of whether the 'reasonable' royalty is $1million or $1000, you are going to pay a whole lot more than $0.
There is no exemption for non-commercial use of patent claims. Patent monopolies are complete -- they give the holder the exclusive right to exclude everyone from exercising any of the processes, methods, or claims outlined in the patent, including researchers and the guy tinkering in his basement.
Follow the link to the AAAS report on how patents are killing scientific research if this still isn't clear to you -- 40% of pure research is adversely affected in some way by patent licensing issues, with roughly 20% of research projects being canceled each year because of problems with patent holders.
The 'penalty' is that it is illegal to do the research without the permission of the patent holder. Here's how it works:
A scientist independently arrives at an idea that may be covered by an overly-broad or obvious patent claim. The scientist innocently begins conducting research in the area (because there is no way he is keeping track of the 100s of thousands of patents filed each year), eventually letting the world know what he is working on. Big Corp[s] (or Patent Troll[s]) that hold a patent gets wind of his work, and sends him a threatening 'cease-and-desist' letter.
If the researcher continues past this point, and a court later finds that his work did violate the patent, he is guilty of willful infringement, resulting in court-ordered payment to the patent holder. If willful, those payments may be treble what they would have been had the researcher licensed the technology upfront. And the patent holder can still force the researcher to stop his research immediately.
Patents grant are a legal right to exclude others from excercising the claims of the patent. That's it. Under current law, there is no exclusion for people excercising the claims in the name of science, solely for their own personal use, etc. The exclusion is 100%. It is an artificial monopoly.
The original AAAS report on the effect of patents on science was broadly conducted across disciplines. Patents are not only a problem in BioTech and genetic research. There are *many* reports of research being canceled in electronics and even, yes, in pure computer science. For example, take a look at Chapter 11 of Security and Usability. The chapter is an overview of keystroke biometrics, and contains a section on the patent minefield in this area. It also states that one of the authors of the article was forced to remove keystroke collection and classification tools from the Internet by patent holders (perhaps unjustly), effectively killing research they were conducting in this area. Also take a look at slashdot threads following the original article on patents chilling science (linked above); there you'll find several other "me too" stories just like this one where researchers in computer science departments had to drop what they were doing because of patent licensing issues.
Re:the recommended changes require MORE laws?
on
The Patent Epidemic
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The only way I see anything falling apart is if the Internet gets regulated more, or if central authorities find a way to control it
But isn't that exactly what our current patent system allows? I.e., there isn't another priceline.com because priceline has a monopoly on Internet reverse auctions.
When I look at the number of patents issued that cover essential Internet techonologies and even simple programming practices, I see a world that teeters on the edge of widespread regulation and central control.
To date, many of these [defensive] patents haven't been excercised. But we are beginning to see the lawyers come out of the woodwork, so to speak, and trying to put anything up on the web is increasingly a process of obtaining the correct "permissions" from those holding exclusive patent monopolies.
I know this from personal experience, having had to remove a simple research project, website, and java applet from the web while in college because of a cease-and-desist letter received from a patent holder. It didn't matter that I didn't think the patents applied to my work. It didn't matter that I thought I could win the "right" to continue my work in a court of law -- I didn't have the resources to go through that battle, so I folded.
And I'm not the only one.
In my case, the project I worked on wasn't earth-shattering, but I certainly think it could have made the world just a tiny-eeny-wee bit better had I been allowed to continue. My fear is that we are squashing a lot of really earth-shattering stuff that could benefit all of us, as well as their inventors.
I won't die without the patent system
on
The Patent Epidemic
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· Score: 1, Informative
1) You will all die without a patent system. I'm not sure I'd have even been able to use pig insulin, let alone human from recombinant source insulin, without the patent regime. Who exactly is going to spend billions on cancer research if they have no market share following their discovery of the cure?
This is false, and is contradicted by a wealth of historical data and analysis of spending by drug companies. See Why Drug Companies Don't Need Patents
Re:the recommended changes require MORE laws?
on
The Patent Epidemic
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· Score: 1
Your views of the political world are very cynical. And I don't blame you -- our politicos inspire a lot of cynicism. And I absolutely agree that the corporate hijacking of our political process is discouraging.
But I cannot allow myself to wallow in cynicism. As long as there is a good fight worth fighting, I'll fight it. To do otherwise is cowardly, isn't it?
So, here's my challenge to you: if you don't like any of the proposed solutions, propose one that you do like, and let us know how to help and why we should. If you want to abolish the patent system, tell us how you plan to go about it, and what steps we can take to help you achieve it.
Otherwise, you are just sucking up valuable mindspace.
the recommended changes require MORE laws?
on
The Patent Epidemic
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The downside to the articles is that the recommended changes require MORE laws and MORE government intrusion rather than less. Does anyone really think that the same coercive laws can really be fixed with more coercive laws? Will we see laws "protecting" freedoms by taking them away?
So are you suggesting no change at all, or are you suggesting we get rid of the patent system altogether?
If you are sympathetic to the idea of abolishing patents and you live on this planet, the best you can hope for is gradual change towards weakening the power of patent monopolies. Only by performing the experiment of reducing patent force can our society begin to see the benefits of less government interference in essential human rights, such as the right to build stuff and the right to create new things -- rights that patent monopolies prevent you from doing.
So I guess what I'm saying is, instead of pooh-pooing meaningful patent reform, you should be supporting it. Unless, of course, you are advocating sitting on our hands and letting the IP-maximalists continue to increase and concentrate their power.
You seem to have missed the parent's point -- 'stealing' requires that you deprive someone else of a thing. I can't 'steal' your idea, because I can't deprive you of thinking it. I can't 'steal' your music because I can't prevent you from singing it. Etc. Thomas Jefferson said this much better than I ever could:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Theft is an act of force. Monopolies wield complete market force (control of production levels, availability, pricing, etc). Patents and copyright are government-granted monopolies. Take these facts together and you'll see that 'strong' IP regimes have much more in common with theivery than the free sharing of ideas does.
Honestly, anyone using the phrase "pure OO programming" and referencing C++ should probably be shot in the head.
:) I'll go ahead and agree with you. I should have said that I've spent the last few years trying very hard to do OO programming in C++ despite its severe OO problems.
I'll make a bold counter-claim: Object-oriented programming is a bad substitute for straight-forward dynamic binding and typing.
I've been doing almost pure OO programming for the past 8 years (using mostly C++ and Java), but recently took up Python (for python-twisted and pyWxWindows) and Ruby on Rails (for server-side development), and I can tell you that it is much simpler, easier to debug, and quicker to get done than taking the time to create massive class hierarchies whose inheritance structures and interfaces only exist to satisfy type-safety requirements.
Don't get me wrong. I like writing class hierarchies as much as the next guy. I've spent years doing it. But when I compare what I can get done in 30 minutes in, say, Python, to what I can't get done in 3 hours in C++, the advantages start to become very clear.
First small inventors are not without options. They are encouraged by the system to market and sell (or lease) their rights to larger groups that have the money to defend them and the resources to bring them to market....That average readers think they carry any actual weight is a product of not informing themselves or hiring someone who is more informed to represent them.
Wow. So what you've basically admitted here is that small inventors get totally screwed by the system. If I'm not a corp, I'm encouraged to sell or license my invention? That's it? You've got to be kidding. If I don't have the money to pursue litigation, why would anyone license from me? Oh, I get it -- I'm supposed to sell to a patent holding company, right? They can pay me a small pittance and then sue the bejeebers out of someone else with their arsenal? I'm supposed to feed my ideas into the patent troll and feel good about it, because they tossed me a bone?
This doesn't sound anything like "promoting the useful arts and sciences." It sounds like a system hijacked by interests that are consumed with extorting as much money as possible out of corrupt practices.
As for Nakamura. He was not working alone is some garage. He was part of a large team of engineers refining LEDs.
Buzz, wrong. Or at least mostly (I'll grant that he wasn't doing this in a garage). He was working alone. The R&D lab at Nichia consisted entirely of Nakamura by the time he embarked on the blue LED research.
The company, on the other hand, had been pursing LED tech for some time before and after Nakamura.
Wrong again. Nakamura couldn't get his bosses to let him work on blue LED research -- he had to go straight to the company's chairman and threaten quitting to get the research approved.
I'm sorry, but you lost credibility long ago. Now you are just making stuff up. Just an observation about people in general: those who have to lie to themselves to justify their own actions often end up creating their own reality around lies. Do you really believe what you are saying? Because it certainly is coming across as less and less believable with every sentence you write.
Capitalism relies on the idea of property. You have to materialize any thing of value so it can be traded and protected. This includes inventive concepts.
Patents as an analogy to real, physical property: Yawn. Sorry, it doesn't work. You can call it "intellectual property" all you want, but the truth is, patents share little in common with real property. Lack of scarcity, ease of transferrence, impossibility of theft, absurdity of the term "private intellectual property", etc. In the words of Jefferson:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
I'm a bit confused as to how the latter statement refutes the former. Patent examiners can be highly competent and well-informed while still being overworked and underpaid.
Okay, good point. I suppose a more logical line of argument is that no matter how much technical material the patent examiner reads, no matter how many similar patent applications he processes, he can't be as specialized in the field as a practitioner, because there is a lot of knowledge that the practitioner gains by practice that is not written down anywhere. This is absolutely true with software patents, and the reason why techniques, data structures, and interfaces that have been in common use for many years can suddenly receive patent protection -- the examiner doesn't know about these because the examiner isn't writing source code all day.
Now, this isn't the examiner's fault, and it isn't to say that the examiner is an idiot. Quite the opposite; the examiner is likely very knowledgeable, educated, and otherwise smart. But the process is dumb. Leaving a judgement about 'obviousness' and prior art up to a single overwhelmed examiner who is tied to their patent office desk for most of their waking life is not a process that is likely to yield good results, and we can all verify that by following patent news or reading granted patents.
It would be much saner to have some sort of a peer review process, led by the examiner, but conducted largely by a committee of actual practitioners. These could be volunteers, academics, or even people from industry.
Or, we could just abolish patents (at least software) altogether.:)
Slashdot Mirror
We live in a pluralistic society. The norm is for rational people to disagree civily with one another. The solution is not to issue a fatwa that quells all dissent. The solution is to embrace the diversity of opinion and encourage discussion. You can't do that if you lobotomize everyone so that they think the same way. Monoculture is your enemy, Liberty your friend.
I really find the whole debate childish. Do grown men really still argue about where to put the curly braces, tabs, spaces, whitespace, etc.? About vi vs. emacs vs. Eclipse vs. DevStudio vs. NetBeans etc.? It's been so long since I was in an environment where that kind of thing occurred that I find it hard to believe this stuff still goes on. I guess I'm lucky, having quickly left the one company where this was an issue for greener pastures with more professional co-workers and more reasonable managers, where no one cared what editor you used or whether you K&R'd your braces or ANSI'd them -- where the only thing people really cared about was how you performed your duties and how good of product you and your team turned out.
Seriously, if formatting is such a problem for you when you read code, then you should really familiarize yourself with tools like indent and astyle.
But that's a far cry from a top-down mandate that every programmer in the company use language X for every conceivable project, or that every programmer use IDE Y -- it's just not efficient or practical, and any gains achieved by such standardization are far outweighed by the attrition of excellent people that will flow towards freer workplace environments.
Do we agree so far?
Now, you tell me, who is the primmadonna:
(a) the person who believes that their code formatting rules are superior and should be forced on everyone around them, the person who believes that their manner of placing curly braces is the only true way and thus that anyone who doesn't do it that way is a 'pain in the ass', the person who believes that the language they most prefer is the one that should be dictated for all programmers?
or
(b) the person who believes that the people around them are sufficiently capable of making their own decisions about code formatting, and who is generally flexible when it comes to specific arguments regarding which language to use for which task, and who would never presume that his own preferences were as good of a fit for everyone else as they are for himself?
Pot, meet Kettle.
I've worked on teams as small as 4 people, and as large as about 20. And it was never a problem. Maybe I'm lucky -- I've always worked with people who are adaptable and competent, and who don't get confused if someone used tabs in one file and spaces in another.
Here's the alternative that works just fine -- each developer has "ownership" of the code they write. And each piece of code is formatted as its owner pleases.
What happens when two developers need to work on the same file? As long as 'ownership' is generally understood, the developer who doesn't 'own' the file conforms to the owner's style, and just edits it in a way that is as conformant as possible. If the second developer doesn't do this quite right, the first can always clean it up later.
Once in a while, a piece of code slips from one owner to another. At that point, both the previous owner and the new owner will recognize that it has happened, and the new owner is free to reformat that whole kaboodle to his liking
Seriously, with tools like indent and astyle (not to mention IDE specific formatters), you'd think we'd be over this childish bickering about where to put the curly braces by now. It simply doesn't matter. Pretending that it does is wasting effort and time.
Notice a pattern?
If there are enough people in your organization that this issue actually has to be debated, you might as well start looking for an exit -- the company is doomed to, at best, forever wallow in mediocrity. I'm not exagerating. This type of 'discussion' shows a serious disregard for reason, logic, and a lack of respect for wisdom. It's a serious indication that those spearheading the push have no clue what they should be doing in their roles -- they can't figure out how to do real work that would actually be valuable to the company, so they choose to waste their time on this.
There is something else at play here: whoever is pushing for this doesn't trust their developers to make sane decisions regarding development tools. Maybe that mistrust is warranted, maybe it isn't. Either way, you are screwed.
Now, if you were talking about a 5-man startup, it's almost a sure bet that you are all going to be writing in the same language, and you might even all be using the same IDE. Same if you are working in a small team in a larger organization. But a company-wide push to put all your eggs arbitrarily in one basket? Insane. For one, it means that the company will only attract (or keep) programmers who are not interested in developing new skills. And a programmer who is not interested in keeping their toolset current is generally a very poor programmer.
Smart people don't build monocultures on purpose.
The truth is, drug patents are the best case to be made in favor of patents. The only problem is that even that example provides a weak case.
I agree that the lower barrier might mean more patents of this limited sort would be applied for and granted, but that seems like a small price to pay for shortening the monopoly term from 20 to 4 years. It just means that all those low-quality ideas will have their patent monopolies expire that much more quickly.
In an ideal world (which is, by definition, one where I am the benevolent dictator :) ), I would make it one of my first orders of business to abolish patents. But, I'm sad to say, I am not ruler of the world, and there are a lot of people and interests who want to keep the patent system around -- and even a bunch who want to push it further to maximalize patent monopoly power. I'd gladly accept a compromise that gets us closer to abolishing patents (4 years instead of 20), rather than rejecting every reform that falls short of that goal.
In my case, the patent holder found my work via google. They then cease-and-desisted me. It was actually over some research I had done as part of my coursework, and I was no longer pursuing it. Unfortunately, others still were pursuing it, and I routinely had people email me for the software tools and data sets, all of which became unavailable after the patent holder made me pull them.
One of my regrets is that I didn't fight the patent holder. I was nearly graduated, was juggling a new job, we had just had a new baby, etc., and I simply didn't have time to fight. There was no way I could have fought alone -- I simply did not have the resources to support even a speedy litigation proceeding. But I probably could have employed the university to help me out, and I wish I would have, because I've since come to believe that the patent portfolio was on very shaky ground, and I might have been able to invalidate significant portions.
As for the matter of attacking you -- I didn't. I attacked your ignorant dismissal of an issue that is far more important and complex than the characterization you gave it. Nothing personal.
Patent rights, as defined by current laws, have little to do with the marketplace. That is why, for instance, a 'patent troll' can collect royalties without ever producing a product whatsoever. In that case, what damages did I do to their product? Zero, because they don't have a product. But that isn't how the system is set up.
Patent holders are given the right to prevent anyone from practicing any of the claims of their patent. They excercise this right by either 1) demanding that any infringers cease their activities or 2) demanding that an infringer pay them a royalty so that they won't do #1.
In that light, 'damages' is whatever price the patent holder sets for the licensing fee. In this skewed (but legally entrenched) mindset, you did 'damages' simply by not paying the patent holder for the license.
Suppose I have a patent on selling iced chocolate syrup with chunks of mustard in it. And suppose that I've decided that anyone who wants to license this from me must pay $1,000,000 anually. Further suppose that you are a researcher at Berkeley and you've independently discoverd that a neat chemical reaction occurs when you put mustard with chocolate and that if this concoction is injected directly into the eyeball, it will cure diabetes. Suppose I get wind of this and demand that you pay me my royalty or stop your research. You refuse. A year later a court determines that you indeed violated my patent. What are the damages? Well, wouldn't I claim that you willfully infringed my patent and therefore that you should pay me licensing x 3? And regardless of whether the 'reasonable' royalty is $1million or $1000, you are going to pay a whole lot more than $0.
It's insane, but that's how it works.
Follow the link to the AAAS report on how patents are killing scientific research if this still isn't clear to you -- 40% of pure research is adversely affected in some way by patent licensing issues, with roughly 20% of research projects being canceled each year because of problems with patent holders.
A scientist independently arrives at an idea that may be covered by an overly-broad or obvious patent claim. The scientist innocently begins conducting research in the area (because there is no way he is keeping track of the 100s of thousands of patents filed each year), eventually letting the world know what he is working on. Big Corp[s] (or Patent Troll[s]) that hold a patent gets wind of his work, and sends him a threatening 'cease-and-desist' letter.
If the researcher continues past this point, and a court later finds that his work did violate the patent, he is guilty of willful infringement, resulting in court-ordered payment to the patent holder. If willful, those payments may be treble what they would have been had the researcher licensed the technology upfront. And the patent holder can still force the researcher to stop his research immediately.
Patents grant are a legal right to exclude others from excercising the claims of the patent. That's it. Under current law, there is no exclusion for people excercising the claims in the name of science, solely for their own personal use, etc. The exclusion is 100%. It is an artificial monopoly.
The original AAAS report on the effect of patents on science was broadly conducted across disciplines. Patents are not only a problem in BioTech and genetic research. There are *many* reports of research being canceled in electronics and even, yes, in pure computer science. For example, take a look at Chapter 11 of Security and Usability. The chapter is an overview of keystroke biometrics, and contains a section on the patent minefield in this area. It also states that one of the authors of the article was forced to remove keystroke collection and classification tools from the Internet by patent holders (perhaps unjustly), effectively killing research they were conducting in this area. Also take a look at slashdot threads following the original article on patents chilling science (linked above); there you'll find several other "me too" stories just like this one where researchers in computer science departments had to drop what they were doing because of patent licensing issues.
But isn't that exactly what our current patent system allows? I.e., there isn't another priceline.com because priceline has a monopoly on Internet reverse auctions.
When I look at the number of patents issued that cover essential Internet techonologies and even simple programming practices, I see a world that teeters on the edge of widespread regulation and central control.
To date, many of these [defensive] patents haven't been excercised. But we are beginning to see the lawyers come out of the woodwork, so to speak, and trying to put anything up on the web is increasingly a process of obtaining the correct "permissions" from those holding exclusive patent monopolies.
I know this from personal experience, having had to remove a simple research project, website, and java applet from the web while in college because of a cease-and-desist letter received from a patent holder. It didn't matter that I didn't think the patents applied to my work. It didn't matter that I thought I could win the "right" to continue my work in a court of law -- I didn't have the resources to go through that battle, so I folded.
And I'm not the only one.
In my case, the project I worked on wasn't earth-shattering, but I certainly think it could have made the world just a tiny-eeny-wee bit better had I been allowed to continue. My fear is that we are squashing a lot of really earth-shattering stuff that could benefit all of us, as well as their inventors.
This is false, and is contradicted by a wealth of historical data and analysis of spending by drug companies. See Why Drug Companies Don't Need Patents
But I cannot allow myself to wallow in cynicism. As long as there is a good fight worth fighting, I'll fight it. To do otherwise is cowardly, isn't it?
So, here's my challenge to you: if you don't like any of the proposed solutions, propose one that you do like, and let us know how to help and why we should. If you want to abolish the patent system, tell us how you plan to go about it, and what steps we can take to help you achieve it.
Otherwise, you are just sucking up valuable mindspace.
So are you suggesting no change at all, or are you suggesting we get rid of the patent system altogether?
If you are sympathetic to the idea of abolishing patents and you live on this planet, the best you can hope for is gradual change towards weakening the power of patent monopolies. Only by performing the experiment of reducing patent force can our society begin to see the benefits of less government interference in essential human rights, such as the right to build stuff and the right to create new things -- rights that patent monopolies prevent you from doing.
So I guess what I'm saying is, instead of pooh-pooing meaningful patent reform, you should be supporting it. Unless, of course, you are advocating sitting on our hands and letting the IP-maximalists continue to increase and concentrate their power.
Theft is an act of force. Monopolies wield complete market force (control of production levels, availability, pricing, etc). Patents and copyright are government-granted monopolies. Take these facts together and you'll see that 'strong' IP regimes have much more in common with theivery than the free sharing of ideas does.
I've been doing almost pure OO programming for the past 8 years (using mostly C++ and Java), but recently took up Python (for python-twisted and pyWxWindows) and Ruby on Rails (for server-side development), and I can tell you that it is much simpler, easier to debug, and quicker to get done than taking the time to create massive class hierarchies whose inheritance structures and interfaces only exist to satisfy type-safety requirements.
Don't get me wrong. I like writing class hierarchies as much as the next guy. I've spent years doing it. But when I compare what I can get done in 30 minutes in, say, Python, to what I can't get done in 3 hours in C++, the advantages start to become very clear.
This doesn't sound anything like "promoting the useful arts and sciences." It sounds like a system hijacked by interests that are consumed with extorting as much money as possible out of corrupt practices.
Buzz, wrong. Or at least mostly (I'll grant that he wasn't doing this in a garage). He was working alone. The R&D lab at Nichia consisted entirely of Nakamura by the time he embarked on the blue LED research. Wrong again. Nakamura couldn't get his bosses to let him work on blue LED research -- he had to go straight to the company's chairman and threaten quitting to get the research approved.I'm sorry, but you lost credibility long ago. Now you are just making stuff up. Just an observation about people in general: those who have to lie to themselves to justify their own actions often end up creating their own reality around lies. Do you really believe what you are saying? Because it certainly is coming across as less and less believable with every sentence you write.
Patents as an analogy to real, physical property: Yawn. Sorry, it doesn't work. You can call it "intellectual property" all you want, but the truth is, patents share little in common with real property. Lack of scarcity, ease of transferrence, impossibility of theft, absurdity of the term "private intellectual property", etc. In the words of Jefferson:Now, this isn't the examiner's fault, and it isn't to say that the examiner is an idiot. Quite the opposite; the examiner is likely very knowledgeable, educated, and otherwise smart. But the process is dumb. Leaving a judgement about 'obviousness' and prior art up to a single overwhelmed examiner who is tied to their patent office desk for most of their waking life is not a process that is likely to yield good results, and we can all verify that by following patent news or reading granted patents.
It would be much saner to have some sort of a peer review process, led by the examiner, but conducted largely by a committee of actual practitioners. These could be volunteers, academics, or even people from industry.
Or, we could just abolish patents (at least software) altogether. :)