Using Excel for school level science may be acceptable but as the UK NPL and others have found, Excel is the one that is not up to par, Gnumeric is greatly superior and scientists should not blindly trust the software they use anyway - especially when the only way to verify it's reliability is to treat it to empirical scientific investigation itself, amusing though that may be.
Patents have never before been applied to works that are immediate realisations of pencil and paper work and that don't have to take into account the realities of the physical world. If machines and other artefacts could be built like programmes can, the world would look very strange, elaborate and exotic today - probably quite beautiful - unless in the Industrial Revolution of this parallel world, patents had taken hold - then it would probably look more like Basingstoke, Croydon or Slough.;-)
It seems to me there is a freedom in programming that is like the freedom in art and that arises from the fact that the full range of abstract mathematics is available to the programmer, rather than just that which will work in the real world and because there is an immediacy of implementation and an intimacy between idea and expression like that which there is between composer and piano keyboard. Software patents are generally directed toward the utilitarian aspects of programming - it's fundamental techniques and ideas, yet strangely it is obvious to everyone that such kinds of patents if applied to literature or cinematography or music would have only a detrimental effect.
It is interesting to wonder if one day artists (or publishers of art) might foolishly decide to embark on a patent land grab as is occurring in the software world. If you think that is not possible because of the technicity/usefulness requirements of patents, consider the Pollock techniques of splatter painting at a certain constant average fractal dimension, or the Da Vinci low frequency technique of causing a sense of elusivity and enigma. (Check out Semir Zeki's book; "Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain" and much other work on the science of perception). Recent work in analysis of music too has resulted in (among other things) researchers claiming to have found techniques for generating 'hit songs' automatically. It can only be a matter of time before one cannot engage in any activity at all without infringing someone else's exclusive right to use the techniques associated with it.:)
Everybody - even RMS himself - uses this as an example of a possibly reasonable patent but it most certainly is not. The RSA encryption algorithm patent was an example of almost the worst possible kind of patent there can be. It is pure mathematics, it is the obvious algorithmic application of a trivial lemma in number theory that A CHILD can understand and the only thing that saves it from being the absolute worst possible kind is that it doesn't have many (any?) other applications.
As mathematicians, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman should be ashamed of themselves anyway but they weren't even the first to discover the lemma and it's obvious application - Clifford Cocks at GCHQ found it 4 years before R,S and A.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." [Bill Gates, 1991]
A common mistake: To achieve the success of a successful business, you should imitate what you see they are doing now. Of course what you should really do is imitate what they did to become successful.
Microsoft didn't copy IBM and they are not as stupid as IBM was when it provided the opportunities that Microsoft jumped at, and now the ladder Microsoft climbed to reach it's dizzy heights is being pulled up into the sky by it's army of patent scribes.
Re:Those are 'prior art' pictures, to show contras
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Microsoft Patents sudo
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"The patent is apparently for MS's improvment of the concept by actually showing small recognizable representations of each desktop in a "preview" pane that shows all the desktops, and for being able to transfer application windows from a different virtual desktop to the current one, without actually bringing up the other desktop."
That's an excellent description of the Enlightenment pager. I'm pretty sure it's been there since before April 5 2002.
Yes, you are right of course and it's even possible for corporations to behave deliberately ethically (possibly as part of their business plan), it's just not something to expect or rely on.
Yes, I know Microsoft is promoting software patentability and when it does so it's arguments must be countered vigorously but that doesn't mean you should show that you're willing to throw away your principles simply because it is your 'enemy' who is being harmed by the evil you claim to despise. Landaras understood that and my response to his original post was because I think it is counterproductive to harbour feelings of antipathy toward publically owned corporations. They will always do what they think is expedient and in the narrow interests of their shareholders and there is no point in getting peeved about it.
Something does appear to have gone badly wrong within some Western democracies lately; the moral and intellectual calibre of many of our representatives seems exceptionally poor and they have let the influence of special interest groups reach far into the heart of government but that is their failing, not that of the lobbyists and it is right and useful to be outraged at their wilful failure to discharge their duties to the public diligently and ethically.
The Patent Offices don't work in a vacuum: If Lord Sainsbury told the U.K. PTO not to violate the letter and spirit of the EPC, they would be obliged to comply. Courts and Judges, who by their incompetent and short-sighted decisions build the case law that validates software patentability are acting as legislators too.
I'm well aware of what is going on in some apparently mismanaged corporations but even so, they are only playing the game and their asking and arguing comes under promoting software patentability, not using software patents. The board of directors of Microsoft are not blindly allowing their 'I.P.' department carte blanche to damage their strategic interests though. Theirs is a deliberate policy but it is amoral not immoral - they genuinely believe it's in the best interests of their shareholders - and they'd just shrug their collective shoulders and find some other way to maintain their profitability if only the politicians and legislators had wit, courage and integrity enough to stand up to them and do what is right for society.
"I believe it is, and as such I cannot fully get behind the offensive use of software patents, even against an enemy such as Microsoft".
Right. But I'd drop the adjective 'fully': Neither Microsoft nor any other company is the enemy, except when they are actively promoting software patentability. Companies are amoral entities at best and we shouldn't expect them to behave with any measure of philanthropy or social responsibility - the most we can demand is that they act lawfully. The real enemies are the corrupt, incompetent or short-sighted politicians and legislators who make and administrate the laws that enable such companies to behave immorally and unethically, yet perfectly legally.
"There seems to be this ongoing problem that I'm arguing about what should and shouldn't be patentable, and you keep throwing in references to specific European rules. It seems to me that existing rules are irrelevant to what should and shouldn't be patentable so I'm not sure why you keep throwing these things in."
There is no problem; I'm well aware of what you're arguing for - unlimited patentability of abstract algorithms, methods and processes, commonly referred to in the literature as programme claims. Existing rules are relevant because they have not appeared out of nowhere and for no reason. Just like everything else that you wish to dismiss as irrelevant (economic reality, ethics, practical patent administration realities, the history and background of patents and software patents in particular, the difference between the abstract and the physical,...). If you think that what should and should not be patented can reasonably be decided on the basis of your frankly irrational and mistaken beliefs about patents and your unfounded and risible dream of some uniquely efficient patent administration, then you are deluded.
"But again, as I've pointed out over and over and you've even recognized is a valid point, patenting algorithms is not inherently bad."
What nonsense is this? - recognized as a valid point indeed! - you have even quoted me before your last paragraph as describing algorithm patents as appalling! All patents are inherently bad, as Jefferson recognized two centuries ago, and that is why they are properly treated with extreme caution and allowed only where their benefits can be shown to outweigh their evils.
"The criteria I've suggested...weed out all of the examples of any harmful ones you (or anyone else) have provided. In my solution, everybody wins. In your solution, a lot of people lose."
Pure fantasy! and not unexpected given that your 'solution' is contingent on an imaginary and idealised patent regime. You have asserted that there are such criteria but not stated a single one of them and surely you cannot really mean that they consist only of "basically the same rules for physcial objects (obviousness, prior art, physical laws, etc.)" because those are exactly the criteria used to grant patents on algorithms you claim to wish to exclude.
However in all cases the plan-conformant utilisation of controllable natural forces has been named as an essential precondition for asserting the technical character of an invention. As shown above, the inclusion of human mental forces as such into the realm of the natural forces, on whose utilisation in creating an innovation the technical character of that innovation is founded, would lead to the consequence that virtually all results of human mental activity, as far as they constitute an instruction for plan-conformant action and are causally overseeable, would have to be attributed a technical meaning. In doing so, we would however de facto give up the concept of the technical invention and extend the patent system to a vast field of achievements of the human mind whose essence and limits can neither be recognized nor overseen.... Any attempt to attain the protection of mental achievements by means of extending the limits of the technical invention -- and thereby in fact giving up this concept -- leads onto a forbidden path. We must therefore insist that a pure rule of organisation and calculation, whose sole relation to the realm of technology consists in its usability for the normal operation of a known computer, does not deserve patent protection. Whether it can be awarded protection under some other regime, e.g. copyright or competition law, is outside the scope of our discussion. Federal Court of Justice 1976: "Disposition Program" Decision
"See, here's the problem. You see them as special cases. I see them as the norm for what an algorithm is. The ones you are talking about, the ones harmful to open source a
"I'm not a fan of software patents, but if I did spend good money in getting one, it was made useless/unenforcable, and I didn't get a refund, I think I'd be rather pissed off about it."
Then you should have read Article 52 of the EPC which explicitly excludes software patentability. The companies that have been granted software patents by the EPO are mostly the same companies now lobbying for legislation to make valid their patents. They knew the score. They have gambled. They will lose. Tough.
"The cause for the >30,000 "bad" software patents isn't because algorithms are patentable, it's because the criteria for allowing them has either been insufficiently applied (e.g., prior art, obviousness) or insufficiently defined."
Wait a minute! - You call them bad software patents, I just call them software patents. As the FFII says on it's front page: "For the last few years the European Patent Office (EPO) has, contrary to the letter and spirit of the existing law, granted more than 30000 patents on rules of organisation and calculation claimed in terms of general-purpose computing equipment, called "programs for computers" in the law of 1973 and "computer-implemented inventions" in EPO Newspeak since 2000.". It's not a matter of criteria being insufficiently applied but a simple fact that the E.P.O. have granted patents on inventions they should not have because they are specifically excluded by Article 52.
"But again, that's a problem with the process of awarding patents, not with the concept of patenting algorithms. The exact same thing is true with any form of patent."
Those comments of mine you quoted should be taken as merely additional justification for the premise that patentability of abstract ideas is inherently bad. I did not mean to convey the impression that my opposition is based solely on the ineffectiveness of the current patent infrastructure.
"It isn't specific to algorithms. Getting rid of algorithm patents will not get rid of the problem in general. It's basically saying the system is broken so lets get rid of the system as it pertains to my field, but leave everyone else screwed with a still broken system. (And in the process screw over some people in my field who have "legitimately" patentable algorithms.) I think it's a lousy and inappropriate solution."
Your position is understandable but it is narrowly drawn. What might suit your industry will damage or destroy others, damage individual civil liberties, damage free software, damage freedom of communication of ideas, promote monopolisation by enabling denial of interoperability etc. etc. You seem to think that pure software idea patents are valid now but they are not - only in one or two European countries would they stand up in court, hence the directive. We are not trying to throw anything out but prevent the imposition of some crass new legislation and return to the clear doctrines of the EPC. It is from that starting point that I and perhaps others would be willing to consider amendments for special and exceptional cases such as yours. General patentability of abstract software ideas - programme claims - is utterly unacceptable.
"There are several problems with this argument; you state that you can meet the "second condition", but you never supplied the first..."
Perhaps "meet the condition" was misleading, what I meant to imply was that the condition you imposed on arguments against patentability of abstract algorithms is wholly unreasonable and rather absurd. You insist that any argument against patentability of abstract algorithms must not also apply to physical devices. But by definition it would not: Since no abstract algorithm is identical with any physical device there is nothing to do in order to meet your condition. Your first sentence was a challenge to argue against the patentability of a special class of abstract algorithms, not abstract algorithms in general and I declined to do so because it seemed at least possible that they might prove to be extraordinary exceptions that might merit special consideration.
"I asked how the argument about how such patents (in the specific examples I gave) are harmful differs from the same arguement applied to physical devices."
It is very simple: The argument differs (at least) in it's subject. It's inapplicability to some other subject cannot therefore invalidate it - that would be absurd. Indeed much of the argument against software patentability depends
"It's naive because to the end user there is no difference between a box that performs a function completely electronically versus one that does the exact same thing through instructions running on a computer. It is figuring out how to do it that is the hard part."
Well the failure of the end user to perceive a difference or ascribe to it any importance cannot logically imply that there is no difference or any importance to any difference, but never mind - in view of later parts of your post, what you are saying deserves consideration anyway. You are clearly advocating the patentability of a certain class of abstract algorithm (you say it doesn't matter whether it runs on a general purpose computer or a circuit board specially constructed for the task) You are talking about the patentability of ideas, which is an extreme position, but you at least appear to want to introduce strict criteria for patentability. You then say (of these very particular algorithms): "They take just as much time, effort, money, imagination, etc., to develop as a mechanical device." and later: "These things take years of research and development and require as much expertise, ingenuity, expense, creativity, and time as any other type of invention. They are not obvious or trivial, and in no sense could patenting them ever cause any of the problems people are complaining about. Nobody could ever "accidently" code them and later find out they were patented. Nobody could see them performing their functions and then run off and do the same thing, not realizing they're patented." Now this is very interesting and to me at least it seems like a strong argument and I'll consider it your central point and return to it later.
"You make the assumption that allowing patents in any algorithm means all "general software ideas" are patentable."
Yes, because that is the way it has happened in the U.S. and it is the reason there are > 30,000 such patents already on the books at the E.P.O, and as Herr Bolkestein has said: "The question of how to define the patentability of computer-implemented inventions is thus becoming steadily more important especially as such inventions are estimated to cover 15% of new patent applications." The motivation for the proposed directive and even it's initial draft have originated not with companies like your own, for which I have, as you will see later, a measure of respect, but from bodies like the B.S.A, representing some of the most prolific recipients of the kind of software patent we both (I think) despise, and from the patent establishment (including the remarkably autonomous patent departments of some large companies), representing their own narrow interests. The sorry tale of deliberate obfuscation, bullying of Parliament, wilful disregard for and misrepresentation of the views of respondents to consultation, clear attempts to sneak universal patentability loopholes into the directive while claiming the opposite..., reveals the true intention of the European bureaucrats, which is to inflict on European citizens and businesses the exact same conditions of untrammelled patentabilty that obtain in the U.S.
"Then there's the "obvious" ones, such as the famous XOR patent."..."All of the examples I've seen so far fall into this category."
Here we have a major problem; you and I consider them obvious and unpatentable but others, especially patent examiners, may not. There are patents such as RSA, DHT and LZW which are the natural algorithmic forms of simple mathematical and logical ideas, appearing in elementary textbooks. There are more complex examples of course, such as the kind of stuff (wavelet and filter bank methods?) being patented by the BBC in their Dirac technology and Barnsley's fractal compression algorithms. What is concerning is that in all these areas, fundamental algorithms and methods are being patented - the consequent algorithmic expressions of elementary results in particular fields. To me that is entirely unacceptabl
"What I find naive is the idea that instructions in software is not an "implementation". If I have a box that does someting, say given some input it produces some output, then it doesn't really matter to the end user whether it's done mechanically, electronically, or through some software code."
I do not consider it naive to properly distinguish between instruction and implementation. Failure to do so would render the designs of material inventions patentable. Software is itself a written form of expression, a language in which to express abstract ideas. Just because a machine has been invented which can read those instructions in certain forms and implement them does not make the instructions themselves identical with their implementation. Such a notion is as absurd as instructing someone to do something and then claiming you did it yourself.
"If we couldn't patent the algorithms,..."
You should indeed not be able to patent the algorithms. If you choose to keep them secret, then so be it - it is far better that society maybe loses the benefits of disclosure in a few narrow fields than suffers the widespread damaging effects of general software idea patentability.
"What people have been complaining about is simple or general "software" patents (e.g., one-click shopping). The problem with these is that they are too obvious, have prior art, or are too general. (For example, we couldn't patent "automatic object recognition" since it isn't a method, but we could patent one method for doing it.) Patenting mathematical solutions also doesn't fall into this category. There are an infinite number of ways to do automatic target recogntion, some good and some bad. Mathematical solutions are like physical laws, they are unique solutions."
I don't see what you're trying to say here. It is not true that I and others are complaining only about simple or general software patents. We are disputing the validity of software patentability, period. You seem now to be trying to justify patentability of mathematics and physical laws (which are not unique solutions anyway). To me that is utterly repellent and there can be no justification for it, least of all the desires, wishes or needs of some few businesses.
" It [making money] may be your purpose, but it is not the purpose (or intention) of the law
Yes, in fact it is, at least indirectly. Referring again to the U.S. Constistution description of patents, it is for the purpose of promoting progress. As I mentioned above, the way it does this is by providing a limited monopoly in exchange for publishing how it works."
You contradict me then immediately contradict yourself. The granting of monopoly rights is the means by which the purpose is fulfilled, not the purpose itself.
"Again, discussing semantics and wording of specific laws is generally irrelevant."
That is an appalling stance. What you are saying is the semantics - the meaning - of laws (and the constitution) is irrelevant to _you_. If you perceive that the meaning of some law obstructs your personal commercial interests then it must have really meant something else. If the purpose of granting monopoly rights as set forth in the constitution reads "to promote progress..." what it really means is "to enable patentees to make profits". If the distinction between the words 'instruction' and 'implementation' is inconvenient, let us ignore it. I detect a pattern here.
"Without the ability to patent, my company never would have invested in the work we've done and developed these things. That's real, and a real result of what you are arguing."
It isn't 'real', it's a hypothesis - a 'what if' which neglects the possibility of secrecy you yourself suggested. You seem interested only in your own and your company's particular circumstances, which is understandable - but the software idea patentability which you insist is necessary for your economic survival is simply too damaging to the rest of society to be acceptable. Your own NRC and even the FTC have finally woken up to the fact that there is a problem but whether they do anything about it or not is not really my concern - Europe and the U.K is.
I'm not sure what it is you think is naive - to me it seems naive and dangerous to confuse abstract ideas expressed as works of software with useful material inventions, just as it is naive to confuse the designs of physical inventions with the inventions themselves. It is that distinction that motivates the entirely separate intentions of copyrights and patents (not just their respective areas of application) and although it is fair enough for you to have used the word 'intent' to refer to the general case of 'intellectual property' it is an obfuscatory generalisation in the current context.
"Basically, if I solve a problem and I can do it through software..."
Again - You can only solve abstract problems directly through software, not real world problems and it is precisely because of that distinction that the abstract solution in software is inherently broad and not appropriately patentable, any more than works in any other language in which abstract ideas are expressed. Some time ago, a similar argument was made by someone who suggested that the Viterbi algorithm was a valid patentable invention because it had been invented for the express purpose of solving a problem in digital communications. Perhaps it was, but it has since been found to apply in other fields like molecular biology and speech recognition. It is not an artificial invention at all, it is a mathematical discovery.
"...if I'm interested in making money on it (which is the purpose of patents)..."
It may be your purpose, but it is not the purpose (or intention) of the law, to hold the narrow interests of commerce above all else. As you may have read from Halo1's comments and links, software patents do not succeed in that respect anyway. I'm sure the large publishing companies could make a great case for literary idea patents but I doubt whether individual authors would fail to see the folly and obscenity of such a measure and it strikes me as extraordinary that anyone can fail to see the folly of software idea patents. If you had been programming professionally in the three or four decades before there even were any software patents you would perhaps have considered it as absurd and harmful as successful entrepreneurs like Salin and Walker did. The assertion that software patents are necessary to promote innovation in software development is ridiculous - the truth is that it is an ex post facto justification that has merit only for the holders of large portfolios of such patents.
Anyway - if software ideas are made patentable in Europe, or rather not made unpatentable, I hope the manufacturers of electronic computers do the honourable thing and relabel their products as 'Multi-function electronic appliances' and drop the misleading description 'Personal Computer' .
" So, why would the mechanical and electrical implementations be patentable but not the software implementation?"
Because the software is not an 'implementation' - it is a written description, a set of instructions to tell a general purpose computer how to implement an essentially abstract mental process. It is not the implementation itself and even it's implementation in a computer is qualitatively different to the physical implementations you describe: If the computer is behaving within it's tolerances, the output is a perfect representation of the idealised algorithm acting on the idealised inputs. There is no meaning to the phrase "algorithms and methods that are implemented in software". The implementation is in the hardware of the computer, which is itself an invention, designed expressly for the purpose of implementing abstract algorithms and processes.
"There are many examples of where an implementation can be done mechanically, electronically, or in software, and yet it's the same underlying algorithm."
As any physicist or engineer will tell you - there is a world of difference between the abstract theory that predicts the behaviour of a physical device and the actual behaviour of that physical device and an algorithm enacted in a computer is modelling the theory, not the physical reality. That is where the invention lies in justifiably patentable inventions - in the ability of the inventor to conform physical materials in such a way that they closely enact the desired behaviour. And that is where the problem with software idea patents lies - they are not patents on solutions to real world problems but on solutions to abstract idealised problems. They are patents on mathematics.
Your example of the flyball governor and it's electronic alternative is a case in point: The solution to the problem can be written down in abstract mathematical form at the outset. The inventor then seeks a means of conforming physical materials in such a way that they embody this solution. This is difficult and takes skill and inventiveness. The software developer on the other hand, takes the abstract mathematical solution and immediately translates it into programming language instructions.
"People aren't complaining about actual patents on software, they're complaining about patents on algorithms and methods that are implemented in software."
Again, the algorithms are not implemented in software, they are implemented in hardware that has been constructed to reliably perform the idealised algorithm or process described by the software instructions. The software patent is a patent on an abstraction, it immediately subsumes and embodies all possible solutions to the problem in it's idealised form - not it's real world form - the algorithm is just the unique function representing the desired relation on the product of the set of inputs and the set of outputs.
and never have been. The documents by Franklin on patents and McCaulay on copyright give some interesting historical foundation and context to the fundamental differences.
Mmmm... I often find that when I read the words of a 'thinker', it reminds me of the contributions of other great thinkers in history:
Like Einstein:
"Fuck you man, I'm tellin' ya - E=mc^2"
Or Gauss:
"Shit man - I think I'm gonna call this coinky-dink li'l theorem the Theorema Egregium"
Or Blake:
"Oh Rose, thou art freakin' sick man"
I suggest you return to Earth - you are not a thinker - you are a run-of-the-mill programmer, tossing off mundane and trivial little algorithmic ideas that are no more than programmatic expediencies which only an absurdly inflated ego could possibly describe as the works of a thinker. If the abstract ideas embodied in patented software inventions were were worth according their authors the title "thinker", then it would be essential that they not be patentable. As it is, they are at least abstract ideas and like the ideas in a complicated proof, or the component ideas of a literary narrative, or of a musical work, they belong to the mental, not the physical world and it is absurd and obscene to make them patentable inventions.
Ethics aside, your economically based arguments are hopelessly flawed. The opposition to software patentability in the U.S. was led by some of the most successful software entrepreneurs of the time but you would have us believe that you know better? Your penultimate paragraph is beyond reason - you would promote progress and innovation by dragging every incremental new idea in software through the courts? You know full well that the innovators you pretend to speak for will never be able to afford that privilege anyway.
You claim these software idea patents are somehow necessary for the progress of the useful art of software development, yet the software industry flourished long before they existed. Hundreds of thousands of professional programmers disagree with you. Scientists, economists and the representative organisations of 2 million European businesses disagree. Show us your patented ideas so that we can see what a truly patent-worthy software idea really looks like.
You condemn trade secrecy and say how much better to have these marvellous inventions public knowledge, that they may be used "a few years later". Perhaps you meant decades, which would've been nearer the truth - and a substantial fraction of the entire history of the field. But more importantly; you have it backwards: Trade secrecy would be ideal for these mundane and incremental inventions, at least for proprietary software.
With your final comment, you sweep away all free software and the community of hobbyists, enthusiasts - professional and amateur alike - that have rediscovered a more vigorous, productive and engaging way to develop software. You would have them "work around patents" or "improve on key components" of existing patents. But in the former case it is often simply not possible - an official standard for example or a whole field sewn up with fundamental patents, like fractal compression. And in the latter case, you'd force the free software developer to somehow find the license fees for the original patent anyway. But perhaps you are not really interested in the genuine development of new and varied software - real software that is - not just the idea of it. Perhaps you are only interested in promoting the stagnant and fruitless trade in the already myriad and burgeoning software patent pool, that large and wealthy corporations are so fond of.
"As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the Silicon Valley".
Now listen here you moderators - I've already had to tell you off once already today. The parent's post may be interesting, but only in the same sense as a novel or any other fictional work is interesting. If I have to tell you again, you will be doing an hour's meta-moderation every day after school for the rest of the month.;-)
And as for you boy - yes, you z0ink, you little rascal! Here's a piece of chalk. 100 times please:
"There are 30,000 or more software patents on the books in Europe. Microsoft wants them all to be enforceable in each and every country in Europe. Microsoft executives interrupt their vacations to involve themselves in the politics of the software choices of foreign governments."
And make sure you've finished by the time I come back!
"I remember when some of the windows source code was leaked, so many/.rs were looking for GPL code in it,.."
For copyright violation.
"...and yet when it comes time for Linux to lift ideas from Microsoft,/.rs get really mad because they don't think Microsoft should be allowed to own it's ideas."
It's patented ideas.
Really - I cannot understand what is the matter with the moderators this morning - this drivel isn't even factual and rational, let alone insightful.
"Are you sure the mental process is considered a forbidden use of the patent?"
I'm sure that it isn't - though perhaps that may not always be true - but the use of the computer as an aid to the mental process, and nothing more than that mental process, is forbidden. To forbid the use of a general purpose computer in this way is like saying you can hum a particular musical phrase quietly to yourself but you may not play it on any musical instrument. It is an absurd and unjust situation and utterly unlike the situation with ordinary patented inventions, in which the use of the invention and it's effect is quite obviously qualitatively distinct from the effect of simply imagining using it. You could stand on stage to give a musical recital and simply hand out copies of the score to the audience and ask them to imagine the music. They might not be very pleased but if you were an avant-garde composer you could probably get away with it. If you were a salesman in a shop and you handed over the design of a toaster instead of the toaster itself you would be taken away in a strait-jacket.
When you buy a musical instrument you do not then have to worry about what kinds of music you are allowed to play on it - what techniques and basic constructions you can use to create original music which you can also write down and freely distribute. And the fact that you can imagine the music just as well as if you'd played it aloud, shows that it too, like computer code, has the quality of being reproducible entirely by abstract mental processes - as do natural languages.
Likewise, I have every right to expect that my personal electronic computer - an instrument designed for the purpose of rapidly executing abstract mental ideas, expressible in computer programming languages, should be free for me to use in the way it was intended to be used (as an original invention in it's own right). Allowing ex post facto patenting of it's uses is as inane and unjust as that notorious U.S.patent on swinging sideways on a swing.
"I imagine that distributing a machine that implements the patent, or profiting from the execution of the patent on a commercial scale (a la the Amazon 1-click patent) would be required in order for there to be an issue."
Patents grant the right to exclusive _use_ of the invention; commerciality is not relevant, which is why free software and the foundation of the entire computing infrastructure I am pleased to rely on is threatened by them. And let's not forget that all this activity and freedom of legitimate use of computers is being forbidden for the mere convenience of a few large corporations and the community of patent lawyers. It is a disgrace and an outrage.
The nonsensical result is not to be found in any edge case but at the very heart of the matter - the offensive and unspeakably mindless notion that software ideas are justly and usefully patentable.
"That said, how does your argument about mental processes versus implemented computational processes differ from me going over the plotline to the Harry Potter novels in my head and me publishing my own Harry Potter ripoff novel? The difference is that in the one case it's all in my head, and in the second case, I'm publishing a work for distribution that either brings me income on J. K. Rowling's property or which may, arguably, decrease her income"
Errm... the mental process is the (forbidden) use of the actual patented invention, the plotline is not the actual copyrighted work. If you publish a copy of someone else's published work, you are violating their copyright.
You can 'distribute' the plotline as freely as you can 'distribute' most ideas. It is usually termed 'communication' in those circumstances and the freedom to do so is generally considered to be a fundamental human right. I don't think even lawyers can easily twist those simple facts so far that their legally qualified colleagues the judges will be misled.
"If I pick some software patent and I do in fact execute it mentally, have I committed a patent violation? An illegal sequence of thoughts??"
Heh! - God help us all in 2050 when the BSA goons, intent on recovering their 'stolen property', are hiding in the bushes with their icepicks and brain scanners, waiting to pounce on any of us cybernetic implant users who've inadvertently leaked a patented algorithm across the neural interface between mind and machinery.:(
"They aren't protecting the implementation (in this case lab and/or factory equipment) they are protecting an idea, just like someone could protect an idea in the software world."
Stating it that way is tautological - of course; they would use security guards and dogs to protect their own physical implementation of their own invention but in that sense a patent does not and cannot 'protect' ideas anyway. In fact patents are supposed to do exactly the opposite and make widely known that which would otherwise remain secret. They do not 'protect' ideas, they protect the artificial right of the patentee to temporary and exclusive use of the idea or invention - and for what reason? - so that the effort and expense of invention is economically worthwhile for the inventor and that such inventions are deemed unlikely to have occurred if that incentive were not in place. But that justification for such an imbalance and inequity of rights between inventor and other citizens simply doesn't exist in the software world - as is convincingly proven by the existence of free software and the growth in software development before software patents.
The idea that software development would cease or be in any way impaired if software 'inventors' were unable to claim exclusive use of software ideas by patent is absurd. The reverse is true - even the F.T.C. agrees with that at last! Software ideas were made patentable in America by accident for Pete's sake and now that the stupidity of that error is finally bringing the inevitable detrimental economic effects to the attention of anyone who cares to look, what is the response of the U.S. government? Well naturally they want to impose their self-inflicted illness on the rest of the World too.
"As far as the RSA algorithm, it looks trivial now, because the actual steps of the algorithm are so simple."
The RSA algorithm looks trivial now and always has done. That is because (as I said before) it is the immediate consequence of the pure mathematical idea on which it is based. There is no invention at all in turning the simple lemma into the software algorithm. So as I pointed out before, the invention you consider deserving of patentability is not in fact a software idea but a mathematical idea. It may come as a surprise to you and others but I will lay down my life before I see the day mathematics is made patentable here in Europe and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would feel this way. Indeed it is just this issue that motivated me to support the fight against software patents in the first place - when I saw how many of them were effectively legally erected barriers to the free use and communication either of bits of mathematics itself or of the useful and essential tools of mahematicians and other scientists.
"I agree with you that the core of mathematics should not be patentible, however, it has already been made unpatentible"
But it has not - the distinction between mathematical ideas, best expressed by being written down in textbooks, papers and journals and mathematics applied as computer algorithm, enacted by computer for some mundane purpose and as such, only of interest to businessmen does not exist. Think of the Appel and Haken proof or the whole field of fractal geometry or symbolic dynamics etc. There is much in pure mathematics these days (let alone the theoretical branches of other sciences) for which the expression of ideas as computer algorithm is an essential part of the exposition. Computer languages are languages after all and if you consider the ideas expressed in those languages to be justifiably patentable then you must say why they are special and why that is not the case in literature or music.
At which point we return to the fact that a positive justification is needed for any kind of patentability and that justification cannot exist for software ideas any more than it can exist for ideas expressed in Inuktituk. The Inuit may already have invented the finest language constructs in which to expresss ideas about the
In free and open source software we do have a wild frontier - I think: It is just that the judges and lawmakers entrusted with the good and just governance of that territory seem to share the motivations, principles and insight of some of their earlier colleagues.
Slashdot Mirror
Using Excel for school level science may be acceptable but as the UK NPL and others have found, Excel is the one that is not up to par, Gnumeric is greatly superior and scientists should not blindly trust the software they use anyway - especially when the only way to verify it's reliability is to treat it to empirical scientific investigation itself, amusing though that may be.
It seems to me there is a freedom in programming that is like the freedom in art and that arises from the fact that the full range of abstract mathematics is available to the programmer, rather than just that which will work in the real world and because there is an immediacy of implementation and an intimacy between idea and expression like that which there is between composer and piano keyboard. Software patents are generally directed toward the utilitarian aspects of programming - it's fundamental techniques and ideas, yet strangely it is obvious to everyone that such kinds of patents if applied to literature or cinematography or music would have only a detrimental effect.
It is interesting to wonder if one day artists (or publishers of art) might foolishly decide to embark on a patent land grab as is occurring in the software world. If you think that is not possible because of the technicity/usefulness requirements of patents, consider the Pollock techniques of splatter painting at a certain constant average fractal dimension, or the Da Vinci low frequency technique of causing a sense of elusivity and enigma. (Check out Semir Zeki's book; "Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain" and much other work on the science of perception). Recent work in analysis of music too has resulted in (among other things) researchers claiming to have found techniques for generating 'hit songs' automatically. It can only be a matter of time before one cannot engage in any activity at all without infringing someone else's exclusive right to use the techniques associated with it. :)
Everybody - even RMS himself - uses this as an example of a possibly reasonable patent but it most certainly is not. The RSA encryption algorithm patent was an example of almost the worst possible kind of patent there can be. It is pure mathematics, it is the obvious algorithmic application of a trivial lemma in number theory that A CHILD can understand and the only thing that saves it from being the absolute worst possible kind is that it doesn't have many (any?) other applications.
As mathematicians, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman should be ashamed of themselves anyway but they weren't even the first to discover the lemma and it's obvious application - Clifford Cocks at GCHQ found it 4 years before R,S and A.
A common mistake: To achieve the success of a successful business, you should imitate what you see they are doing now. Of course what you should really do is imitate what they did to become successful.
Microsoft didn't copy IBM and they are not as stupid as IBM was when it provided the opportunities that Microsoft jumped at, and now the ladder Microsoft climbed to reach it's dizzy heights is being pulled up into the sky by it's army of patent scribes.
"The patent is apparently for MS's improvment of the concept by actually showing small recognizable representations of each desktop in a "preview" pane that shows all the desktops, and for being able to transfer application windows from a different virtual desktop to the current one, without actually bringing up the other desktop."
That's an excellent description of the Enlightenment pager. I'm pretty sure it's been there since before April 5 2002.
Yes, you are right of course and it's even possible for corporations to behave deliberately ethically (possibly as part of their business plan), it's just not something to expect or rely on.
Yes, I know Microsoft is promoting software patentability and when it does so it's arguments must be countered vigorously but that doesn't mean you should show that you're willing to throw away your principles simply because it is your 'enemy' who is being harmed by the evil you claim to despise. Landaras understood that and my response to his original post was because I think it is counterproductive to harbour feelings of antipathy toward publically owned corporations. They will always do what they think is expedient and in the narrow interests of their shareholders and there is no point in getting peeved about it.
Something does appear to have gone badly wrong within some Western democracies lately; the moral and intellectual calibre of many of our representatives seems exceptionally poor and they have let the influence of special interest groups reach far into the heart of government but that is their failing, not that of the lobbyists and it is right and useful to be outraged at their wilful failure to discharge their duties to the public diligently and ethically.
I'm well aware of what is going on in some apparently mismanaged corporations but even so, they are only playing the game and their asking and arguing comes under promoting software patentability, not using software patents. The board of directors of Microsoft are not blindly allowing their 'I.P.' department carte blanche to damage their strategic interests though. Theirs is a deliberate policy but it is amoral not immoral - they genuinely believe it's in the best interests of their shareholders - and they'd just shrug their collective shoulders and find some other way to maintain their profitability if only the politicians and legislators had wit, courage and integrity enough to stand up to them and do what is right for society.
Right. But I'd drop the adjective 'fully': Neither Microsoft nor any other company is the enemy, except when they are actively promoting software patentability. Companies are amoral entities at best and we shouldn't expect them to behave with any measure of philanthropy or social responsibility - the most we can demand is that they act lawfully. The real enemies are the corrupt, incompetent or short-sighted politicians and legislators who make and administrate the laws that enable such companies to behave immorally and unethically, yet perfectly legally.
There is no problem; I'm well aware of what you're arguing for - unlimited patentability of abstract algorithms, methods and processes, commonly referred to in the literature as programme claims. Existing rules are relevant because they have not appeared out of nowhere and for no reason. Just like everything else that you wish to dismiss as irrelevant (economic reality, ethics, practical patent administration realities, the history and background of patents and software patents in particular, the difference between the abstract and the physical,...). If you think that what should and should not be patented can reasonably be decided on the basis of your frankly irrational and mistaken beliefs about patents and your unfounded and risible dream of some uniquely efficient patent administration, then you are deluded.
"But again, as I've pointed out over and over and you've even recognized is a valid point, patenting algorithms is not inherently bad."
What nonsense is this? - recognized as a valid point indeed! - you have even quoted me before your last paragraph as describing algorithm patents as appalling! All patents are inherently bad, as Jefferson recognized two centuries ago, and that is why they are properly treated with extreme caution and allowed only where their benefits can be shown to outweigh their evils.
"The criteria I've suggested...weed out all of the examples of any harmful ones you (or anyone else) have provided. In my solution, everybody wins. In your solution, a lot of people lose."
Pure fantasy! and not unexpected given that your 'solution' is contingent on an imaginary and idealised patent regime. You have asserted that there are such criteria but not stated a single one of them and surely you cannot really mean that they consist only of "basically the same rules for physcial objects (obviousness, prior art, physical laws, etc.)" because those are exactly the criteria used to grant patents on algorithms you claim to wish to exclude.
"See, here's the problem. You see them as special cases. I see them as the norm for what an algorithm is. The ones you are talking about, the ones harmful to open source a
"I'm not a fan of software patents, but if I did spend good money in getting one, it was made useless/unenforcable, and I didn't get a refund, I think I'd be rather pissed off about it."
Then you should have read Article 52 of the EPC which explicitly excludes software patentability. The companies that have been granted software patents by the EPO are mostly the same companies now lobbying for legislation to make valid their patents. They knew the score. They have gambled. They will lose. Tough.
Wait a minute! - You call them bad software patents, I just call them software patents. As the FFII says on it's front page: "For the last few years the European Patent Office (EPO) has, contrary to the letter and spirit of the existing law, granted more than 30000 patents on rules of organisation and calculation claimed in terms of general-purpose computing equipment, called "programs for computers" in the law of 1973 and "computer-implemented inventions" in EPO Newspeak since 2000.". It's not a matter of criteria being insufficiently applied but a simple fact that the E.P.O. have granted patents on inventions they should not have because they are specifically excluded by Article 52.
"But again, that's a problem with the process of awarding patents, not with the concept of patenting algorithms. The exact same thing is true with any form of patent."
Those comments of mine you quoted should be taken as merely additional justification for the premise that patentability of abstract ideas is inherently bad. I did not mean to convey the impression that my opposition is based solely on the ineffectiveness of the current patent infrastructure.
"It isn't specific to algorithms. Getting rid of algorithm patents will not get rid of the problem in general. It's basically saying the system is broken so lets get rid of the system as it pertains to my field, but leave everyone else screwed with a still broken system. (And in the process screw over some people in my field who have "legitimately" patentable algorithms.) I think it's a lousy and inappropriate solution."
Your position is understandable but it is narrowly drawn. What might suit your industry will damage or destroy others, damage individual civil liberties, damage free software, damage freedom of communication of ideas, promote monopolisation by enabling denial of interoperability etc. etc. You seem to think that pure software idea patents are valid now but they are not - only in one or two European countries would they stand up in court, hence the directive. We are not trying to throw anything out but prevent the imposition of some crass new legislation and return to the clear doctrines of the EPC. It is from that starting point that I and perhaps others would be willing to consider amendments for special and exceptional cases such as yours. General patentability of abstract software ideas - programme claims - is utterly unacceptable.
"There are several problems with this argument; you state that you can meet the "second condition", but you never supplied the first..."
Perhaps "meet the condition" was misleading, what I meant to imply was that the condition you imposed on arguments against patentability of abstract algorithms is wholly unreasonable and rather absurd. You insist that any argument against patentability of abstract algorithms must not also apply to physical devices. But by definition it would not: Since no abstract algorithm is identical with any physical device there is nothing to do in order to meet your condition. Your first sentence was a challenge to argue against the patentability of a special class of abstract algorithms, not abstract algorithms in general and I declined to do so because it seemed at least possible that they might prove to be extraordinary exceptions that might merit special consideration.
"I asked how the argument about how such patents (in the specific examples I gave) are harmful differs from the same arguement applied to physical devices."
It is very simple: The argument differs (at least) in it's subject. It's inapplicability to some other subject cannot therefore invalidate it - that would be absurd. Indeed much of the argument against software patentability depends
Well the failure of the end user to perceive a difference or ascribe to it any importance cannot logically imply that there is no difference or any importance to any difference, but never mind - in view of later parts of your post, what you are saying deserves consideration anyway. You are clearly advocating the patentability of a certain class of abstract algorithm (you say it doesn't matter whether it runs on a general purpose computer or a circuit board specially constructed for the task) You are talking about the patentability of ideas, which is an extreme position, but you at least appear to want to introduce strict criteria for patentability. You then say (of these very particular algorithms): "They take just as much time, effort, money, imagination, etc., to develop as a mechanical device." and later: "These things take years of research and development and require as much expertise, ingenuity, expense, creativity, and time as any other type of invention. They are not obvious or trivial, and in no sense could patenting them ever cause any of the problems people are complaining about. Nobody could ever "accidently" code them and later find out they were patented. Nobody could see them performing their functions and then run off and do the same thing, not realizing they're patented." Now this is very interesting and to me at least it seems like a strong argument and I'll consider it your central point and return to it later.
"You make the assumption that allowing patents in any algorithm means all "general software ideas" are patentable."
Yes, because that is the way it has happened in the U.S. and it is the reason there are > 30,000 such patents already on the books at the E.P.O, and as Herr Bolkestein has said: "The question of how to define the patentability of computer-implemented inventions is thus becoming steadily more important especially as such inventions are estimated to cover 15% of new patent applications." The motivation for the proposed directive and even it's initial draft have originated not with companies like your own, for which I have, as you will see later, a measure of respect, but from bodies like the B.S.A, representing some of the most prolific recipients of the kind of software patent we both (I think) despise, and from the patent establishment (including the remarkably autonomous patent departments of some large companies), representing their own narrow interests. The sorry tale of deliberate obfuscation, bullying of Parliament, wilful disregard for and misrepresentation of the views of respondents to consultation, clear attempts to sneak universal patentability loopholes into the directive while claiming the opposite..., reveals the true intention of the European bureaucrats, which is to inflict on European citizens and businesses the exact same conditions of untrammelled patentabilty that obtain in the U.S.
"Then there's the "obvious" ones, such as the famous XOR patent."..."All of the examples I've seen so far fall into this category."
Here we have a major problem; you and I consider them obvious and unpatentable but others, especially patent examiners, may not. There are patents such as RSA, DHT and LZW which are the natural algorithmic forms of simple mathematical and logical ideas, appearing in elementary textbooks. There are more complex examples of course, such as the kind of stuff (wavelet and filter bank methods?) being patented by the BBC in their Dirac technology and Barnsley's fractal compression algorithms. What is concerning is that in all these areas, fundamental algorithms and methods are being patented - the consequent algorithmic expressions of elementary results in particular fields. To me that is entirely unacceptabl
"What I find naive is the idea that instructions in software is not an "implementation". If I have a box that does someting, say given some input it produces some output, then it doesn't really matter to the end user whether it's done mechanically, electronically, or through some software code."
I do not consider it naive to properly distinguish between instruction and implementation. Failure to do so would render the designs of material inventions patentable. Software is itself a written form of expression, a language in which to express abstract ideas. Just because a machine has been invented which can read those instructions in certain forms and implement them does not make the instructions themselves identical with their implementation. Such a notion is as absurd as instructing someone to do something and then claiming you did it yourself.
"If we couldn't patent the algorithms,..."
You should indeed not be able to patent the algorithms. If you choose to keep them secret, then so be it - it is far better that society maybe loses the benefits of disclosure in a few narrow fields than suffers the widespread damaging effects of general software idea patentability.
"What people have been complaining about is simple or general "software" patents (e.g., one-click shopping). The problem with these is that they are too obvious, have prior art, or are too general. (For example, we couldn't patent "automatic object recognition" since it isn't a method, but we could patent one method for doing it.) Patenting mathematical solutions also doesn't fall into this category. There are an infinite number of ways to do automatic target recogntion, some good and some bad. Mathematical solutions are like physical laws, they are unique solutions."
I don't see what you're trying to say here. It is not true that I and others are complaining only about simple or general software patents. We are disputing the validity of software patentability, period. You seem now to be trying to justify patentability of mathematics and physical laws (which are not unique solutions anyway). To me that is utterly repellent and there can be no justification for it, least of all the desires, wishes or needs of some few businesses.
" It [making money] may be your purpose, but it is not the purpose (or intention) of the law
Yes, in fact it is, at least indirectly. Referring again to the U.S. Constistution description of patents, it is for the purpose of promoting progress. As I mentioned above, the way it does this is by providing a limited monopoly in exchange for publishing how it works."
You contradict me then immediately contradict yourself. The granting of monopoly rights is the means by which the purpose is fulfilled, not the purpose itself.
"Again, discussing semantics and wording of specific laws is generally irrelevant."
That is an appalling stance. What you are saying is the semantics - the meaning - of laws (and the constitution) is irrelevant to _you_. If you perceive that the meaning of some law obstructs your personal commercial interests then it must have really meant something else. If the purpose of granting monopoly rights as set forth in the constitution reads "to promote progress..." what it really means is "to enable patentees to make profits". If the distinction between the words 'instruction' and 'implementation' is inconvenient, let us ignore it. I detect a pattern here.
"Without the ability to patent, my company never would have invested in the work we've done and developed these things. That's real, and a real result of what you are arguing."
It isn't 'real', it's a hypothesis - a 'what if' which neglects the possibility of secrecy you yourself suggested. You seem interested only in your own and your company's particular circumstances, which is understandable - but the software idea patentability which you insist is necessary for your economic survival is simply too damaging to the rest of society to be acceptable. Your own NRC and even the FTC have finally woken up to the fact that there is a problem but whether they do anything about it or not is not really my concern - Europe and the U.K is.
I'm not sure what it is you think is naive - to me it seems naive and dangerous to confuse abstract ideas expressed as works of software with useful material inventions, just as it is naive to confuse the designs of physical inventions with the inventions themselves. It is that distinction that motivates the entirely separate intentions of copyrights and patents (not just their respective areas of application) and although it is fair enough for you to have used the word 'intent' to refer to the general case of 'intellectual property' it is an obfuscatory generalisation in the current context.
"Basically, if I solve a problem and I can do it through software..."
Again - You can only solve abstract problems directly through software, not real world problems and it is precisely because of that distinction that the abstract solution in software is inherently broad and not appropriately patentable, any more than works in any other language in which abstract ideas are expressed. Some time ago, a similar argument was made by someone who suggested that the Viterbi algorithm was a valid patentable invention because it had been invented for the express purpose of solving a problem in digital communications. Perhaps it was, but it has since been found to apply in other fields like molecular biology and speech recognition. It is not an artificial invention at all, it is a mathematical discovery.
"...if I'm interested in making money on it (which is the purpose of patents)..."
It may be your purpose, but it is not the purpose (or intention) of the law, to hold the narrow interests of commerce above all else. As you may have read from Halo1's comments and links, software patents do not succeed in that respect anyway. I'm sure the large publishing companies could make a great case for literary idea patents but I doubt whether individual authors would fail to see the folly and obscenity of such a measure and it strikes me as extraordinary that anyone can fail to see the folly of software idea patents. If you had been programming professionally in the three or four decades before there even were any software patents you would perhaps have considered it as absurd and harmful as successful entrepreneurs like Salin and Walker did. The assertion that software patents are necessary to promote innovation in software development is ridiculous - the truth is that it is an ex post facto justification that has merit only for the holders of large portfolios of such patents.
Anyway - if software ideas are made patentable in Europe, or rather not made unpatentable, I hope the manufacturers of electronic computers do the honourable thing and relabel their products as 'Multi-function electronic appliances' and drop the misleading description 'Personal Computer' .
" So, why would the mechanical and electrical implementations be patentable but not the software implementation?"
l /w hatis.htmk ly/aa032801 a.htm
Because the software is not an 'implementation' - it is a written description, a set of instructions to tell a general purpose computer how to implement an essentially abstract mental process. It is not the implementation itself and even it's implementation in a computer is qualitatively different to the physical implementations you describe: If the computer is behaving within it's tolerances, the output is a perfect representation of the idealised algorithm acting on the idealised inputs. There is no meaning to the phrase "algorithms and methods that are implemented in software". The implementation is in the hardware of the computer, which is itself an invention, designed expressly for the purpose of implementing abstract algorithms and processes.
"There are many examples of where an implementation can be done mechanically, electronically, or in software, and yet it's the same underlying algorithm."
As any physicist or engineer will tell you - there is a world of difference between the abstract theory that predicts the behaviour of a physical device and the actual behaviour of that physical device and an algorithm enacted in a computer is modelling the theory, not the physical reality. That is where the invention lies in justifiably patentable inventions - in the ability of the inventor to conform physical materials in such a way that they closely enact the desired behaviour. And that is where the problem with software idea patents lies - they are not patents on solutions to real world problems but on solutions to abstract idealised problems. They are patents on mathematics.
Your example of the flyball governor and it's electronic alternative is a case in point: The solution to the problem can be written down in abstract mathematical form at the outset. The inventor then seeks a means of conforming physical materials in such a way that they embody this solution. This is difficult and takes skill and inventiveness. The software developer on the other hand, takes the abstract mathematical solution and immediately translates it into programming language instructions.
"People aren't complaining about actual patents on software, they're complaining about patents on algorithms and methods that are implemented in software."
Again, the algorithms are not implemented in software, they are implemented in hardware that has been constructed to reliably perform the idealised algorithm or process described by the software instructions. The software patent is a patent on an abstraction, it immediately subsumes and embodies all possible solutions to the problem in it's idealised form - not it's real world form - the algorithm is just the unique function representing the desired relation on the product of the set of inputs and the set of outputs.
"Patents and copyrights are identical in intent"
No they are not:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/genera
http://inventors.about.com/library/wee
and never have been. The documents by Franklin on patents and McCaulay on copyright give some interesting historical foundation and context to the fundamental differences.
Mmmm... I often find that when I read the words of a 'thinker', it reminds me of the contributions of other great thinkers in history:
Like Einstein:
"Fuck you man, I'm tellin' ya - E=mc^2"
Or Gauss:
"Shit man - I think I'm gonna call this coinky-dink li'l theorem the Theorema Egregium"
Or Blake:
"Oh Rose, thou art freakin' sick man"
I suggest you return to Earth - you are not a thinker - you are a run-of-the-mill programmer, tossing off mundane and trivial little algorithmic ideas that are no more than programmatic expediencies which only an absurdly inflated ego could possibly describe as the works of a thinker. If the abstract ideas embodied in patented software inventions were were worth according their authors the title "thinker", then it would be essential that they not be patentable. As it is, they are at least abstract ideas and like the ideas in a complicated proof, or the component ideas of a literary narrative, or of a musical work, they belong to the mental, not the physical world and it is absurd and obscene to make them patentable inventions.
Ethics aside, your economically based arguments are hopelessly flawed. The opposition to software patentability in the U.S. was led by some of the most successful software entrepreneurs of the time but you would have us believe that you know better? Your penultimate paragraph is beyond reason - you would promote progress and innovation by dragging every incremental new idea in software through the courts? You know full well that the innovators you pretend to speak for will never be able to afford that privilege anyway.
You claim these software idea patents are somehow necessary for the progress of the useful art of software development, yet the software industry flourished long before they existed. Hundreds of thousands of professional programmers disagree with you. Scientists, economists and the representative organisations of 2 million European businesses disagree. Show us your patented ideas so that we can see what a truly patent-worthy software idea really looks like.
You condemn trade secrecy and say how much better to have these marvellous inventions public knowledge, that they may be used "a few years later". Perhaps you meant decades, which would've been nearer the truth - and a substantial fraction of the entire history of the field. But more importantly; you have it backwards: Trade secrecy would be ideal for these mundane and incremental inventions, at least for proprietary software.
With your final comment, you sweep away all free software and the community of hobbyists, enthusiasts - professional and amateur alike - that have rediscovered a more vigorous, productive and engaging way to develop software. You would have them "work around patents" or "improve on key components" of existing patents. But in the former case it is often simply not possible - an official standard for example or a whole field sewn up with fundamental patents, like fractal compression. And in the latter case, you'd force the free software developer to somehow find the license fees for the original patent anyway. But perhaps you are not really interested in the genuine development of new and varied software - real software that is - not just the idea of it. Perhaps you are only interested in promoting the stagnant and fruitless trade in the already myriad and burgeoning software patent pool, that large and wealthy corporations are so fond of.
"As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the Silicon Valley".
:)
[F.Von Schiller]
Well... mostly.
Good grief!
;-)
Now listen here you moderators - I've already had to tell you off once already today. The parent's post may be interesting, but only in the same sense as a novel or any other fictional work is interesting. If I have to tell you again, you will be doing an hour's meta-moderation every day after school for the rest of the month.
And as for you boy - yes, you z0ink, you little rascal! Here's a piece of chalk. 100 times please:
"There are 30,000 or more software patents on the books in Europe. Microsoft wants them all to be enforceable in each and every country in Europe. Microsoft executives interrupt their vacations to involve themselves in the politics of the software choices of foreign governments."
And make sure you've finished by the time I come back!
For copyright violation.
"...and yet when it comes time for Linux to lift ideas from Microsoft, /.rs get really mad because they don't think Microsoft should be allowed to own it's ideas."
It's patented ideas.
Really - I cannot understand what is the matter with the moderators this morning - this drivel isn't even factual and rational, let alone insightful.
I'm sure that it isn't - though perhaps that may not always be true - but the use of the computer as an aid to the mental process, and nothing more than that mental process, is forbidden. To forbid the use of a general purpose computer in this way is like saying you can hum a particular musical phrase quietly to yourself but you may not play it on any musical instrument. It is an absurd and unjust situation and utterly unlike the situation with ordinary patented inventions, in which the use of the invention and it's effect is quite obviously qualitatively distinct from the effect of simply imagining using it. You could stand on stage to give a musical recital and simply hand out copies of the score to the audience and ask them to imagine the music. They might not be very pleased but if you were an avant-garde composer you could probably get away with it. If you were a salesman in a shop and you handed over the design of a toaster instead of the toaster itself you would be taken away in a strait-jacket.
When you buy a musical instrument you do not then have to worry about what kinds of music you are allowed to play on it - what techniques and basic constructions you can use to create original music which you can also write down and freely distribute. And the fact that you can imagine the music just as well as if you'd played it aloud, shows that it too, like computer code, has the quality of being reproducible entirely by abstract mental processes - as do natural languages.
Likewise, I have every right to expect that my personal electronic computer - an instrument designed for the purpose of rapidly executing abstract mental ideas, expressible in computer programming languages, should be free for me to use in the way it was intended to be used (as an original invention in it's own right). Allowing ex post facto patenting of it's uses is as inane and unjust as that notorious U.S.patent on swinging sideways on a swing.
"I imagine that distributing a machine that implements the patent, or profiting from the execution of the patent on a commercial scale (a la the Amazon 1-click patent) would be required in order for there to be an issue."
Patents grant the right to exclusive _use_ of the invention; commerciality is not relevant, which is why free software and the foundation of the entire computing infrastructure I am pleased to rely on is threatened by them. And let's not forget that all this activity and freedom of legitimate use of computers is being forbidden for the mere convenience of a few large corporations and the community of patent lawyers. It is a disgrace and an outrage.
The nonsensical result is not to be found in any edge case but at the very heart of the matter - the offensive and unspeakably mindless notion that software ideas are justly and usefully patentable.
"That said, how does your argument about mental processes versus implemented computational processes differ from me going over the plotline to the Harry Potter novels in my head and me publishing my own Harry Potter ripoff novel? The difference is that in the one case it's all in my head, and in the second case, I'm publishing a work for distribution that either brings me income on J. K. Rowling's property or which may, arguably, decrease her income"
Errm... the mental process is the (forbidden) use of the actual patented invention, the plotline is not the actual copyrighted work. If you publish a copy of someone else's published work, you are violating their copyright.
You can 'distribute' the plotline as freely as you can 'distribute' most ideas. It is usually termed 'communication' in those circumstances and the freedom to do so is generally considered to be a fundamental human right. I don't think even lawyers can easily twist those simple facts so far that their legally qualified colleagues the judges will be misled.
"If I pick some software patent and I do in fact execute it mentally, have I committed a patent violation? An illegal sequence of thoughts??"
:(
Heh! - God help us all in 2050 when the BSA goons, intent on recovering their 'stolen property', are hiding in the bushes with their icepicks and brain scanners, waiting to pounce on any of us cybernetic implant users who've inadvertently leaked a patented algorithm across the neural interface between mind and machinery.
"They aren't protecting the implementation (in this case lab and/or factory equipment) they are protecting an idea, just like someone could protect an idea in the software world."
Stating it that way is tautological - of course; they would use security guards and dogs to protect their own physical implementation of their own invention but in that sense a patent does not and cannot 'protect' ideas anyway. In fact patents are supposed to do exactly the opposite and make widely known that which would otherwise remain secret. They do not 'protect' ideas, they protect the artificial right of the patentee to temporary and exclusive use of the idea or invention - and for what reason? - so that the effort and expense of invention is economically worthwhile for the inventor and that such inventions are deemed unlikely to have occurred if that incentive were not in place. But that justification for such an imbalance and inequity of rights between inventor and other citizens simply doesn't exist in the software world - as is convincingly proven by the existence of free software and the growth in software development before software patents.
The idea that software development would cease or be in any way impaired if software 'inventors' were unable to claim exclusive use of software ideas by patent is absurd. The reverse is true - even the F.T.C. agrees with that at last! Software ideas were made patentable in America by accident for Pete's sake and now that the stupidity of that error is finally bringing the inevitable detrimental economic effects to the attention of anyone who cares to look, what is the response of the U.S. government? Well naturally they want to impose their self-inflicted illness on the rest of the World too.
"As far as the RSA algorithm, it looks trivial now, because the actual steps of the algorithm are so simple."
The RSA algorithm looks trivial now and always has done. That is because (as I said before) it is the immediate consequence of the pure mathematical idea on which it is based. There is no invention at all in turning the simple lemma into the software algorithm. So as I pointed out before, the invention you consider deserving of patentability is not in fact a software idea but a mathematical idea. It may come as a surprise to you and others but I will lay down my life before I see the day mathematics is made patentable here in Europe and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would feel this way. Indeed it is just this issue that motivated me to support the fight against software patents in the first place - when I saw how many of them were effectively legally erected barriers to the free use and communication either of bits of mathematics itself or of the useful and essential tools of mahematicians and other scientists.
"I agree with you that the core of mathematics should not be patentible, however, it has already been made unpatentible"
But it has not - the distinction between mathematical ideas, best expressed by being written down in textbooks, papers and journals and mathematics applied as computer algorithm, enacted by computer for some mundane purpose and as such, only of interest to businessmen does not exist. Think of the Appel and Haken proof or the whole field of fractal geometry or symbolic dynamics etc. There is much in pure mathematics these days (let alone the theoretical branches of other sciences) for which the expression of ideas as computer algorithm is an essential part of the exposition. Computer languages are languages after all and if you consider the ideas expressed in those languages to be justifiably patentable then you must say why they are special and why that is not the case in literature or music.
At which point we return to the fact that a positive justification is needed for any kind of patentability and that justification cannot exist for software ideas any more than it can exist for ideas expressed in Inuktituk. The Inuit may already have invented the finest language constructs in which to expresss ideas about the
In free and open source software we do have a wild frontier - I think: It is just that the judges and lawmakers entrusted with the good and just governance of that territory seem to share the motivations, principles and insight of some of their earlier colleagues.