Doesn't "the invention must be a trade secret" conflict with "free public access to all patents"? I thought the point of a patent is that it wasn't kept secret.
What hard evidence (as opposed to theoretical musings) is there that patents actually do promote innovation?
That is, there are several factors which would deter a lone inventor or small company from trying to enter an innovative field. These include:
The time and expense of a thorough patent search
The time and expense of preparing a patent (especially if a lawyer is hired to do the job properly)
A large company somewhere is bound to have a patent at least tangentially related to the product in question, which could be used as a tactical weapon against the smaller company. Even if the product is found not to violate the patent, the cost of defending such cases can sink a small company.
Do the benefits of the patent system outweigh the above disadvantages?
According to Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier, it's been claimed that the French DGSE (their equivalent of the NSA) has "openly boasted of using commercial intelligence to help French companies win bidding wars for large contracts."
Even if that's not true, how do you guard against the possibility of this happening?
We don't have this licensing crap for other types of products
I've seen videos that claim to be licensed for home viewing only. I'm not sure whether copyright law backs this up - as far as I can see, broadcasting and copying are two entirely different processes.
a) Disallow patents for user interfaces. The whole point of a patent is to encourage inventors to share ideas that they would otherwise keep secret. Since you can't possibly keep a user interface secret without rendering it useless, there's nothing to be gained by granting a patent for one.
b) Allow a grace period between sudmission and publication of the patent, to give others a chance to independently invent the product. For example, the process might go as follows:
1) Inventor submits patent application. It's not even necessary for the patent office to examine the application at this point, the inventor could just send in a digitally signed hash of the patent.
2) After a length of time of the inventor's choosing, he instructs the patent office to examine and publish the application. If the idea is still original, the inventor gets his patent, for a length of time equal to the time he waited. If not, the patent is null and void. This way, good ideas automatically get longer patents than bad ones.
Hmm, that reminds me of when I was a kid, and eveyone at school was copying computer games tapes. The games companies were forever complaining avout how many millions they were losing. The usual flaw in their argument was that they assumed if we didn't copy a game, we'd have bought it instead. Yeah, right - being kids, we were naturally swimming in cash.
In fact, we usually bought as much as we could afford, and copied the rest. If anything, the copied games benefitted the publishers, as they acted as free advertising. If a game was good, we'd be more likely to buy a game from the same software house in the future.
Can somebody clear something up for me? I'm sure I read somewhere that it wasn't that easy to copy a DVD, since recordable DVD's had the place where the keys go pre-burned with zeros.
Another question while I'm thinking about it - how do independent DVD producers get their DVD's encrypted, since they don't have the keys either? Or is that a members-only priviledge?
We're not against multibillion dollar corporations. We'd just like them to play fair. We don't want them to try and artificially control the market with regional encoding. We don't want them producing a flawed copy control scheme that effectively cripples legally purchased DVD players if it's ever put into use. We'd especially like it if they didn't go crying to their lawyers whenever their little schemes go wrong.
In this case it's understandable - Pick is something of a mixture of an operating system, database, and programming environment. Pick is the computing equivalent of horseshoe crabs - it ought to have been made extinct ages ago, but somehow keeps plodding along just as it always has. Nice to see somebody completely bypassing the Microsoft Era, though.
Nope. For example, Sun aren't threatening to withhold vital operating system licenses from OEM's who dare to bundle a competitor's product with their systems.
If you piss people off, by a) introducing the regional encoding thing, and b) not inviting alternative OSes to the party, this is exactly what is going to happen. They've been too greedy and too protective, and it's backfired on them. Too bad!
Who cares if it did take thousands of hours to code? Amazon are whining that B&N 'stole' all that effort, but unless B&N ripped off the actual code, they must have put a similar amount of work into it themselves.
When it comes right down to it, all B&N allegedly ripped off was a simple idea that any lukewarm human being could have thought of in the bath.
IIRC, patents are there to encourage inventors to share what they would otherwise keep to themselves. As it's impossible to keep a user interface secret without rendering it completely useless, what's to be gained by allowing one to be patented?
Slashdot Mirror
Just wondering how long it'd take to examine all 2^22 algorithms on a slashdotted website :)
It has to be anyway. Under current rules, if you publish it anywhere, you can't patent it.
To find out what a fscking bollocks-up the USPTO have made of it this time around. Obviously.
Doesn't "the invention must be a trade secret" conflict with "free public access to all patents"? I thought the point of a patent is that it wasn't kept secret.
That is, there are several factors which would deter a lone inventor or small company from trying to enter an innovative field. These include:
- The time and expense of a thorough patent search
- The time and expense of preparing a patent (especially if a lawyer is hired to do the job properly)
- A large company somewhere is bound to have a patent at least tangentially related to the product in question, which could be used as a tactical weapon against the smaller company. Even if the product is found not to violate the patent, the cost of defending such cases can sink a small company.
Do the benefits of the patent system outweigh the above disadvantages?I think he was asking what was being done to stop the US experiences from happening in Europe.
It's just a way of increasing hits. None of us linux users ever went anywhere near MSN. Now we're all trying to get in!
Even if that's not true, how do you guard against the possibility of this happening?
I've seen videos that claim to be licensed for home viewing only. I'm not sure whether copyright law backs this up - as far as I can see, broadcasting and copying are two entirely different processes.
...they're using WordPerfect for SCO + Excel, rather than WordPerfect Office for Linux? Is Quattro Pro really that bad?
How about these?
a) Disallow patents for user interfaces. The whole point of a patent is to encourage inventors to share ideas that they would otherwise keep secret. Since you can't possibly keep a user interface secret without rendering it useless, there's nothing to be gained by granting a patent for one.
b) Allow a grace period between sudmission and publication of the patent, to give others a chance to independently invent the product. For example, the process might go as follows:
1) Inventor submits patent application. It's not even necessary for the patent office to examine the application at this point, the inventor could just send in a digitally signed hash of the patent.
2) After a length of time of the inventor's choosing, he instructs the patent office to examine and publish the application. If the idea is still original, the inventor gets his patent, for a length of time equal to the time he waited. If not, the patent is null and void. This way, good ideas automatically get longer patents than bad ones.
Um, if a match was guaranteed to be in there, then the probability would be one.
Hmm, that reminds me of when I was a kid, and eveyone at school was copying computer games tapes. The games companies were forever complaining avout how many millions they were losing. The usual flaw in their argument was that they assumed if we didn't copy a game, we'd have bought it instead. Yeah, right - being kids, we were naturally swimming in cash.
In fact, we usually bought as much as we could afford, and copied the rest. If anything, the copied games benefitted the publishers, as they acted as free advertising. If a game was good, we'd be more likely to buy a game from the same software house in the future.
Can somebody clear something up for me? I'm sure I read somewhere that it wasn't that easy to copy a DVD, since recordable DVD's had the place where the keys go pre-burned with zeros.
Another question while I'm thinking about it - how do independent DVD producers get their DVD's encrypted, since they don't have the keys either? Or is that a members-only priviledge?
We're not against multibillion dollar corporations. We'd just like them to play fair. We don't want them to try and artificially control the market with regional encoding. We don't want them producing a flawed copy control scheme that effectively cripples legally purchased DVD players if it's ever put into use. We'd especially like it if they didn't go crying to their lawyers whenever their little schemes go wrong.
Over a standard cinema screen, possibly?
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Add Bill Gates, and you've got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
In this case it's understandable - Pick is something of a mixture of an operating system, database, and programming environment. Pick is the computing equivalent of horseshoe crabs - it ought to have been made extinct ages ago, but somehow keeps plodding along just as it always has. Nice to see somebody completely bypassing the Microsoft Era, though.
If it's going to threaten Office, it'll have to be really cheap.
Nope. For example, Sun aren't threatening to withhold vital operating system licenses from OEM's who dare to bundle a competitor's product with their systems.
If you piss people off, by a) introducing the regional encoding thing, and b) not inviting alternative OSes to the party, this is exactly what is going to happen. They've been too greedy and too protective, and it's backfired on them. Too bad!
"He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy."
(Sorry. Couldn't resist!)
When it comes right down to it, all B&N allegedly ripped off was a simple idea that any lukewarm human being could have thought of in the bath.
IIRC, patents are there to encourage inventors to share what they would otherwise keep to themselves. As it's impossible to keep a user interface secret without rendering it completely useless, what's to be gained by allowing one to be patented?