IBM Calls for Patent Reform 292
daria42 writes "IBM has called for tighter regulation of patents and a review of intellectual property ownership issues in collaborative software development. The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States. IBM executive Jim Stallings said examining patents for prior art should not only be the job of the patent office but that the wider community should be involved. Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents."
No time to evaluate patents (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM's antidote to the problem is to increase the scope of the investigation into 'prior art' associated with software patents. Stallings believes that sort of undertaking is something the academic community, volunteers and others are willing to help in.
Something obviously must be done to fix this problem but I'm not sure how the proposed system would work. As soon as "volunteers" have the ability to submit prior art challenges to patent applications, you'll likely see as many or more prior art challenges than patent applications. Who's going to evaluate the prior art challenges AND the patent applications then?
Actual research by the patent office? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about going back to the good ol' days when you had to provide a basic working implementation of your potentially patented thingie, instead of just having an idea [slashdot.org] of what may work in the future?
Big Blue takes the middle path (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to see a large company choosing the middle path. Patents aren't entirely a bad thing (although I would rather do away with them altogether than keep the current system) and as with most arguments there are certainly two or more legitimate sides to this. One thing is for sure, we definitely need better review of patents and it certainly seems to me that they are right about the community being willing to help find prior art.
Re:Hello kettle... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is EXACTLY what we need to happen. These are the types of companies that actually have the ability to change things. The fact that they happen to hold a lot of patents themselves and still want reform just adds more weight to the argument that the current system is fscked.
Open Letter to all patent lawyers including IBM's (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Patent Lawyers,
Could you please justify by reply in moderate detail the supposed net benefit to society (rather than just to corporations) of software patents explaining why you think that extending the patent system to cover software is not harmful both to society and to freedom of expression given the case of an open-source software developer who, as a result of
is threatened with a patent lawsuit by a corporation demanding he/she removes the allegedly infringing software from the project's website, leaving the impoverished developer with no real choice but to comply with the demand and close the project?
One recent unresolved case, which is not unique, is that of the German mathematician and open-source software developer Helmut Dersch who had no financial choice but to remove his software from his project website. He had no money to pay for a patent application at the time of his own inventions, which pre-date the patent application of the IPX company , to to pay for a lawyer to challenge the company which threatened him with the prospect of a lawsuit.
Here [ffii.org] is a summary of the case history.
I hope you will take the time to reply at moderate length for the sake of explaining to the open-source developer community why software patents are not a threat to completely unfunded open-source projects.
Thank you for reading this. If you are a patent lawyer, please mention that fact in your reply here.
Last posted here [slashdot.org] without a reply from any patent lawyers reading slashdot.
Please copy and re-post this message in all available forums until at least one patent lawyer has the courtesy to write a thorough reply.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent office should be doing the searc finding for prior art themselve but since they are inundated with applications they dont have the time to do it thoroughly. Allowing the community to do this job would cut down on the number of silly applications allowing the patent office more time to evaluate the more deserving applications
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Does the prior-art quoted really exist?
Is it really "prior"?
If Yes & Yes; kill patent, if not; don't.
Since submissions would need to consist of evidence of the 2 things to be verified, the work is really minimal; a quick check for false evidence.
Re:IBM Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big Blue takes the middle path (Score:5, Insightful)
But let's not forget that they also make billions (this is also a good thing). I think they realise the whole is going to end up in a mexican standoff - a lot of companies having stupid patents for stupid components of an application, and all it will take is one rogue company / individual with a critical patent who doesnt want to play ball, to cause some serious problems.
We would probably all love to see silly software patents abolished or even limited for 12 months or something.
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
The company that patented [blogs.com] "first come first serve" wants to reform the patent system?! What, did they finally run out of blatantly obvious ideas? Or is Microsoft gaining ground in patenting [slashdot.org] such ideas, which scares IBM somehow? Or is it the Japanese who are catching [ffii.org] up?
Re:isn't IBM the king of patents? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be one thing for a company without patents to scream "The patent system is screwed!!! fix it!", leaving everyone calling that company a whiner.
But it another thing when a company with tons of patents says the exact same thing, even if the reformation change can hurt them. This means they are willing to take losses of their own for the benefit of the patent process.
Here's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Patent Office Runs Like a Business! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't with patents, it's with granting them for frivolous claims.
yes, IBM has lots of patents...BUT (Score:5, Insightful)
No - IBM isn't Dell, a company that has never come up with anything new and does little else other than figure out the cheapest way to produce something. IBM isn't even a Microsoft, a company based entirely off taking someone else's ideas and implimenting them in proprietary ways (a compnay whose only real contribution is getting platforms and applications to work together well). Instead, IBM is very very heavily research-based. IMO, it's perfectly valid for IBM to have a vast # of patents, considering how much research it does. Dollar per research dollar, I'm willing to be it doesn't have all that many more per year than anyone else - they just put more dollars into it.
With that in mind - suggesting they're the pot calling the kettle black is a bit of a stretch. They've got a lot of patent experience sure (there's a nice soft word for it, eh?) but back to that dollar per research dollar thing...
If Cornell and Harvard got together and tried to get higher education to be more affordable for all Americans, would their intent be questioned simply because they're a couple of the more expensive schools? I pay $30k a year for my wife to go to vet school at Cornell. It's very painful. Cornell knows it, and is sympathetic to a degree...I know they would have loved to have seen Clinton's promised education costs reforms.
Same bit. IBM does a lot of research, gets a lot of patents. Simply because they have a lot of patents doesn't invalidate their opinion that there is abuse of the patent system.
Yes, you got this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Kjella
Comment Period Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:isn't IBM the king of patents? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, some (like Microsoft) patent anything and everything just because the patent system is so screwed up that they can.
By far the biggest supporters of the current stuffed system would have to be Microsoft (who are tyring to find something they can use to bring down Open Source Software like the Linux kernel, Apache, GCC etc that wont get them in anti-trust hot-water) and Sun (who want too let people mess with Solaris so that sun can get a better operating system out of it but who dont want all the "good bits" or "patented bits" ending up in projects like the Linux Kernel)
good for the goose no good for the gander? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I agree with IBM, patent-hoarders that don't have products and just rape people who need patent licensing suck. But I think that's not evidence of the badness of patent-hoarders; it's evidence of the badness of patents. IBM can rape you just as bad if you don't have any patents to license back to them. Patents are a profit center, though, so you won't hear IBM advocating toasting them entirely. Instead, IBM is going to a crazy space where their intellectual property isn't even exactly property anymore--you presumably can't sell it to just anybody (e.g. a hoarder, or at least, you won't sell it to them since it's worthless to them).
IMO, the biggest problem, as always, is the focus on prior art instead of insisting on a fairly high obviousness barrier (or a low barrier for accepting re-invention as not being covered by a patent).
Re:IBM is helping (Score:5, Insightful)
I have few illusions that IBM is doing this latest protest out of the goodness of their tiny, shriveled, black hearts.
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Big Blue takes the middle path (Score:1, Insightful)
The only arguments that can be proffered for patents are fallacious ones. Such as the timeless "incentive for invention". Under such an idea the Wheel would of never been invented because no one could profit from it with the idea being open to others to implement. We however know that the wheel was invented, in spite of the fact that there was not patent regime present.
Another great argument is that it individuals/companies should be able to profit from their work (like they don't already profit through the adoption and said method which allows productivity to rise). This view completely ignores the very real possibility of the same idea being thought up by two or more individuals/companies in parallel with no influence from each other. A great example of this is again the Wheel, which historians have discovered to have been invented in 4 different continents roughly in parallel with no contact with each other (transportation was a bit crude back then, given that they had only just discovered the wheel and all).
Imagine if patents had existed back then and the richest of the inventors had patented the Wheel. One can only imagine the degree of backwardness that most of the world would be experiencing today as a result.
So in short there is no non fallacious defence of patents.
Re:Patent Office Runs Like a Business! (Score:5, Insightful)
They do a lot of research, so hold many patents, in software and other domains. I'd say that most of these patents are well-researched and original, and even if we don't like software patents, IBM's are generally the least obnoxious.
They sponsor a fair amount of open source, through the Apache Foundation. Sure, this could stop tomorrow.
But, they have started to rely on open source as the basis for many of their lucrative services. IBM has really aimed at ending their own software development and replacing much of the expensive and risky software research by much cheaper and more efficient open source.
And who is most threatened by all this open source? It's Microsoft, who has also been the only significant competitor to IBM in the last two decades.
Microsoft is desperately collecting patents because it can see no other weapon or strategy to stop the open source revolution. IBM sees what Microsoft is doing - trying to collect patents that will harm open source projects.
So IBM is (a) protecting its own investment in patents, by preparing arguments why the entire software patent scheme should not be scrapped, and (b) aiming a warning shot at Microsoft and other patent freaks to behave, or they will be the target of non-trivial lawsuits.
IBM wants, finally, to make its patents open for open source, which it feels creates significant value for its own branded services, while preventing commercial competitors from using them.
This is not a random strategy, and it's unlikely to change over the next 20 years. If anything, expect IBM to defend open source use of patents, while trying to keep software patents "clean" so that it has the most weaponry against competitors like Microsoft.
Re:Patent Office Runs Like a Business! (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Open Source programmers don't give much thought to patents. They even actively avoid them, so any violations are purely accidental, not from "contamination" or some shit.
Now, since embracing Open Source, IBM is now in a bit of a pickle, since they're in a prime position to get sued over these patents. A tighter patent system means IBM is free(r) to engage in open source without the same level of risk.
2) IBM is a big research organisation; they're into real patents. The kinds that other companies want to licence, not the kinds those lesser companies get sued for after accidentally reinventing the same thing.
IBM's business is all Signal, and filtering out the Noise is just good business for them.
Smart move for IBM, in the long run... (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent abuse tends to dilute IBM's position as a R&D-to-royalties focused technology company. They are simply protecting their position. I suspect other R&D-heavies (HP, GE, etc.) will back this, if they're smart.
Patent Office Milking System Patent (Score:2, Insightful)
Subject: A service for which a P.O. can milk both patent holder and alleged patent infringer.
A method by which a alleged patent infringer can apply to the Patent Office for patent invalidation, pursuant to disbursement of a modest application fee for said invalidation application.
Why only sell weapons to one side when you can sell to both?
Re:Somehow this doesn't fit (Score:5, Insightful)
Volunteers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand IBM's interest in patent reform. Maintaining a patent portfolio like theirs is not cheap, and they're a giant litigation target. Given their R&D, they're likely going to remain the 800-pound gorilla in patents no matter what the rules are.
A much better solution would be to place more of the burden of the patent process on the applicant, in a way that's easily verifiable. If an applicant was forced to more thoroughly justify why their work is exceptional, with a bias towards granting a patent as specific to the reference implementation as possible, we'd see fewer applications, which would give more review time to the examiners, and less patent collision, where multiple vague patents cover the same thing.
Not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, there could be a patentable difference if details of the solid state circuit required some really new kind of arrangement, but many times a broad "wherein the oscillator circuit uses solid state active components" clause would be argued over a similarly functioning circuit showing a tube based oscillator, for all the usual reasons already generally established for solid state devices ( low power, less space, longer lifetime, etc).
The criterion SHOULD be if implementing an old method in an internet context really involves such a unique thing in light of lots of other, prior art methods that have been implemented in an internet context (this, of course, is presuming you even think such kinds of methods SHOULD even be considered patentable in the first place)
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Open Letter to all patent lawyers including IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
That's far enough - there's no need to even mention open source or free software projects: the onus is on those who are proponents of software patents (or any other kind of patent) to show that they promote progress in the sciences and useful arts. It must be demonstrated by them that the overall effect is beneficial in each area of technology and in each industry to which the patent system is applied.
Patent attorneys and others will always try to hoodwink us into believing all kinds of nonsense about the patent system. They use words and expressions like "protection", "intellectual property" and "theft" to mislead people into believing that a patent represents some kind of tangible entity over which people have natural rights. But we should never forget what a patent really is: a government granted 20 year monopoly right to exclude everyone else other than the patentee from freely using some idea, whether they came up with it independently or not. Unlike a copyright, it is a kind of officially sanctioned and enforced removal of rights from everyone else and in the case of software patents it is a serious infringement of the tangible property rights of millions of computer owners.
Extraordinary interventions in the free market, that even entail curtailment of natural rights and liberties, demand extraordinary justification.
Re:Without Patents little guys loose (Score:1, Insightful)
SW Patents are there to avoid "the little guy" to ruin "big brothers" affairs. And ever IF some little boy could even benefit, the damage to the all other little guys as a whole is far superior.
Software Patents are EVIL.
regards
Marco Menardi
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents are worthless (Score:3, Insightful)
Externalization? Say its not so! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Without Patents little guys loose (Score:2, Insightful)
Build untill broke
Get an invester (Non disclosure)
Build untill compleate
Patent
Produce
With software it's
Code untill compleate
Copyright
Produce
The software is already protected (by copyright).
Patent protects against reverse engenearing.
For software reverse engenearing costs MORE than the R&D for the original project
but for hardware reverse engenearing costs LESS than the original R&D.
With software your better off if your compeditors are cloning your softwares behavure. And you get to say "We are the first" so the compeator (who forked over more in R&D) has to charge less while effectively advertising YOUR product on the pacage.
However software patents mean you can patent compeditors out of business.
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:patent system change (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:3, Insightful)
There needs to be an easier way to chalenge the pattens. Maybe a required prior art search and a more liberal definition of prior art including an "obvious next step" clause as well as a clause of the patten holder paying the cost of fighting the patten if prior art is found. Also i think the pattens if still existing should be limited to a narrowly defined process and not an openly broad claim that tries to include "the process of staying alive" with it. Too many patten aplication try to include everything other then what they want to patton in an attemp to hold inovation hostage while they profit from the work of others.
Patten holding companies or persons should also be required to activly use the pattens for some length of time by either licensing them or making a product in itself and trying to market it. Also the licensing requirment should hold at the same sale price the rest of the world would get to use it at and whoever license the patten should have to activly use it in a product being marketed. If this isn't met then the pattened software should go into the public domain or be subject to a leanient price policy dictated by the government.
I have no problem with a company developing a new technoligy and using it. I don't like the idea of a patten stoping anyoner else from attempting to compete with it either. If a company just wants to hold pattens in the hope that the next obvious step would violate them, well thats just plain wrong.
Re:Open Letter to all patent lawyers including IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
As a small time software guy, the chance that you'll win in the patent lottery is a lot smaller than that you'll win. And the problem is that it's not a free choice you have: if there are software patents, you have to play the game, you can't opt out. And again, this has nothing to do with patent quality, but with the fact that every computer program is built on many ideas and the fact that pretty much all innovation in software is sequential (along with the fact that large companies have more money to obtain more patents, of course).
As Shapiro said [berkeley.edu] in 2001:
Re:No time to evaluate patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Small company invents 5 new things. Gets 20 patents.
Big Company with 3000 patents, goes to small company and says: "Sure we need 10 of your patents but you infringe on 200 of our patents", starting from "best way to draw line from x1,y1 to x2,y2".
Small company cross licenses with Big Company and possibly even pays Big Company (because they are in a weaker position).
It's a total mess already anyway. What's the difference?
Patents no longer serve the original purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, the rate of change is so fast and most products are so complex that any new idea builds upon dozens or hundreds of active patents. That is why you see chains of patent violation claims like Tivo suing Echostar at the same time that Forgent is suing Tivo. Almost no product is standalone any more. Patents have mutated from protecting a single idea into being part of a company's "nuclear arsenal". You sue us for violating patents a,b, and c and we'll sue you for violating x,y, and z. IBM may have a lot of patents and derive a good amount of income from them, but I think they are fairly restrained compared to many other companies. If IBM was really nasty about enforcing all their patents aggressively, they could make life miserable for a large percentage of all companies in existance.
Smaller companies that actually try to produce a product are at the biggest disadvantage under this system. Chances are they're violating one or more patents by larger companies or they come close enough that they could be forced to prove they're not. It's the little companies that have patented some idea and don't actually produce products based on it that are profiting. They can just sit back and sue anybody who comes close to violating their unused patent.
From an admittedly lay perspective, it appears to me that 1) the duration of patents needs to be shortened, 2) that the owner of a patent should be required to actively attempt to implement or profit from it from the beginning. This crap where companies nobody ever heard of decide 10 years later to shake down everybody using JPEG or GIF for royalties must stop!, 3) full disclosure of patents must be legally required if a company is going to participate in any standards setting group. Example for this is Rambus participating in developing the SDRAM standard and then, after it became a huge success, announcing they owned a patent that covered part of the standard., and 4) like everyone else is saying - patents for ideas that are either obvious or prior art should be harder to get and easier to invalidate.
Re:IAAPL (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should software authors have to worry less about patents than independent mechanical designers, chemists, or electrical engineers?"
Because the patent system in the case of software often imposes the largest costs in the whole process, amounting frequently to an absolute barrier to innovation. Patents are obviously not meant to do this and where the capital and marginal costs of bringing innovations to market are significantly greater than the burden of the patent system itself, the extra burden may be acceptable. Your "why shouldn't everyone else suffer" argument is perverse, especially since in reality the extension of patents to software has imposed even greater a burden on the mechanical designers, chemists and electrical engineers you mention.
"What's the difference between your hypothetical and a guy who designs a new engine on paper, proposes a new synthesis on paper, or sketches a new circuit on paper, and posts it on the web, whereupon some third party company picks it up and mass produces it, and the guy is threatened for inducing patent infringement (yes, there is such a thing)?
There is not much difference. I have heard the arguments that say software is special for various reasons, but you have to have already drunk the koolaid to buy them."
You are not the first patent lawyer to pretend that inventions in the abstract, mathematical world of software are no different than inventions in the realm of physical devices and processes and it is tiresome that many of your colleagues continue to utterly disregard the arguments and opinions of experts and pioneers and the consensus of the majority of practitioners in the field itself. If you are unaware of the explanations of what is different about software, written by notable practitioners and pioneers such as Donald Knuth, Phil Salin and Richard Stallman, then you are guilty merely of ignorance. If you are aware of those arguments and still maintain that "you have to have drunk the koolaid to buy them", then I think the onus is on you to explain in detail why these luminaries in the field have got it all wrong and you are right.
"Just FYI, in the U.S., there is a special "personal use" escape clause for "business methods" (which would be most algorithm/data structure type things)."
I don't understand how this is useful or relevant, nor how compression, encryption, routing, memory management, transform, signal processing etc. algorithms and the plethora of data structures ranging from image formats to crystallographic data structures can be regarded as "business methods".
"I'm sorry. I can accept that patents in general may harm the penniless dreamer. But software is not special, and there is no credible reason to exclude it. The (unproven) net benefit is the same as it is with all other technologies(a disclosure for exclusivity bargain)."
You would have us believe that patents only harm the idle and the penniless, but that is arrant nonsense and software patents in particular have a great propensity to gratuitously harm the least idle [esr-pollmeier.de] and to make penniless (or very much less wealthy) those who [chillingeffects.org] would not otherwise expect to have anything to do with the process of software technology innovation and ought to be able to go about their businesses unmolested by the parasites you and your colleagues help to arm.
"Freedom of expression - a red herring. Free speech is a very good reason to restrict copyright, especially for artistic works. However, software was treated as "expression" as a convenient legal fiction to shoehorn it into the existing copyright laws. But really, that makes no sense. You can't argue simultaneously that an algorithm is both a discovered law of nature and unique personal expression."
No-one is - an algorithm is a mathematical entity and mathematics should absolutely not be cursed with the misery of t