Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It 333
An anonymous reader writes "BlueJ is a popular academic IDE which lets students have a visual programming interface. Microsoft copied the design in their 'Object Test Bench' feature in Visual Studio 2005 and even admitted it. Now, a patent application has come to light which patents the very same feature, blatantly ignoring prior art."
Sick Software "Patents" (Score:5, Insightful)
A patent used to be something that had invented something new, if whatever they had come up with was already out in the open and common knowledge then there a patent could not be granted.
So many things have been patented late, as far as I know these patents did now show up until a few years ago, yet all kinds of things that has been out in the open has been patented.
Software patents doesn't seem to have anything to do with who invented anything, it is about who first comes up with patenting something and get the application in.
So far I have never heard a sensible argument for why software patents is a good thing. It doesn't look like the big companies that keep on filing these patents would stop developing because there was no such thing as a software patent, they did so long before software patents would ever show up. I haven't heard of a single case where the lone programmer (inventor?) gets a patent for some smart code he invented and the big companies will pay him for his efforts. All that I heard of is big companies (or maybe small companies that invent nothing but has made it their business to file patents for things that already exist) that have asked money from another big company because of these patents.
More Evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Vote with your money (Score:4, Insightful)
Submit the prior art (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you care, and if you think you have prior art, submit it to the examiner.
Re:Vote with your money (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed though, I doubt any of the execs of MSFT give two shits about random infractions of the law. They act with impunity all the time anyways. Just makes their eventual demise even more tasty. [Hint: I bet the Enron folk didn't think they'd go down either]
Tom
Go To The Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has no legal/ethical/moral boundaries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go To The Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to defend (Score:2, Insightful)
As it happens, Visual Studio Express is a free download from Microsoft. Having recently visited a college with my high school aged son I learned that the students in the Computer Science department all used Studio Express for their school projects. So I think ascribing this behavior to "corporate greed" may be reaching a bit. In fact, the author of the blog laments the fact that they (BlueJ) are only trying to educate, not make money. Given that, they should be happy that their ideas have been adopted and given much wider exposure via Visual Studio. Perhaps their motives are not so pure and they now see their chance at big bucks from the big, rich nasty corporation?
If it were Microsoft company policy to steal ideas that are plainly in the public domain and then patent them, a company with Microsoft's money pile would be the target of thousands of these types of accusations, and rightly so. Rather, I suspect this transgression is the result of some overzealous individuals, perhaps trying to meet patent quotas or gain some upward mobility in an enormously large corporation where it is hard to get noticed. Regardless, should Microsoft ever take the next step and go after BlueJ, I will have to eat these words, because that truly would be an unforgivable act.
what about patenting? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Granted, but revoakable (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no cost to the patent office for granting patents that are stupid. There is no or little cost to the applicant for appling for a stupid patent. Thats the problem.
evil (Score:5, Insightful)
The only solution is a total overhaul of the patent system.
(As for the BlueJ feature itself, I'm not exactly sure what's supposed to be new about it anyway. People have been doing that kind of testing since the days of Smalltalk.)
Re:Sick Software "Patents" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that it is the responsibility of the party filing the patent to check for prior art, and report their findings to the patent office. This is a clear conflict of interest. However, this is not unique to software patents, only that the effects are more pronounced because the industry moves so much quicker than most.
Reform of the patents system, not abolition of the concept, is required to ensure that they fulfil their purpose.
Re:Hard to defend (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what about patenting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is anybody really surprised by this? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm also not surprised that you went off topic and mentioned Linux and OS X just to get modded up. Seems like standard
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vote with your money (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is not a single entity (Score:2, Insightful)
If the person implementing the feature didn't write the code then they can't.
If the person who implemented the feature just followed a spec then they can't
If the person who wrote the spec "invented" it by copying other people's suggestions then they can't.
The applications lists Goenka; Gautam; (Hyderabad, IN) ; Das; Partho P.; (Hyderabad, IN) ; Unnikrishnan; Umesh; as the inventors so they've declared they invented it. So what did they do that they think is patent worthy?
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd hardly call that recent. Since then Microsoft has asserted that Linux violates Microsoft "Intellectual Property" but has declined to specify what IP that would be exactly. I don't think anyone would claim that's to help patent reform.
This current incident also reeks of foul play, and Microsoft is going to have to turn around pretty quickly and say "Look how stupid the patent office is for giving us this patent," lest they look bad for the incident. If Microsoft is still trying for patent reform, it seems to me they'd be better off targeting ridiculous patents held by other entities.
How this could have happened (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, here's what I think might have happened.
That's my theory, anyway. It goes to show that there's a perverse incentive for large corporations to have a system of information hiding so that it can later have plausible deniability about this kind of thing.
Re:Is anybody really surprised by this? (Score:3, Insightful)
We were talking about Integrated Development Environments, and out of nowhere you mention how you hope people will change the Operating System they use. If you had stuck to RealBasic and Eclipse, then you would have been on topic.
Re:Is anybody really surprised by this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sick Software "Patents" (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh boy! You should read at least a brief introduction to world's history before claiming that Australia has approximately the same population as India after Ghandi kicked out those damn Americans that imposed their language on all the colonies.
Re:Vote with your money (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah ok. He currently owns 977,924,000 shares. MSFT dividends are $0.40 per share. Even ignoring everything else, I think he's doing ok.
Re:How this could have happened (Score:1, Insightful)
The named inventor on a patent must be the inventor or co-inventor, otherwise the patent isn't legally valid.
Do we really need a patent system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I understand the purpose - The purpose is to allow someone who developes a new technology to be able to make the research costs back by having a monopoly, thereby encouraging innovation.
But, I see two situations:
1. The new invention is so clear an obvious that there is no effort at all to reverse engineer it when it comes on the market. (i.e. Sporks, intermittent windshield wipers, etc.)
2. The new invention is technically sophisticated, and requires significant effort to reverse engineer.
In case one, we probably don't want those obvious types of things patented anyway. In case two, even if there is no patent, the person will have a monopoly while other companies reverse engineer the product, tool up for production, etc.
I just don't think that people are going to stop innovating because there are no longer patents. In fact, I think it will ACCELERATE innovation. A company won't be able to develop a product, patent it, and just rake in the bucks from their monopoly anymore - They will have to make constant improvements to be ahead of the curve.
Re:Sick Software "Patents" (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent system was setup to encourage invention, and give incentives for people to make their work public. Patents are only needed in areas in which invention or innovation are lacking, or are regarded with to much secrecy so as the industry doesn't move forward. Software is a industry where problem solving is a everyday occurrence, and there is no need to give any huge incentives to people. Software is also covered by copywrite, and is one of the few industries protected by copywrite AND patents (the only one i know of actually, but im sure there are a few others probably).
Software is not a industry of the physical world, in which invention needs encouragement, the entire idea of software requires the ability to solve problems, to do things not done before, and overall, to innovate. If a company wants to succeed in software, then they must produce software that keeps on innovating, or they will soon fall behind and customers will then jump to some other software company to get the services they need.
When patents get involved, things go bad. Patents give inventors incentives by giving them a temporary monopoly on their patented idea, forbidding other companies from taking that idea without permission, or until the patent expires. This monopoly immediately discourages innovation within the claims of the patent due to the government approved (thus legally binding) monopoly that cant be removed. Normally, this downside is outweighed by the benefits of the invention within the public domain, once the patent expires, the monopoly ends, and the patent falls into the public domain for any use.
The need for invention is the key to patents. Monopolies granted by patents is a big turnoff to innovation, and this must be remembered when deciding what should or should not be allowed to be patented. Software is already protected by copywrites, also important to remember. Software requires innovation, something patents discourage in the short term (short being the patent expiration term), in the long term, does the software industry really benefit from patents? The answer would be no. Software patents only cover ideas used in software, not actual software. The ideas used would have been created by the need for them by a programmer. Sooner or later, some other programmer would have also come up with the same ideas. Not only that, but software patents try to be generic as possible, they don't just cover implementation, but the whole idea of something. This is what kills innovation in software. Without patents, innovation will flourish as companies wont be scared to death about coming under fire by patents, allowing them to innovate and move the industry as a whole forward. Without software patents, the industry will not suffer from a lack of invention, as stated, the industry requires it just to exist, and if a company did decide "hey, without patents, why should i invent anything?", with will soon find themselfs in a world of hurt when their customers start switching to other software makers (hey, just look what happened to Microsoft and Mozilla, Microsoft won the browser wars with Netscape, and from then on didn't work on IE, Mozilla meanwhile caught up to IE and even surpassed it, forcing Microsoft to update their browser in fear of losing even more people to Mozilla/Firefox and other browsers gaining headway.).
Competition is good in industries, and in the software industry, you compete and succeed by inventing (yes, success is also being bought out by other companies). As noted by Microsoft, without competition, why even bother innovating and inventing? Patents remove competition, and in a industry who's main goal is to innovate and invent, removing competition is what makes companies sit on their ass.
Re:BUZZZTT Wrong! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Antipatents? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy way to get mod points (Score:2, Insightful)
This might be an acceptable situation for some businesses if they did not have to pay for the Microsoft-certified "professionals" to come fix their installations when the OS gets fried by malware, viruses, adware, spyware, and/or patches and "updates". Not to mention the costs of trying to relicense software if a piece of hardware goes out.
The real cop-out is saying that there are no alternatives.
Re:Beware of Submitting Prior Art (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Submit obvious idea for patent.
2) Have a "third party" submit prior art. A shoddy version so that it is easily dismissed.
3) Get the patent.
If any trial happens, try to get the opponent's prior art thrown out by proving it is related to the prior art that had been previously submitted.
Of course, I have to wonder if this would ran afoul of any conspiracy or fraud type laws.
Re:Sick Software "Patents" (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I don't want to get bogged down in battles à-la Free vs Open Source philosophies, etc.; I want to do whatever I can to open up the field for more people to help fight bad patents, using any strategy that doesn't have overtly undesirable side effects. While hastily & poorly written, the text on the tooi.org homepage is meant to convey the fact that the system is not intended for people to "claim" the ideas they submit.
So given its mission, the language about "original ideas" on the homepage needs to change; the scope is counter-productively narrow as it stands. Insofar as the project does solicit and accept original ideas though, the point is that those ideas will somehow be put into either the public domain or Creative Commons (or BSDd or GPLd... implementation still to be debated).
Hope that clears things up.