English Court Allows Patents For "Complex" Software 132
jonbryce writes "The court of appeal in England has ruled that companies should be granted patents for 'complex' software products. In this particular case, Symbian had written something that makes mobile phones run faster. The court case has received very little attention because of the bank crisis, but it can be appealed to the House of Lords and then the European Court of Justice."
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
"That surely will motivate people to work harder and develop new products/processes so that others with better means will reap the rewards in their place!"
People work hard and develop new products because they make money from doing so; and few 'people' who develop those products actually make money from patents, it's primarily a means for companies to keep new competitors out of their markets.
I used to work in an area of IT where patenting hardware elements was common; the end result was that pretty much every company had a cross-licensing deal with every other company because none of them could function effectively without access to other patents in the industry. So patent lawyers made a lot of money so that the companies could do what they would have been able to do without patent laws.
As for 'original/innovative', I don't remember seeing a single patent in that industry that wasn't clearly built on ideas that had come before; the number of truly innovative and original ideas is tiny.
Stupid stupid patent office (Score:1, Interesting)
Having one type of software run more efficiently than another is (in CS terms) described as "Big O" efficiency. There are many grades of efficiency, log(n), nlog(n), n, n^2, 2^n, etc. That two pieces of software can be completely different and produce the same result means that they are a tautology (gee, just like a mathematical expression). That one can be much more efficient than another can also be true (just like a mathematical expression). All of the 'advances' in software come from university research. There is nothing in the 'advanced' version of this cell phone software that isn't prior art in Don Knuths 'The Art of Computer Programming'. Just because it seems 'advanced' to the patent office does not mean that its advanced. Over the last 60 years, every piece of software ever written was likely at least once re-written to make it perform the exact same function, faster. Its quite absurd, but coming from Briton, no surprise. Even more astounding, they can have the occasional Newton or Maxwell come along, and yet they can make SO MANY bad choices otherwise.
Re:Photoshop is Complex (Score:3, Interesting)
that's a poor way to grant patents. just because something has market value doesn't make it an innovation or an invention.
Notice that my statement started with "...create an INNOVATIVE, MORE DESIRABLE method of..." The fact that it had market value came as a consequence, though I see that the end of the sentence makes it seem that market value gives causality to IP rights. What I did mean was that an innovative better process has merit and deserves some kind of recognition. Whether the system in place is the correct one is a different point altogether.
the ultimate goal of the patent and copyright system is to promote public good and societal progress
While I agree that should be the ultimate goal, it is simply not the way it plays out in a mostly capitalistic society. Truth is most people are motivated by self interest. For that reason independently of how we might agree societal systems should function, when it comes down to it people will use it for their own purposes.
one of the inherent flaws with most patent systems is that once something is patented, even if someone else with no knowledge of the patent filing independently invents the same idea, they will either, be forced to pay royalties to the first inventor, or simply forbidden from using their own invention.
While that is certainly a problem, there seems to be no clearly resolution for it, as far as commercial rights go. Either you forfeit or enforce the fact that the first person to register a product/process has rights to it.
software patents exacerbate the problem when companies are allowed to patent mathematical algorithms or trivial/obvious functionality. things like UI interfaces, JavaScript popups, portable e-mail, etc. should not be patentable. these patents do not benefit society in any way, and they have hindered technological progress rather than promote it.
The idea of a patent is to grant rights over non trivial/obvious things. I am not claiming the system works as it is intended to, but it is certainly is not meant to give rights over the obvious/trivial. The flaw here of course being the perception of what is/isn't obvious/trivial.
at the very least, non-commercial uses of patented ideas should not be prohibited. give the first inventor exclusive rights to commercial the idea, but if someone else comes along and re-invents the same concept for personal use, they should be free to do so. otherwise the patent system is just restricting free expression and stifling innovation.
I completely agree with you here. I believe that patents should concern themselves strictly with commercial use. Even independent of reinvention, I believe that if you have the means to implement anything strictly for personal use you should have the rights to.
Something about software is different. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a difference between software and other industries, difference is in the way of infringement. In other industries most patent conflicts are about rip off of inventions, in the software industry, most patent cases are against people coming up with the same ideas and that's the problem.
In most other industries, the patent system means that if I invent a nice mouse trap I can get royalties from the guy with the mouse trap factory a.k.a. the producer.
In the software industry there is nothing to produce, there are no producers, only inventors a.k.a. programmers, and there are lots of them, which should mean lots of inventions. However the patent system used to the idea of lots of producers and few inventors, decides that whoever comes up with an idea and patents it first is "the" inventor, disregarding the fact that the same ideas are being produced concurrently elsewhere.
The patent system was not conceived to handle such a massive amount of inventors and inventions, to put it bluntly, the more you cherish the idea of an "IP" driven economy the more you should adapt to lots and lots of coincidental development. Software patents are just wrong.
Re:Complex? (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is, the original patent examiner seems to have made the correct decision. It is probable that the speedup method has prior art, although perhaps not in the context of phone operating systems. (Patenting something to speed up operations in your own companies crappy operating system seems a little narrow anyway!)
Re:write to your MP (Score:3, Interesting)
mathematical patents are simply not right for the patent system
There fixed it for you, since all software is just maths.
Re:Complex? (Score:3, Interesting)