Groklaw Rants On Software Patents 302
LMCBoy writes "Groklaw has the story of Kodak v. Sun (mentioned on Slashdot already), which PJ calls 'Exhibit A' in the case against software patents. Her analysis of Kodak v. Sun, and the larger issue of software patents, is excellent. Bottom line: the software patent 'cold war' provides no benefits to anyone, and will inevitably make the game of software development impossible for anyone to play."
What about GNU Java (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe Sun wanted to lose.
Or perhaps someone who gave them over a billion dollars wanted asked them politely to lose a case like this.
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:2)
I wonder how this could affect Mono.
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:2, Informative)
Not true. Remember that Kodak got that particular set of patents from Wang; and in a long ago intellectual debate between Microsoft and Wang, MSFT paid/invested $90 million to settle issues on a set of Wang patents that covered OLE. It's probably the case that this settlement got them a pretty broad IP cross-license including the Java patents.
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:3, Insightful)
Karma Hits Sun (Score:2, Insightful)
Next, the management showed its hand by doing a deal with the devil: Bill Gates. He gave Sun Microsystems a ransom on the order of a billion dollars.
Now, Kodak comes out of nowhere and slaps Sun Microsystem with a lawsuit and wins a billi
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:3, Informative)
US Patent # 5206951 Filed April 3, 1991
US Patent # 5421012 Filed May 30, 1993
US Patent # 5226161 Filed August 31, 1992
Because in the U.S. patent rights belong to the first to invent rather than the first to file, and companies often wait a long time before filing in order to maximize the value of each patent (the more you know about your eventual product when you patent it, the better you can protect it) it is likely that at least two, and possibly all 3 of these we
Re:What about GNU Java (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also another issue. If this affects
Could be better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could be better (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent system assumes that ideas are something unique and that it is something special to come up with new ideas. It is only with software that the mistake becomes really obvious.
If it were really neccessary for us to advance how the hell did the monkey ever come out of the tree without a working patent system?
Jeroen
Re:Could be better (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is different. The barrier to entry is small, all you need is a Turin complete machine (a PC) and you are golden. Well, at least you can build some things that way. But the problem with software patents is that software is really just special cases of math, and math ideas should not be patentable. Do you want to pay royalty to company X just because you added 1 and 1 together?
Software ideas are too broad to be patentable. An example:
Controller software managing transformation and transmission of data structures.
That's it. That's your entire computing right there. If I patent it everyone has to pay royalty to me if they use a computer in any way.
Software is different from physical things in a way that it represents ideas more than just implementations. Patents to physical objects are more obvious than patents to ideas that can be in principle reduced to a simple set of mathematical rules that define the Turin Complete Machine.
Re:Could be better (Score:3, Interesting)
A little spin on that one:
An inventor with his new shiny invention and a few tens of thousands of dollars to spare goes to the patent office and gets a patent. (Ignoring the fact that a few thousand others might come up with the same solution when presented with his problem)
Now the inventor goes to the manufacturer and waives around his patent. Manufacturer says: 'great, but by the way we have a few patents of our own tha
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
He can as well spare a few thousand bucks more to find out, whether his invention infringes other parties' patents.
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
And thats without the fact that in the end the claims get interpreted by human beings, and especially in the case of software, the fact that human beings cannot always see how software works (unless its open source. Go FOSS!). A recent case from a friend of mine: there is a patent in place for scheduling appointments with people based on two databases (spe
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
Re:Could be better (Score:3, Informative)
That misses the key trade in a patent system: publication of the idea. Your version of "protection" results in the idea being kept secret by the inventor and the public never benefiting from the knowledge of the idea, or the public can figure it out (e.g., reverse engineering) and the inventor is left unprotected. Yes, patents have a downside, but they are recognized as a necessary evil. The key to a good patent system is a proper balance between th
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
No, most people realize it wouldn't matter.
The originators of the patent system thought it might spur innovation by establishing a public record of the workings of existing inventions. However, in reality, the only reason anyone carries out patent searches today is to scout out potential infringement claims, for either offensive or defensive purposes.
That is why the system is broken. The USPTO should
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
An example:
Controller software managing transformation and transmission of data structures.
That is almost certainly the title of a patent. The title means effectively nothing from a legal standpoint. Ignore it and the abstract and go straight to the claims. No claim will look like the example you listed.
Re:Could be better (Score:3, Insightful)
In order to foster innovation, companies needed protection; otherwise, it was a lot cheaper to let the other companies innovate and then copy them later.
Two things have changed in this regard:
1. Many ideas are now a lot cheaper to take to market than they used to
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally, the university was used to progress and disseminate knowledge. Now, due to increased administration, budget cuts, etc., all the knowledge is being locked away just in case it might be worth something.
I'm not sure what can be done about it, but it is unfortunate and wrong IMO.
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:2)
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:2)
And filing/defending a patent isn't easy. Filing costs are around $10,000 and you have to register your patent across the world (Europe, USA, Japan) and you must defend the patent the
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see how you think you can discuss patents and intellectual property intelligently when you don't know the difference between a trademark and a patent. You have no duty to "defend" a violated patent. A patent is ONLY the exclusive right to prevent others from practicing the invention or process described in the patent. You also don't "register" a patent -- you have to file for a new patent in every country where you want one (though some countries are combining for this purpose, or are moving towards cross-patenting agreements). If you want to patent something in the U.S., and you only want to use that patent in the U.S. then you don't have to bother with the rest of the world. BTW, the patent application fee for an individual or small company is a whopping $395.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee200
If you think it's so easy to patent something, go to town. If you hire a high-powered law firm to write your patent, research prior art, craft your claims so that they are as broad as reasonable, and prosecute the patent until issue (which would include several rejections for overly broad claims and additional fees for reexamination under narrower claims) then you could spend $10k. If you're doing that, though, you're either planning to license to a company to produce your product (which you presumably have no problem with, provided you are rational) or you are planning to practice or produce it yourself (again, there should be no problems here).
You plainly don't understand the patent system. A patent has to be new, useful, and nonobvious. If, given Company A's patent, Company B's engineers can invent new, useful X, Y, and Z without substantial thought, research, or development then X, Y, and Z are not patentable inventions. If X, Y, and Z are not obvious (Company B had to invest substantial research etc) then they are patentable. Why? Because we want to reward Company B for adding to our global knowledge base. Your problem is that you think, many years after the fact, that X, Y, and Z are obvious, and because they are obvious now that they were obvious at the time they were invented. You can't patent "in every possible direction," (whatever that means) you can only patent related nonobvious inventions.
Your ignorant, paranoid rantings are really quite disturbing to those of use who contribute to society, and to the onward march of technology, and wish for a system that rewards largely based on innovative merit to remain in place. The system does have some problems, and determining obviousness in software patents is one of the harrier issues, but your desire to dismantle a system that has successfully promoted innovation and prevented intellectual quagmire for more than two centuries based on a problem with a 20-30 year-old industry is unfounded.
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:3, Informative)
Hoover to pay 4m [pounds sterling] damages to Dyson - News - in dispute over bagless vacuum cleaner [findarticles.com]
Hoover wins court battle with Dyson [bbc.co.uk]
Dust settles on Dyson's long battle [bbc.co.uk]
Forgive my use of the word "register", but I am using it within the context defined by the following article:
Business Law - An Overview o [bizhelp24.com]
Re:Why aren't univerities better at the patent gam (Score:3, Insightful)
So how is the object manager patent a new, useful, and nonobvious improvement on Smalltalk (which is mentioned under Other References)?
When Thomas Edison's laboratory was inventing the light bulb, they tried thousands of wrong solutions over the course of a year and a half. That kind of work does require patent protection, since it is much easier to reverse engineer the one correct way than to redo the research.
Software is the opposite. It is a construct
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
Soko
Re:Could be better (Score:5, Informative)
Read Donald Knuth's letter to the USPTO [mit.edu] to get a better understanding of this reasoning against software patents.
What PJ is effectively pointing out is that software patents have degenerated from rewarding true innovators to being serious road blocks to software innovation. They are land mines waiting to explode on anyone writing serious software without the resources to pay an army of lawyers to protect them.
Re:Could be better (Score:3, Interesting)
Software is fundamentally a mathematical process.
Quite true. Software itself is unpatentable - you must claim it interacting with something tangible. It controls a processor, it takes input from a user, it causes a display to operate, etc. In this way, it legally becomes a component of a larger process, like, "I'm flying an airplance and a computer is helping," even if the claims are 99% about software and 1% about airplanes.
To make that any more restrictive would cause th
Old geeks should enter a class action vs. USPTO (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing the rules in the middle of the game was unfair and should have been blocked in court. All the geeks from "back in the day" should participate in a class action suit against the USPTO to have all software patents overturned.
If we had had the chance to patent software back then, my associates and I might well have patents on certain types of client-server architecture, physical disk mapping, soft failover disk servers, tiled images with prefetch for seamless virtual panning, using neural networks for heuristic evaluation of image convolution patterns, 'tiled' convolution pattern matching, various methods for converting scanned image data into 3D terrain models, etc., etc. If not our group, then certainly others before us. But we did not have the opportunity to do so because at the time (early 1980's) software was not patentable!
Allowing SW patents 10 to 30 years after many of the most significant innovations was violently unfair to the hundreds or thousands of creative people who developed the industry to that point, and produced nearly all the real inventions, under a non-patentable paradigm.
In the early 1980's my teams developed dozens of major innovations that today could be patented, but at that time were restricted to the thin "trade secret" and copyright protections. The entire philosophy of the industry at that time was either keep it secret, or publish. There was no middle ground. We were just a minor group, there were hundreds or thousaands of others doing as well or better. None of those innovations were protected as "Intellectual Property" - we just shared ideas.
Now, after all that work, stuff that we built back in the 1970's and 1980's is being patented right and left - not to mention trivialities like file formats for a disk partition scheme!! What's new in that?
At this point the best action might well be for all of those who were around before the USPTO changed the rules to get together and file a class action suit against the USPTO to have all software patents thrown out and return to the previous presumption that software algorithms were mathematics to be discovered, not invented. I would suggest a legislative process, but I doubt that this would go anywhere in today's environment.
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
I was just about to say........ (Score:2)
Isn't it strange how the USPTO are the only ones who can't see the obvious?
Re:Could be better (Score:2)
Programming is essentially a markup language surrounding mathmatical formulas and thus, should not be patentable.
Re:Could be better (Score:5, Insightful)
Examples of where "software" patents have been, or can be, harmful is not an argument that they are inherently bad. There are also bad "device" patents even outside software, such as the combover [uspto.gov] and using a laser pointer to play with a cat [164.195.100.11]. It also doesn't show that all software patents are harmful.
The harm caused by some software patents isn't because algorithms and methods are patentable, it's because simple obvious ones are being approved as valid patents. Think about it. If the algorithm is not trivial or simple, nobody would come up with it by chance anyway and so it isn't stopping them from doing anything. For example, there are a multitude of machine vision algorithms such as facial recognition or object recognition. You can't accidently stumble on the same approach, they are complicated an non-obvious. Patenting these harms nobody. If they weren't patentable, many of these intelligent algorithms would not get published and would be kept secret, so we'd never learn how they worked and couldn't improve from them. Conversely, as in the typical examples given, if someone can inadvertantly implement a patented algorithm, it must be somewhat obvious to people in the industry (and hence shouldn't be patentable).
As far as the "it's just math" argument, I go back again to machine vision. Yes, it can be written as math. But we're not talking about fundamental math derivable from first principles, we're talking about procedures that involve math as a basic building block. This is akin to developing physical devices in which physical laws are the basic building blocks. Often a physical design is optimized by math, the same as an algorithm.
In short, so far the arguments against software patents in general don't hold water. Yes, there absolutely has to be patent reform, but that includes all forms of patents. But that doesn't mean that one has to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are non-harmful algorithms (and I would argue these are the majority of algorithms) and it is in the public's interest to provide some protection to the inventor, otherwise these algorithms will be kept secret.
Bzzzzzzt (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bzzzzzzt (Score:2)
Hey! Where's my can of Lysol?
hilarious (Score:2)
Re:hilarious (Score:2)
mor(m)ons? (Score:2)
Re:flipflopflipflop...pop. (Score:2)
I appreciate very much the work that DeCSS has done. Without the work from folks who were willing to move around in a legal gray area, DVDs would be a closed system, and I probably wouldn't be able to play my DVDs on my computer (which runs Linux) and *certainly* wouldn't be able to play DVDs with open source software on same.
I appreciate what P2P does. P2P is a new and important economic infrastructure that allows costs of distribution to (a) be low due to efficient use o
wow, that is REALLY squinting (Score:2, Troll)
Since you didn't get it I'll make it easy: patents (like copyrights) DO NOT HARM INNOVATION. If you want to produce art you damn well can - and you can distribute it your heart's content, all because of this wonderful invention of communications. In
Re:wow, that is REALLY squinting (Score:2)
Okay, in that case, I'd like to make a one-click buy option for an open source online store.
Oh, wait, I can't, because Amazon owns the patent on that and my open source project can't afford to license it.
Now do you see how patents hurt open source too?
meanwhile those big mean and evil corporations might even use a bit of that brainpower of yours as motivation to cut you a paycheck.
Or they could just decide to sue you f
what? (Score:2)
Duh... what? If you want to run a "click and shop store then you are, by definitoin, doing business. That means you have taken the impetus to play in the corporate world, which means taking on their rules.
OTOH, nothing at all to stop me from creating (and maintaining) an open source software project that provides "click and shop" functionality to those who do business in countrie
Repetition helps us learn. Repetition helps us... (Score:3, Informative)
While I can sympathize with you having to read the same objections repeatedly, this information is repeated for a good reason: it is not a part of the public's common understanding of computers and it should be. Common computer users are under threat too even if they don't know it (I refer you to Paul Heckel's threatening Apple Hypercard users with patent infringement if Apple didn't see things his way; RMS talks about it in his talk on the danger of software patents [gnu.org] when Heckel attended one of RMS' talks)
Kodak vs. Polaroid (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anyone remember the Kodak vs. Polaroid lawsuit?
Maybe that experience is what gave Kodak the idea. The sheer number of software programs constantly being developed also makes patent searches an overwhelming task. And how do you research prior art in proprietary software licensed under terms that forbid reverse engineering?
There are other reasons too that they list. Software is developed so rapidly a 17-year blockade is impractical; it never wears out, so the traditional argument that patents are
Good idea (Score:4, Funny)
Patents won't stop innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
This might be an object lesson in other fields, though. If we want to slow down the pace of genetic engineering, for example, just allow extremely broad and ill-defined patents in the field, and by the time they expire perhaps we'll have time to define a series of ethics and protocols to safeguard us.
/ only slightly facetious
Re:Patents won't stop innovation (Score:2)
Kodak vs. Sun (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kodak vs. Sun (Score:2)
This epitimizes what is wrong with SW patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you think patents are a good thing (as I do), there is no room for Software Patents. The only people they benefit are the Lawyer IP-Land-Grabbers. The vast amount of the proffessionals in the industry I know are against them (includiong me).
Re:This epitimizes what is wrong with SW patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Once the patent wars start, there'll be no stopping them (because of bad blood between companies) and there will be more money to be made from sueing non-open-source companies than open-source projects with volunteers.
Once companies are in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Then maybe the lobbyists working for the corporations will change their tune and push for abolishment of software patents.
My suggestion, get some good patents into the hands of EFF or similar organisations and start the conflict until it bleeds everyone dry in the US and Japan.
We know that software patents are bad because we're smarter than average, we're also knowledgeable of the industry. Others are not so forward-looking and they have to be SHOWN examples of why it's bad. This
Wonderfully evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you a student of Machiavelli, or merely a gifted amateur. [rhetorical question, no need for a question mark]
The scenario you describe is all too likely, the IT/IP mix is like a powderkeg at the moment with software patents. Sounds unethical to me to start such a bloodbath, but one could argue that if it was deliberately started now it would be like "back burning" to prevent bush fires, preventing something even worse later on.
Re:This epitimizes what is wrong with SW patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the big players cross license with each other. Microsoft deals with Sun deals with IBM. The only companies that work as loose cannons are those (like Eolas) that do not produce software products profitably. They can't be intimidated into cross licensing because they don't actually produce the software.
good for open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:good for open source (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the war on drugs was meant to keep out drugs of all suburbia. Has the US administration gave up keeping colored kids away from drugs and focused on whites only?
Re:good for open source (Score:2)
Re:good for open source (Score:2)
Untrue (Score:5, Insightful)
the software patent 'cold war' provides no benefits to anyone, and will inevitably make the game of software development impossible for anyone to play
It would shift the production of software with unhindered innovations from countries that have intellectual property restrictions to countries that completely disregard them. Governments that are allowing these patent controversies to continue are killing the IT segment of their economy, and will eventually be surpassed by the unrestricted countries. It provides benefits to the latter.
Re:Untrue (Score:2)
The result still couldn't be sold or distributed in the US in violation of a US patent, no matter where it was written or what the laws are there.
That's my point. The software would still continue to be developed, but as in the example you gave, the US would not be allowed to use it. The US economy would not benefit from the advances in software while other countries would.
Ask Slashdot: How do I pronounce /etc/fstab? (Score:2, Funny)
"Girl, you must be in
but I'm not sure how to say
Thanks!
Re:Ask Slashdot: How do I pronounce /etc/fstab? (Score:2, Funny)
--
"It tastes like burning, Ms. Krabappel."
Re:Ask Slashdot: How do I pronounce /etc/fstab? (Score:2)
Re:Ask Slashdot: How do I pronounce /etc/fstab? (Score:2)
Also, why don't you try for yourself at http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.htm
It's not a rant, but the news item is low quality (Score:3, Insightful)
The only ranting I saw was in the title of the item. It would do the poster good to observe some courtesy towards other news sites.
Re:It's not a rant, but the news item is low quali (Score:2)
How is software really different? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "software doesn't wear out" argument is BS. When you sell software, you don't sell the software as such, but the right to use it. While the software itself does not wear out, the usefulness does. eg. Anybody still using TurboPascal V1 for MSDOS? Expanding on that, if anything software "wears out" faster than mechanical mechanisms.
When you take out a patent, you're not so much protecting your product but you're protecting your market/customer base. This doesn't change when you're making software or little mechanical gizzmos. All the examples showing that patents kill software innovation could equally be applied to mechanical gizzmos too. eg. "Method to attach spring to washer" is just as much a problem for somebody making gizzmos as "Nesting identification by colorizing". If Ford own a patent for some engine technology, they can prevent Toyota using it. So how is this different from IBM preventing Microsoft doing something?
The "software is different" proponents are just like the people who whine about their tech job going to India while wearing Nikes made in China. Patents of all kinds, including software ones, have common problems.
Re:How is software really different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is software really different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is software really different? (Score:2)
b) I don't know how something patented can be a trade secret. Part of being a trade secret is that you have to keep it a secret. Patenting something is the complete opposite: you are disclosing the invention to the world in exchange for a limited monopoly.
I could be wrong, so please show me a case where a company successfully litigated a pat
Re:How is software really different? (Score:2)
I have always wondered, it use to be that an inventor had to disclose blueprints and specifics on how to build the machine he was patenting. If software is to be patented, I think sourcecode should be provided and sealed in a vault (digital and/or physical) until the patent expires, then that sourcecode becomes public domain.
Ofcourse, I also think patents should be scrutinized b
Re:How is software really different? (Score:4, Interesting)
PJ's point is that you still could. The reason nobody does anymore is that MS, Borland etc now offer better products. She says that these companies innovate so people won't want to keep using TurboPascal V1, even though they could.
The tech and software sector innovate because it's in their nature. They don't need patents as a stimulus.
Re:How is software really different? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Software doesn't wear out. There are programs running in the insurance industry that were written 30+ years ago. And funny you should mention, but there are odd little niche markets where people DO still use TurboPascal for MSDOS. I know of at least two software products written in Pascal, designed to run on MSDOS platforms, which are still being maintained and updated by the original creators-- in Pascal for MSDOS. One of them eve
Re:How is software really different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other issues:
* With software, systems are generally quite complex and require effort to re-implement. Consider your "Method to attach spring to washer" -- if you *didn't* have a patent, it'd take your competitor five minutes to figure out what to do by glancing at your system. In software, just because you have the latest version of a 3d rendering package do
Chicken Little (Score:3, Insightful)
Rants aside, the raison d'etre of patents is to promote innovation. Now I don't see how patents have fostered software innovation in the US; copyrights seem to be sufficient protection for that. On the other hand, where is the *evidence* that patents have choked-off software innovation? What developer did not pursue an idea for fear of a patent-infringement lawsuit?
I'm not trolling. If we're going to argue against patents, then let's see the evidence that they actually choked-off innovation; the linked "industry at risk" story makes some cogent arguments, but read closely and you'll find it's mostly speculation about what *will* happen in the next decade.
An aside, but check out this quote the "industry at risk" story uses to bolster its POV: "Thus, if a small company tries to use a patent to "protect" itself against competition from IBM, IBM can usually find patents in its collection which the small company is infringing, and thus obtain a cross-license. Besides which, if you are a small company, do you really want to try taking IBM to court?"
Re:Chicken Little (Score:2)
It isn't stopping me, but it does scare me. I'm trying to get into the billing software industry, and hoping and praying that the industry doesn't have any patents to speak of, but who knows?
To the extent I control the company's purse (not the only owner), I'm going to want to build up a war chest much sooner than I should have to under normal circumstances, because who knows what shit some other
Wrong To Argue No One Benefits From Patents (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider: If someone had patented DNS, each DNS query might chalk up a micropayment in the patent holders' account. That's a serious benefit for the patentholder.
That's the incentive driving patents.
It's possible to argue that "society" suffers from all this, while one individual prospers. Perhaps. But, society is a morass of peop
Litigation Death Nell (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe someday a judge will be appointed that has a computer science background that will be able to see as plain as most programmers how wrong and misguided software patents are. Until then I know I'll never buy another Kodak product. . .
Re:Litigation Death Nell (Score:2)
That isn't their job. Unless you meant they quit the bench and run for congress.
The problem (hopefully) written in one sentence: (Score:3, Insightful)
(Perl jokes aside...)
IMHO, the expression of ideas in any language is covered by copyright law, not patent law. Ergo, software patents should not be allowed, since there's already plenty of protection under copyright.
Soko
What do the media companies think of this? (Score:3, Interesting)
All comments owned by previous posters (Score:5, Interesting)
"Kodak praised the verdict and said it was part of an aggressive push to convert innovations ? both homegrown and purchased ? into real money. The company over the past several years has been issuing licenses, filing lawsuits, forming spinoff companies and finding other uses for its technologies."
It seems that today, companies don't produce products, they produce lawsuits, and that's how they get their money. How long can this continue?
Furthermore, since 1.06B is about 1/3 of Sun's cash on hand (here [yahoo.com]), what will that mean for Sun? It's 7% of their total value, so this can't be good for them.
In the end, it's only the lawyers who win.
--
First the Eolas lawsuit, now this. What is going to take for Bill Gates to wake up and say that suing OpenOffice developers isn't worth being able to lose $1.06B to a company that actually has the legal resources to wage a protracted war with Microsoft? If Sun loses this, the Microsoft had better be willing to settle in a very generous was or Kodak will go after them. $1.06B for Sun, since Microsoft has much, much more money it could just as easily be $5B from Microsoft.
This is all starting to become like nuclear weapons in and after the cold war. First it seemed like no big deal, hell it was even a requirement to be a big player to have nukes. Now all these little players are getting them, and Eolas and Kodak IMO are no different or better than the rogue states getting their own arsenals of nukes. Now the big boys are getting attacked so, what do they do? Disarm by pushing for the elimination of all software and business method patents, to keep these guys from having legal nukes to use against them, or do they just pray that not enough ankle biters will get enough patents to bankrupt them in independent and coordinated lawsuits?
--
Although I know its offical /. policy that everyone should run around in circles yelling its the end of the world everytime a software patent is infringed, this particular dispute is far from over and probably faces 5+ years of appeals before any money changes hands or any technology is changed or restricted.
First, after damages are decided, Sun will move with JNOV (asking the judge to set aside the verdict because there was insufficent evidence to support to verdict). There is probably a 10% probability of this happening in any given case, even more when there is alot of money at risk.
Second, Sun will appeal to the Federal Circuit, which usually overturnes 60% of district court decisions because district courts usually dont know anything about technology and know even less about patent law.
So, IMHO, its too early to start running around in circles over this decision, at least until the Federal Circuit affirms.
Please check the other identical story onWhat Makes Software Patents Different (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that I never see pointed out as a key difference between software patents and traditional real-world patents is the time it takes to make an implementation.
For example, in the past, it could have taken years and thousands to millions of dollars of development and testing to create a patentable idea. Because of this, you need a way to protect that hard work and investment or, yes, nobody would spend the time to invent things because they could get stolen by big companies (patents were originally designed to protect small inventors ironically). The problem with software patents is that it hardly takes any R&D whatsoever to create most of the patentable ideas. All it takes is an idea, something that patents were originally designed NOT to protect. They were designed to protect the implementation of an idea.
All the BS patents seem to fall into the space of no R&D for implementation, especially the "business processes" patents like 1-click. It's like "Oh, I have an idea," let's patent it. The patent office is making the erroneous assumption that not being able to patent an idea as soon as you thought of it would somehow have discourage you thinking of the idea. If software patents are allowed at all, they need to be tempered by the amount of research it requires to go from idea to implementation.
You should NOT be able to patent a "Hey, I just thought of something idea" that takes 10 minutes to implement. Practically all web-based patents fall into this category. I think there is still room for patents on ideas that take a lot of R&D work, investment and time.
Is there an IT PAC? (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds to me like what the Government needs is a large, influential group that can force them into understanding just what it is we DO. I think that's the big problem: they just don't understand what goes into Software development, and as Groklaw's article mentions, the mathematical nature of it. There is a lot we could do if we were to mobilize.
So if there is a PAC, point me in the direction and I'll join it. If there's not... perhaps we should make something happen.
Re:Is there an IT PAC? (Score:2)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org], perhaps?
There are serious benefits. (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM nets billions in profit from patents annually. How is that not a benefit?
One way to fix..... (Score:5, Insightful)
That way, those who are serious about their idea will be given plenty of time to get a head start and license out to those who can't wait, or don't want to fall that far behind the curve.
Those who make it their business model to sue won't have much time to sue. Most companies may just simply wait it out, or license a non-infringing technology, or simply work out some 2-3 year licensing agreement.
And once the protection time is over, those who waited will have to play catch-up... and it'll be back to the good'ol days where companies actually competed on things like cost and quality.
What if I don't want to patent my ideas? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I talk about my work at conferences, it occasionally happens (especially when "business people" are in the audience) that someone eagerly asks, whether I have already patented those ideas.
My answer is no. First, patenting is expensive. I don't have the money. Second, I want my ideas to benefit the world (that's what science is about, I think). I do not want to hoard them for myself. Third, if I want to patent my ideas, I have to spend a lot of time on legal stuff. I am a computer scientist, not a lawyer. I rather not do that.
But now there is a problem. If I do not patent my ideas, what withholds someone else from patenting them? It is not a requirement that you are the originator of an idea to patent it!
Prior art? Sure, I can bring that forward. In court. Which is not what I would like to do, because, (1) as I said, I am not a lawyer, and I hate spending time on legal matters, and (2) if I attempt to sue company X which has patented my ideas, for which prior art exists, no doubt that during the case, the expensive lawyers of X (which I can't afford) will have turned the case around and start sueing me for something, anything. Prior art is no defense. Basically, there is no defense if you are not rich enough to be able to afford expensive lawyers.
What I would really like to have, is a possibility to say, without all kinds of legal hassles, "Here are my ideas, they are for the world, anyone can use them, for free, forever." This should protect my ideas from being misused in patent form.
Guess what, that is impossible. I have a choice to either claim sole ownership of my ideas, and become a 50% of a lawyer, or to throw my ideas out to the world, close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and hope that the vultures leave something of my ideas for the world, and for me, to use.
If you look at it objectively, that is ridiculous. Patently ridiculous.
Hmmm.. Kodak could have hit paydirt (Score:2, Insightful)
What about Ole ?
What about spellcheckers ?
what about plugins in general ?
what about web browsers that launch upon clicking a URL from another app
maybe I am misunderstanding the patent
anyone else see possibilites for this ?
Kodak Moment? (Score:3, Funny)
All our rants will do absolutely nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Congress and the patent office will NEVER change the rules without pressure from business because the patent offices makes a LOT of money selling patents.
I'm not saying we shouldn't educate people about the issue or that we shouldn't discuss the issue, I'm just saying not to get your hopes up.
Ugh, wake up (Score:2, Insightful)
IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Kodak, you name it - they've all sunk huge sums of money into buying these software patents, and aside from some lawsuits between eachother, they all stand to win, by crushing opposition with their ridiculous repertoire of patents. So when the article states "The solution is obvious. Everybody needs to get rid of their stockpiles of we
What will it take? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about how long it has taken for Americans to get a clue about how bad things like McDonalds food are for your health. Our healthcare system reacts to things, like people having a heart attack, instead of the person taking preventative measures (exercise, diet) before the heart attack happens.
It's going to take several major software companies having legal "heart attacks" because of software patents before the rest of the industry gets a clue and quits dining at the trough of patents and IP.
patents now benefit only lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the thing that has kept software innovation from stalling out completely in a patent litigation tarpit has been the combination of open source and the fact that you can often bring a software idea to market for vastly less venture money than a new drug takes. Those VC's and big pharma's do all they can to see that such big gambles pay off. But trying to own and "idea" when everybody and his sister are working get an idea that solves the same problem is bound to make for friction, duplication and loose-loose litigation. If you get out there first with something people really need and you don't gouge your customers, just staying one innovation ahead of the competion can keep you in business and maybe even make you some money. One machine vision startup I worked for NEVER patented a really significant advanced technique, preferring to keep it a trade secret because they took out a patent, competitors would find a way around it more easily than they could reverse engineer it. 20 years later, they are still in business. Its much harder to spend nearly a billion dollars on a new drug and still keep it a secret until you are making sales.
Audio: R. M. Stallman's talk on software patents (Score:4, Interesting)
My favorite quote: "
Re:rants are annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:rants are annoying (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe ! (Score:2)
Looking again at the 2 articles I can also see that there are quite a few different words in each of the summaries and although at the end of the day it is the exact same topic for the exact same discussion they do also both contain different links.
I am surely grateful to the
Re:Fuck Sun Microsystems (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't smoke, for example. I detest the things because of all the bad things they do and I'm somewhat allergic to them so I get physically ill around smokers. However, I'm dead set against policies that are directed specifically against smokers: excessive taxes on cigarettes, anti-public-smoking laws, etc. I personally wouldn't mind if all cigarettes disappeared from the planet
Re:Software and Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. The inherent complexity and abstractness nature of software development puts it in a separate category altogether.
Not to mention the rate at which software is being written. Not many people are going to go out and build their own bridge, but how many people have written something that would qualify as a virtual machine? Quite a few. It's a natural progression.
I f
Re:So will MY project infringe somone's patent? (Score:3, Funny)
Buy a winnebago. drive coast to coast and breath in the deep unfettered air of the land of the free.
Eventually you could consider getting a job with a large corporation and eventually you might find yourself working on a similar project. Rejoice in your litigation protection, citizen.