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Patents

Patents For Open Source Projects? 92

Posted by timothy from the but-this-is-an-*internet*-yo-yo dept.
A nameless reader writes: "Salon has an interesting article on an organization and a company that are teaming up together to try to provide free software programmers with patents to protect free software in general from the corporate grip." The Salon article is about IP.com, a company (surprisingly, with the Patent office's promise to check their database) planning to put patentable ideas online as evidence of first creation, for a much smaller fee than filing a patent. If the idea appeals to you, check out openpatents.org as well -- the idea there being that the right to pool patents is a good incentive not to keep technologies locked up for more than a decade.
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Patents For Open Source Projects? More

Patents For Open Source Projects?

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  • Good point. This would be a fertile breeding ground for people to go through, grab anything that looked important, and busily patent _applications_ (you know, what patents were supposed to be in the first place?) of the idea. A dozen implementations this way, a dozen that way- none of them make claims on the central broad concept, nor should they, but it'd be pretty trivial to go 'OK, this is the background' (like a patent for a machine that is not a patent for the background concept of 'a gear') 'now here's the REAL invention!'

    As such, anything put on this database would easily become an absolute minefield and not safe to use- because there's not enough space given for an exhaustive enumerating of applications, and patents would be cheerfully filed on all the best applications- and because they would be implementations, they'd be rubberstamped through like all patents, never challenging the underlying concept but making it impossible to _implement_ it in the real world without legal exposure.

    What a bad idea. No thank you. This is so not the way to solve the problem. Frankly, it provides an avenue to worsen the problem... except in the abstract sense of 'joy! now they can't patent a gear!'. Riiiight- instead, smart people backed by corporate lawyers are put to work 24/7 patenting every conceivable application of the gear. You're better off not baiting them that way...

  • Bruce, this is bait for people to go forth and patent every SPECIFIC APPLICATION of an idea that's placed in the prior-art database. Not enough space is given to cover every imaginable application, and it's trivial to develop such an idea in a specific direction and then patent _that_.

    I totally concede that this is more like what patents _should_ be... IP claims on specific implementations of solutions to problems. I totally see that.

    However, this hardly makes it sensible for ME to put ideas in a place where others can go forth and patent all the best implementations and then sue me to stop me using them! I'm sorry. This is well-meant but fatally flawed.

  • Nonsense. It raises the bar (which _is_ good) by forcing people to go and come up with actual implementations of ideas and patent those, rather than patenting overarching concepts.

    It also gathers together all the 'most valuable' ideas for cherry-picking so that unrelated people can go do just that, and will. Yes, it's good for companies to have to come up with specific implementations of ideas and patent only those- but implementations of YOUR ideas?

    This isn't a patent reducer. It is the basis for a patent _explosion_. The resulting flood of patents will be much more like what patents were supposed to be. They'll also cover pretty much every implementation of common ideas that you could think of, making it more or less impossible to use the 'free' source ideas in the database without jumping through some serious hoops, or licensing your idea back from a company that patented the implementation you need when you gave it access to the underlying concept and said 'Ha-HA! Now you can't patent this underlying concept like some of you guys have been improperly doing!'

    Just keep away from this one... the backlash of implementation patents is going to be horrible, if this catches on. And, ironically, if you discount the fact that the basic inventing was done by someone else, the implementation patents will hold up far better in court, being more specific and less over-reaching in their claims!

  • Whatever makes you think they're NOT?

    The only difference is- source code IS an implementation. That would require the parasite to make another implementation and then patent that. With what you're proposing, it is only possible to put up basically an abstract. The most obvious implementation then falls to the parasite, so it's actually a bit easier for them seeing as they would have to come up with an implementation that's not a direct copy of someone else's implementation anyhow.

    Again- with published source code a person would have to re-implement something obvious (like a shopping cart, or 'one click' button) before patenting it and being allowed to use the patent. If we give this database any ideas it's a simple matter of the parasite just whipping off the _most_ obvious implementation and patenting that. There's no question that they'd get the patent, and it's quite likely that they'd be allowed to use it.

    None of this is good but, respectfully, I would suggest that building up a database of idea abstracts is worse. Better to build up the 'database' of open source which is at least _implementations_ that can't reasonably be directly patented by third parties without possibly awkward re-implementing.

  • The GPL fights copyright with copyright.

    The GPL does nothing of the sort. The GPL is built on copyright protection, and relies heavily on those rights in order to exist. A world with no copyright protections would be very unfriendly to the GPL and the goals it was designed to promote.

    Eliminating intellectual property protections would be equally (if not more) harmful to the FSF and the GPL license as it would be to commercial software publishers.

    In the absence of copyright, source code would either be public domain or it would be concealed and resricted using other mechanisims. The GPL is quite a bit of text outlining all the various restrictions that apply to GPL'd code which differentiate it from public domain code. GPL doesn't even begin to resemble public domain code, and if GPL advocates were unable to copyright their code, they'd be unable to enforce their goals and views that they currently use the GPL to enforce.

    In a world without copyright, there would be no protection from people taking code which is presently GPL'd and using it in proprietary, closed-source projects.

    Copyright exists because the world believes that a person should have the ability to control the use of the value they create. At its heart, the GPL promotes the exact same philosophy. Just as copyright protections allow a company to earn a profit from the code it produces, copyright enables a coder to restrict the use of their code to only those people who agree to use the same license (the GPL). In both cases, copyright is being appropriately employed to empower the person who has created the code to make sure that it's used as they wish.

    While you may view the goal of the GPL as more worthy than the goal of a commercial software publisher, they're both equal beneficiaries of copyright protections and use those rights similarly.

    Without copyright protections, neither would have an easy time promoting their goals, although it would be more difficult to maintain the goals of the GPL than it would be to produce proprietary software with no copyright.

  • For example, in a world without copyright, all programs or algorithms written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) would be available for all to use.

    How is this any different from today, with copyright, where all programs and algorithims written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) are available for all to use? If you invent an algorithm, and you wish to allow the whole world to use it, the existence or nonexistence of copyright has little effect on your world. Release the algorithim or program to the public domain and all can use it. Copyright doesn't impact your right to do that in any way.

    I also disagree quite strongly with your statement that without copyright, protections against proprietary absorbtion would be lessened. Anyone who was around and using computers in the late 70s and early 80s knows exactly what the world of commercial software looks like in the absence of strong copyright protections. Before there was sufficient precedent to establish that software is protected adequately by copyright law, this was a subject of considerable debate and contention. Commercial software vendors, without adequate copyright protections, simply employ even more invasive and cumbersome mechanisims to protect their ability to profit from their labor. Hardware keys (dongles), obfuscation, enforceable end user license agreements, NDA's, and hardware copy protection all existed to fill in the vaccuum and made users' lives far more difficult before we gained adequate copyright protections for software.

    A post-copyright world will not be friendly to users, or the FSF.

    Bottom line -- if you want to give away the code and algorithims you produce, please do so. But stop with this twisting of logic that implies that your ability to make your code free is in any way helped by eliminating the protections available to those who wish to restrict the distribution of their code and algorithims. Especially since the FSF is one of these groups.

    At least admit what you mean is that you want to be able to benefit from the hard work and labor of others no matter what their views on the matter are.

  • I agree with you 100% that the DMCA far oversteps the boundaries and is a gross distortion of the concept of intellectual property law. Mainly in the way that it deprecates the concept of 'fair use' and blurs the line between code and data too much. Where you lose me is how this can be used as an argument against copyright/patent law in general.

    People should have the right to control how the value they create is used. Metallica believes this, I believe this, and Richard Stallman obviously believes this. Copyright and Patents are the tools we use to protect this right, and they need to exist in some form or we'll lose this basic right.

    The Big Myth of the FSF is that end users care at all about the source code of the software they use. End users want to use software that does what they need and does it well. The way to convince users that free and open is better is to ensure that free and open software is superior to the alternatives. If you truly believe that "The War will be won by convincing the end users" then why bother with trying to destroy the capacity to create proprietary software? If free and open is inherently superior, why not just build good software and render the proprietary stuff meaningless by comparison?

    Convincing the end users is not a social, educational, or political battle. It's plain darwinism. You'll convince the end user that your methods are better the day those methods produce software which is more useful and beneficial to the user than the alternatives.

  • I agree that IP.com is there to make money, but Foresight Institute will provide you with access to these disclosures at zero cost.

    And yes, this doesn't make patents any nicer. Just a little easier to fight.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • They aren't providing patents for Open Source! They are providing a prior-art database that is available to Open Source folks for free (if you go through Foresight) and that the patent office will search.

    I agree that software patents are bad, but this will help fight them.

    Bruce

  • No. You can actually block enforcement of a patent by showing that prior art existed. Go on patents.ibm.com and search for "Perens". You will see that ATT cited the existence of Electric Fence as prior art even though I didn't patent it, and they won't ever be able to enforce patent claims that overlap what Electric Fence did when I published it.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Well, today they can look over any source CD from a Linux distribution and patent everything they find in it, because we already publish all of our work. I don't think this would actually place us at greater risk.

    But I agree that I'd rather eliminate software patents. That's going to be a pretty big fight.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • We have, so far, not effectively mounted an offensive to fight patents with patents. There will be a summit Open Source and The Law in August, organized by yours truly, and patent defense will be a full-day topic. If you are going to LinuxWorld and want to be a community representative, write me.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • The rule in the U.S. is that an invention can not be patented if: (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . . .

    In other words, if the invention existed before the applicant conceived of it, a patent would not be granted. The one-year rule actually applies to what you publish before you apply, not what others publish before you conceive of an invention.

    Of course, the applicant can lie about their date of conception, and thus these things go to court and the court has to find if there is sufficient proof regarding the date of invention. If you want to win in court, you make a confidential disclosure to a third party who would later testify about the disclosure, like a notary or an attorney. I have received one such disclosure for a possible future Open Patent, and gave the inventor a PGP-signed proof of disclosure that he can later use in court and verify against my public key. If that ever got to court, I'd probably be called upon to testify as well.

    In most other nations, once an invention is published, including by the inventor, it can immediately no longer be patented.

    Public disclosure by the inventor within a year before filing is also an option to establish priority under U.S. law, but prevents the grant of a patent under non-US law, and thus is not much used.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • If your invention is in a "fixed" medium such as CD-ROM, and is distributed publicly, it should be applicable as prior art. Also, preceding the patent application by more than one year is not required, you need only precede the conception of the invention by the patent applicant. So, we already have a large prior art repository in the form of those Linux CDs, especially the source ones. Save those old Yggdrasil discs from 1996.

    What we do not have is any form that could be searched by a patent examiner. They do text searches of computer disclosure databases, which means that you have to (a) percieve that you have made an invention and (b) write the disclosure, to be of use to the patent examiner. What we have on those source CDs is more useful in court, but it would be better to block the patent from ever being issued.

    Thanks

    BrucE

  • This announcement was completely blown because Salon got told too early, and did not understand that the announcement was embargoed until a release date. It was not pretty to watch what happened on Slashdot today. Foresight's plan was to announce it to the Free Software community in a way that would have made all of your points clear. I'm sorry it did not happen that way.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • The patent application in this case used language so similar to Karn's that one might conclude that the applicant had seen Karn's paper. If that's what really happened, the applicant would have committed a felony in swearing to the various things required when one signs a patent application. I'll stop short of making an accusation.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Hm. Why would not pernicious patent applicants not simply start reading source code, then? We disclose enough of that.

    Bruce

  • They are not trying to provide patents to Open Source authors! They are providing Open Source folks with the ability to put our art in a prior-art database that patent office folks will search. For free if you go through Foresight, for less than $20 if you go directly to IP.com .

    I agree that software patents are bad. As someone whose Open Source project appears as prior art in a patent, reducing its scope (search for "Perens" in the patent database), I do think this might help us a bit.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Yes, but RMS says many things which make for great soundbytes and mantras but fail to withstand the scrutiny of logical interpretation.

    I'm going with my observations here -- The GPL seeks to control the distribution of covered code, and cannot do that without the power of copyright. Eliminating copyright won't magically destroy the proprietary software world. If anything, history indicates that a lack of copyright protection for software makes the world a lot less convienent and useful for users.

    So how, exactly, would destroying copyright be a "win" for the proponents of the GPL? They'd lose their ability to protect their code as they choose and gain nothing that they do not already have.

  • This business model is similar to "Invention Submission Corporation" (I think that's the name) that you see on late night TV and on the commercials during BattleBots! You know the one... "Invention Submission Corporation will help you patent your idea and submit it to business and industry..."

    This is just another "screw the little guy" scam, only this one is "screw the little guy with high ideals" where ISC is "screw the little guy with high hopes".

    You don't need some company to charge you to publish your ideas anymore. That's why setting up your own web page is so powerful, and why the World Wide Web is so empowering! For things JUST LIKE THIS! Set up a web page. Give it some relevant keywords. Get it included in the major search engines. That's all it really takes.

    Sure it'd be nice to know you had your ideas somewhere that the USPTO is bound (or better yet, obligated!) to look. But we don't need to pay $20 a pop to do it.

    But this DOES point out the need for a centralized database of ideas that shouldn't get patented. Sourceforge? Everything2? Anyone else interested in setting this up?

  • Bounty Quest is different. They look for specific items of prior art, where the site mentioned (not open ip, the first one) if my understanding is correct is essentially offering a document repository service that allows people to place their "inventions" in the public domain in such a way as to establish their idea as "prior art" for the USPTO to search first.

    Not a bad idea, even if they do charge. I am just wondering about the cost overhead of doing the same thing for free.

  • Try OpenIP.org [openip.org]. Although it has been a while, I was very familiar with what the project is trying to do, and although AFAICT they do not have a database set up, they do have some projects running.

    If OpenIP is interested in doing this, it would not be that hard to add a similar database to the IP.Com database, and I am sure that the fellow in charge would welcome the assistance. (I will be emailing him offline with the suggestion, btw.)

    The real work would probably be in convincing the USPTO that this new database would also be worth consulting.

    What do you think? Would this be worth pursuing via this site?

  • Actually, the FSF would rather copyright didn't exist.

    This is one of the most frequent GPL/FSF misconceptions I see here.

    Yes, the GPL does require copyright to work. But that doesn't mean the FSF is pro-copyright. The GPL was a license built to attempt to promote free software in a world where copyright is the law. If copyright wasn't the law, there would be other ways of promoting free software, and it would probably be easier to do so.

    For example, in a world without copyright, all programs or algorithms written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) would be available for all to use. Admittedly, the GPL's protection against turning things proprietary would be lost, but it would also be less necessary (since compilation, encryption, and obfuscation are known not to be effective protections against plagiarism anyway).

    For example, see the essay at the gnu website here [gnu.org] for an example; other essays in the same place may be more apropos.

    Jules
  • No, you cannot sue a company if they patent the idea. However, if you have prior art you can easily tell them to shove it when they sue you over violating their patent.

    This is about protecting yourself against the lawsuits you risk facing for programming these days.
  • Copyright and IP doesn't mean restricting what you made from the people. It means doing what you want with it - be that giving it away or hiding your shame in a black box far away from prying eyes oh how you still hear the screams that wake you at night.

  • I am the coordinator of the Foresight Intellectual Property Reform Project, and I was the one who started this ball rolling last fall. I'd like to clarify a few points.

    This project is not about getting patents. It is about preventing and mitigating bad patents. How? By putting prior art where patent examiners will be able to find it easily, and publishing ideas in a way that we can prove when they were published.

    The project is not about supporting the patent system. (The title of the Salon article may have caused some confusion on that point.) It is about trying to mitigate the damage caused by bad patents.

    The original plan was that Foresight would provide a web site where people could go to publish their ideas in order to keep someone else from patenting them later. We soon realized that publishing ideas in a useful (legally significant) way is not as easy as it sounds, and we found that IP.com was doing almost exactly what we needed to do (for $107 per idea, and aimed at commercial interests). So we talked with them, and sold them on the idea of a much cheaper publication mechanism, for non-commercial ideas only, that could be useful to the Open Source community. Of course they can't give it away; they need to eat, after all. But...

    There will be at least two websites. IP.com will offer this service as a product. In addition, the Foresight Institute is planning to get funding and offer this publication service for free for inventions in areas that we care about, including Open Source and nanotechnology.

    As long as we have the patent system, we might as well try to deal with its problems. Here are two: Patent examiners have about eight hours to examine prior art. And patent fights tend to cost about US$1,000,000. If you put your idea on a web site or newsgroup somewhere, or use it publicly, chances are good that a patent examiner will not be able to find it in eight hours. So a later, abusive patent is likely to slip through the system. Then, you have to prove in court, years after the fact, that the idea was available to the public before the patent holder claimed to invent it.

    The patent examiners actually look at IP.com's database. That's worth a lot. In addition, IP.com has a system set up for proving when the idea was published, and that it was available to the public continuously since that time. They add significant value that we felt would help this project. If you don't want to use it, then don't use it.

    Chris Phoenix

  • This concept makes a lot of sense. Everyday, developers (commercial and open source) run the risk of infringing upon somebody's patent. And, in many cases, software patents have been wrongfully issued with no checks against prior art databases.

    A central, searchable repository of open source concepts will slowdown the rate at which software patents are issued and raise the bar on what actually does get patented. If a software patents are to exist, then make the patent seeker work for it and prove they did something worthwhile.

    As I see it, a $20 publishing fee is not such a bad investment if:

    1) The database is truly searched for prior art before issuing a patent.

    2) Existing software patents are actually revoked if prior art can be established because of a submission to this database.

    3) It makes it easier for someone to find prior art as it relates to their development efforts.

    I have no problem with individuals making money from the development efforts (Hell, I do). But, software patents are ludicrous and put us all at risk simply because we didn't patent an obvious concept (like Amazon's one-click concept). Thus, I do not support software patents in any way shape or form and they should be abolished.

    In its place, I would rather see a system for enforcing recognition on the use of "patented" material as an acknowledgement of having come up with a great idea (and publishing it). But, there should be no financial penalty for use of "patented" software UNLESS the recognition/accredidation is not offered. In such cases, a heavy "license" and royalty fee may be pursued with all legal costs incurred by the violator.

    RD
  • Like there has been a lot of real inovation lately? Most of the inovation has been inprovements on existing ideas. This would open up the information allowing more people to hack away at it and somebody might come up with somethign truely inovative.
  • How about something like a copyleft for patents, in which the holder of a patent states that they will give a no-cost license for its use in any application covered by, say, the GPL? The holder could also grant licenses to non-free software creators in the usual way.

    This strikes me as a middle ground between the current situation (patent something and use it to beat everyone senseless) and no patents at all. A patent holder could use it as an advantage over non-free software, while leaving the free/open-source communities alone.
  • Better cut that out. CMGI has a patent on that.

  • Great Idea! (Score:3)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:31AM (#350344) Homepage
    Hello Open Source Advocates! I'm starting a service where, for a small fee, you can give me all your patentable ideas so that I can protect them. IPthieves.com will patent your idea, with no additional cost to you, and keep the information in our protected database. We assure you that we will NOT parent your ideas then use them to steal your software and sue you to your grave. All this for only $20 per patent. Submit 10 patentable ideas and get a free "IPthieves.com" T-SHIRT!
  • If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void.
    This is false; Nate has confused trademark with patent.

  • Hm, I thought one of the big tenets of Open Source was "expose the information so I can make an informed decision myself."

    That's the same principle that gives us peer reviews, shallow bugs, security auditing, and frank discussion on how to improve things.

    To say that the USPTO should keep the patents sealed is to return to the world of "users don't need to have access to the source code."

    The USPTO has apparently promised to include a scan of such databases when it's aware of them. It's a two-way street and a mutual responsibility to avoid infringement. Just because Open Source projects are un/underfunded, doesn't mean they can scoff at their responsibilities to avoid infringements.

  • It is not logic[al?] why the USPTO protects only proprietary software developer's interests and not open source code software developer's interests.

    The USPTO has no such discrepancy in its function. They don't care who files for patents, but it's clearly an advantage to be organized if you want the USPTO to pay attention.

    Open Source people are able to file for patents as well. There's nothing about patent law that says you must (1) keep your method proprietary [it's exposed anyway], or even (2) vigorously defend your patent against every infringer [unlike trademarks]. File for the patent, even on an obvious thing, and then just sit on it. That keeps anyone else from filing the same stupid patent.

    Microsoft holds thousands of patents. They don't use them to attack infringers. They use them as a defensive counter-attack only, when some other company does attack them on some other patent. (Find a headline that refutes this, I haven't found any.) Many other ethical companies do the same thing. Hold patents as a defensive posture.

    There's no reason that Open Source writers cannot do that, or cannot post their concepts to communal patent groups or communal "prior art" databases like these. In fact, they may do one or both, and everyone benefits.

    Unless it's very easily searchable, the USPTO cannot and will not keep abreast of the many "prior art" examples on its own. The task is just too large. It is up to people to organize, either by spending the pro-active effort required to review the USPTO's patents, or passively by offering a central searchable database for the USPTO to query. Both now are possible, whereas this was not true a year ago.

  • USPTO now exposes Patent Applications (Score:3)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:42AM (#350348) Homepage Journal

    A press release on www.uspto.gov [uspto.gov] indicates that the USPTO now exposes patent applications before they finish the grant. This makes it possible for third parties to challenge the grants as obvious or covered by prior art.

    This was one of my "stock rant" solutions. Since the USPTO is a source of revenue for Congress, it has incentive to grant patents for a fee, and it has incentive to minimize the work it does to consider or invalidate applications.

  • This is a cop-out. What we really need to do is unite and demand reforms from patent systems worldwide. This likely being unachievable, we should lobby the US patent office to drastcally lower the cost of patents for those who do not plan to profit from said patents.

  • I think that http://www.bountyquest.com/ [bountyquest.com] might also be relavent. They pay rewards for particular bits of Prior Art that they are looking for.

    I don't know if they keep a database available for others though.

  • Wouldn't the USPTO be the best registry for software?

    A commercial venture, or even a non-profit rganization may collapse, and isn't controlled by regulation, and may or may not meet standards (current and future), and can't guarantee that their database hasn't been comprimised.

    This is the job of the USPTO, and they should provide the registration service for free. It would help them get out of their software patent mess.

  • Re:Provisional Patent Application. (Score:3)

    by cworley ( 96911 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @06:15AM (#350352)
    The provisional patent is intended to allow you to sell your idea to a company withing twelve months, then let them go thru the expensive patent process.

    It does have it's drawbacks (many):

    For example, you loose your provisional patent filing date if you don't file for patent the within the 12 month period.

    I don't think this is the proper solution. Letting it lapse gives you no claim to prior art.

  • I don't think this is the proper solution. Letting it lapse gives you no claim to prior art.

    I think you miss the point. Prior art doesn't have to have been patented - you just need evidence that the prior art exists, which exactly is what the website in question (ip.com) is trying to do. A provisional patent application will serve this purpose just as well - assuming that the application is in fact kept on file by the PTO even after it lapses.

  • Provisional Patent Application. (Score:3)

    by gargle ( 97883 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:52AM (#350354) Homepage
    Why not just submit a provisional patent application? Read a description here [uspto.gov]. The idea is that you submit a provisional application for a patent, and then follow up with an actual patent application within 12 months. For the purpose of establishing prior art, one can submit the provisional application, but then let it lapse.

    It's dirt cheap ($75 for a small entity), and it's a pretty much bullet proof prior art evidence since I believe your application will be kept on file by the PTO (someone correct me if this is not the case).
  • How is this any different from today, with copyright, where all programs and algorithims written down in academic publications (or publications of any kind) are available for all to use?

    Today, programs and algorithms written down in academic publications are presently not available for all to use.

    For example, go and look up the many papers on register colouring in a compiler. I believe you cannot use all some documented algorithms due to patents (which expire soon, fortunately).

    Look up text in international standards like ITU-T V.8bis for modems, and you find a stern warning that implementing the standard may infringe on some patents (although you are not told which ones or how to find out).

    The RSA encryption algorithm was documented in many papers, but until recently you weren't free to use it.

    Take a look at the book "Numerical Recipes in C". It's a nice book describing numerical algorithms, but you are warned that the example programs are copyright the publisher, and you cannot just type them in and use them as-is. This leaves a questionable grey area, because you can presumably write your own code modelled on the code presented in the book.

    In a world without copyright, all these things which are published in books and papers would be free for all to use.

  • Well anthing that stops abuses like this:-

    http://www.ibm.com/Press/prnews.nsf/jan/33331B969B 56D7AD852569D00073EFD4

    According to this press release IBM seem to have patented distibuted processing, which must come a news to distributed.net and seti@home.

    I personally have no objections to patents, which when administered properly have served businisses, consumers and researchers well over the last century or so, but, it just doesn't work for software.

  • I don't think the issue is one of individuals versus corporations at all. Individuals can be patent parasites and corporations can develop inventions which deserve a lot more than five years protection.

    All inventions are easier to copy than to develop in the first place and corporations will spend less on R&D if they can't expect to get a good return on their investment.

    I think some software patents are legitimate. Ullman cited [stanford.edu] the best example--the RSA encryption method. There's nothing obvious about it and it was novel at the time. The people at RSA still had to put a lot of work into it in order to develop it into something useful, too. Look at the PKCS series of papers as well as the software written.

  • If you are going to LinuxWorld and want to be a community representative, write me.

    I'm in Toronto, and I'm going to LWCE in August. What does the position entail?

    --

  • Re:What is the point of 'Free' patents? (Score:3)

    by antis0c ( 133550 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:41AM (#350359)
    The point of this is the current Patent system does not work. And we've all seen this many times over (see Articles on Amazon, TechSearch, NCR, and Apple). They Parent insane things like One Click Shopping, Aqua Color Theme, and Compression between a Client and a Server.. These people didn't patent this because they were afraid their great new idea would be stolen by a huge corporation, or by another individual, they patented so competition legally couldn't compete and so that they could wait until the rest of the world had popular devices like theirs, with many companies producing them, and then sue/charge licensing fees for them. That is whats wrong. What this place does is allow us Open Source programmers to patent our ideas or at least record prior art so that we don't one day get a letter from Apple saying that we violate their patent on the creation of a text file containing specific code to be run through a preprocessor, compiler and linker to create a distributable executable binary. Sure GCC has prior art.. but thats not the case for all open source projects, it could be very hard to prove..
  • I would first like to quote Thomas Jefferson on his view of the patent system (which was controversial at its very creation as our founding fathers debated whether congress should execute its power to protect IP "for a limited time"). Please note that this was written some 200 years ago, long before extreme corporate abuse of patents began.

    "If the bringing together under the same roof various useful things before known.. entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either seperately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by a patent."

    "If a new application of our old machines be a ground of monopoly, the patent law will take from us much more than it will give.. a man has the right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?"

    The second quote is of course where /.'s "patent pending" topic icon comes from.

    Now, are all patents entirely bad? For software patents I would say yes, because they are too similar to mathematical formulas and algorithms. In fact, technology patents in general are dubious because technology by its nature needs to change and evolves quickly to make any real progress. Perhaps the reason that the patent system has become so bloated in the last few decades is that our technology is becoming increasingly multi-faceted. We no longer seek simple devices that perform a single function, but complex devices that can do whatever we want them to--perhaps covering extremely broad fields of "innovation." As an example, a patent on a general technology application, such as... "an electronic book" (of which there are many patents) not only stops innovative people from building a business around this general idea, but henceforth prevents further innovation by manufacturers. Look around. I don't see many electronic books, do you? (Except for the copy control encumbered eBook which is hardly innovative.) As a technologist, I take a look at what tools are available to me and how I can put them together to improve the quality of life. But if all of the general technologies are patented, I am limited. Perhaps this is why so many electronic devices to date have been of such limited scope of use and design.

    But I do think there are some cases in which patents are acceptable if not required assuming that we still want a market economy. Such cases would be those in which a *highly specific* device or substance is created. Pharmaceutical companies are the common example, but the idea can be extended to some cases of mechanical or electronic invention, such as machines designed for an ultra-specific task. I think the line here must be drawn based on who benefits. If a patent takes away from the general public, it must certainly be ruled out for this is not the purpose of patent law. As Open Source has demonstrated that software is the domain of the general public, all software patents must be eliminated because they limit individual freedoms (ex. codec related patents). On the other hand, a patent that is only between competing businesses (such as a new manufacturing process) is certainly acceptable because it provides incentive to improve quality and efficiency. A specific example would be some of Transmeta's radically new ideas on microprocessor design. Patenting these ideas does not hurt the general public because (at least right now), the general public does not have the means to fabricate integrated circuits. Even at this, however, I argue that the length of patents should be shortened due to the needs of fast technological evolution.

    So now what? I think the only answer to this situation is to start pressing for patent law reform. Our legislators need to know that we the people are not happy with what the patent office has turned into and that change is necessary to keep the new economy strong.

    ogerman

    Have you ever made a cat run around using a laser pointer? If so, you are in violation of a patent. Not kidding! Go look it up! (-; US Patent Number: 5443036
  • I propose a compromise between 'president' and 'elected'. Let's just say he was "erected" (this would be good term for the current vice president as well wouldn't it?)
  • i think the point is to publish the information, so a company cannot patent it, on account of prior art.

  • You can use a patent to prevent another company from patenting your idea. Also if a company uses your idea in a commercial application you can sue them. You don't have to make them pay you if it's your patent. I think patenting Open Source software would be good in that you can force people to only make free software with your idea, or open source software. Just think of it as an extension to the GPL. Right now the GPL forces people that use your software to use it in a free Open Source project. A patent on your software will just enforce this idea even more.

    For example you could patent say, the binary search algorithm. Then force everyone that uses it to either pay a huge exorbitant fee they can't afford, or open the source of the product for free.

  • Keep the copyright and leave the IP alone to be distributed amongst the people. What is the value of open source if you cannot use it?

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • I see that. Maybe they should team up with the 'pay you a gazillion dollars for prior art' sites and see if there could be a one-source database of such.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]

  • ....But what about Mechanical stuff?
    Suppose I go out and invent the next seatbelt?

    Yeah, you can argue all you want that some company should be allowed to have exclusive rights to selling their product, but if a technology (such as my seatbelt example) exists that would be of great use to society, What's a financially challenged inventor supposed to do ?

    I mean, what's the motivation for a Mechanical Engineer to shell out $10,000 for a panent that he has no plans to make any money on?
    Is a patent even necessary? Can't we just publish this stuff as "prior art"?

    Comments welcome.

  • Re:Does this make sense? - Yes (Score:3)

    by NoNeeeed ( 157503 ) <slash.paulleader@co@uk> on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:58AM (#350367)
    The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.

    You havn't actually read the article have you? It states...

    Specifically the joint venture will give open-source and free-software developers the chance to "defensively publish." For a fee of $20 per document (a significant discount over IP.com's usual $100 fee), software inventors will be able to place their innovations in a searchable software database.

    Inventors will be assured that patent examiners will see innovations that might otherwise be lost to unseen Web pages or college papers.

    So, if IBM tries to patent something that's been published in the IP.com database, for example, the inventor will have a better chance of beating the company in court.

    Any idea placed on IP.com's system will be protected from patenting. Or there will at least be a stronger legal basis to stop patents. And since the database is checked by POs, dodgy patents are less likely to get passed if prior art is registered in the IP.com system.

    Essentially this is patenting in reverse. Instead of preventing other people from using your idea without licensing it first, it stops people from patenting it and keeping it to themselves. It forces the concept to be open to all.

    Please read articles before commenting on their contents.

  • Changing Patent Law.? (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @06:38AM (#350368) Journal
    Personally, I am tempted by the idea of "use it or loose it" as applied to patents. this would make patents more similar to trade marks in some way.

    I am not sure this would work. but the idea is that if someone had a patent for the hyperlink system that they discover they had owned since 1979, that if they sat on it and did not develop it or otherwise did not choose to enforce it early and often, that it was a donation to the public domain in fact, if not in practice.

    Another angle on this is the idea of different time lengths for patents. The problem is that there is a conflict between individuals and large corporations. Since we are horrified by the prospect of the actions of Large Corporations.

    What would happen if MS patented their .NET or their HailStorm technology? (see description here [theregister.co.uk] in a spicy article in the Register) - or a large segment of it in many smaller pieces?

    One thought is to have patents held by corporations be far more limited in time than patents by individuals. 5 years for corporate p[atents from the time of original filing, not renewable, vs the traditional 15 -20 years for individuals.

    This is something we need to think about because the current answers are not Good Enough (tm) to do the job.

  • The internet already provides the same capabilities. Someone at the USPTO should have all employees undergo a training session on using google.

    One solution to the problem of prior art is to require patent applicants to submit a prior art report signed by an independent prior art specialist that could be sued for not seeing the obvious. Such specialists could work in the same way as real estate appraisors work.

    please note, the above idea has been patented ;-)

  • The main problem is not length of patents, per se. Software patents are evil in themselves because they have nothing to do with the goal of patents. Developers do don't create algorithms for the sake of selling them on the market. They create algorithms because they have a technical problem standing in a way of creating a marketable product. Thus the granting of a patent has no effect on their willingness to invest time in creating better algorithms.

    In general, given the sophistication of available economic analysis, the static process of patents is obsolete. Patents should be used to encourage innovation. The time length of patents and the areas that are patentable should not be statically legislated. They should be determined dynamically by the USPTO at regular intervals ( say every five years) based on economic data, to ensure that patents serve their purpose at minimal cost to the public.

    of course, the current USPTO is not the vehicle for such an approach. The office should be upgraded to something more like the level of a central bank.

  • The Slashdot title and original blurb are a little misleading - this isn't the patent equivilant of copyleft. Noone's patenting software with the intention of keeping the ideas free. They're simply publishing the ideas in a public forum to add weight to the claim of prior art. It's not a bad idea, but I don't know how econmically viable this company is going to be. When you come up with a creative idea for a free software program, are you going to want to pay $20 to get the idea logged, for future insurance against bad patent claims? I'd rather publish the program and have a few users testify that its existance predates the patent. And what happens if IP.com goes under? Where does their database go?

  • Actually, I did read the article and visit the IP.com web site, and you'll find a minor mea culpa below (which pretimes your message by 20 minutes), where I replied to an earlier correspondent on this matter.

    Indeed, IP.com is creating a repository of information for the purposes of identifying prior art -- but they are doing so for a fee.

    Not that making money is a problem -- I don't object to a fee per se, but rather to certain assumptions we must make if we are to consider IP.com a valuable resource. IP.com could be a "fishing expedition," attracting nifty new ideas for use by who knows whom. I don't see anything that limits what they can do with the "publications" that appear on their site.

    Furthermore, IP.com's repository is based on the existence of IP.com. It will only contain "publications" from those willing to pay $109 for the privilege. I'm not certain this fits with the core beliefs of Open Source. Perhaps we would be better-served a grassroots repository managed by the community, as opposed to a private repository (IP.com) with unknown intent.


    --
    Scott Robert Ladd
    Master of Complexity
    Destroyer of Order and Chaos

  • I see it somewhat differently... (Score:3)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:57AM (#350373) Homepage

    ...although I must admit, the /. article is a bit misleading about the actualy intent of IP.com. Indeed, IP.com is providing a service to maintain a list of "publications" for use in "prior art" defenses against patents. However, the service is oriented at business, not Open Source per se, and it isn't free, either. The cost appears to be $109 per "publication", so the expense isn't high.

    HOWEVER, using IP.com implies trust that they (and their database) will continue to exist, and that their intent will remain "noble." Perhaps a grassroots equivelent would be more in the spirit of Open Source.

    The main points of my original article stand, however, even if they were somewhat misguided by reading the /. article before visiting IP.com.


    --
    Scott Robert Ladd
    Master of Complexity
    Destroyer of Order and Chaos

  • Does this make sense? (Score:4)

    by ChaoticCoyote ( 195677 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:19AM (#350374) Homepage

    No.

    In an ideal world, patents promote innovation by giving inventors an exclusive right to profit from their creations; in return for this financial benefit, the inventor must publish a detailed description of the invention, so others can build on it. It is a good system that has been perverted by modern corporate concepts.

    Patenting Open source is -- well, patently stupid. By nature, Open Source is published, and it has no direct profit motive. A patent on Open Source does not promote innovation, because innovation exists in Open Source by default!

    The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.


    --
    Scott Robert Ladd
    Master of Complexity
    Destroyer of Order and Chaos

  • ...at least not in regard to overturning stupid obvious patents that end up getting approved and enforced. Ooh, guess what? I figured out how to get Macromedia Director to interface with CORBA. So the hell what? Anyone with the same objective eventually would have invented the same technology, so who would think to post it as prior art.

    The example of one-click shopping is even more illustrative. Something that is obvious will have no prior art, for the very reason that it's not worth publishing. What am I going to do, publish a solution for a doubly-linked list just to prevent a patent from getting issued on it?

    Until the USPTO begins to recognize what's obvious, there's not enough hard drive space in the world to publish such revolutionary ideas as appending '\0' to a string of characters to signify termination.

    -- ShadyG

  • I think it would be foolish to expect that people would turn from being clueless to clueful overnight with the abolishment of copyright and licences. They WOULD NOT "come to expect to see the sources and datasheets on the things on which they depend." If such were the case, Ralph Nader would not have had to sue General Motors for the poor saftey designs of their automobiles in the late 1960s.
  • The goals of the FSF would be better served without copyright protections because the people they are fighting hide behind copyright law.

    Modulo the DMCA, I would be able to 'free' proprietary software and, conversely, all my software would be free and unable to be 'proprietised'.

    The 'modulo' comes from the encoding of source code into binaries. It /is/ possible to reverse-engineer binaries; you /do/ have access to header files for libraries; you /can/ see the protocols on the wire. Reverse engineering [zdnet.com] is prohibited in the US by the DMCA.

    Without the conventions of copyright and licences, people would come to expect to see the sources and datasheets on the things on which they depend.

    The Big War of the FSF is served by a Small Battle that is the GPL. The War will be won by convincing the end users that free (and open) is better than closed and proprietary. That is a social, educational and political battle.

    Which brings us back to what I was saying about patents. Let's get back on topic!!

    Duncan Cragg
    ------------------
  • Hi Bruce!

    Thanks for your reply.

    Fighting patents with prior art databases (especially ones that cost money to enter IP into) is, in my opinion, not as good as fighting patents with patents, or fighting patents with the destruction of the USPTO!!

    The GPL fights copyright with copyright. The other battles are generally fought with technology (e.g Freenet, etc) and politics (e.g. - mmm, well..).

    It just doesn't seem like IP.com is the right way to go about this.


    ------------------

  • No Thanks (Score:5)

    by Duncan Cragg ( 209425 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:06AM (#350379)
    • IP.com is a dot-com. They are a commercial entity who plan to make money. They are not there for the benefit of free software. Their service is nothing we can't do ourselves, for nothing, with the right principles behind it.
    • As the article says, they are a drop in the ocean of available 'prior art' data repositories.
    • Patents are a bad thing and no amount of tail-chasing and legal niceties can get around that fact.
    • If you have IP to protect, you should try and patent it yourself.
    • If that fails, be thankful that the US patent system is in such a mess that it will eventually collapse under its own weight of stupidity.

    ------------------
  • Why can't the government provide a service like that on tax payer's money ?
  • Patenting Open source is -- well, patently stupid. By nature, Open Source is published, and it has no direct profit motive. A patent on Open Source does not promote innovation, because innovation exists in Open Source by default!

    Yes, and because it has no direct profit motive, Open Source may simply die out (and the default innovational power it represents), if it is not subsidized by the government. Basically it will return to where it came from. It's the tax paying and voting population represented by the government, who will decide to finance Open Source, so that the inherent innovational power of Open Source can be used to its potential and for the good of the people.

    What I don't understand, why another government agency is is not exactly providing the Open Source Prior Art Database at no cost to the people. Why is it just another commercial company ?

    It can't be that expensive and difficult to implement it.

  • Yes, but do you think it is the role of the Open software developer to continuously search the USPTO for new patent applications just to see if he might not have accidentically already developed the same thing before the applicant ?

    It it the USPTO who needs not only to expose patent applications, it also needs to provide the database for Open Source developers to defensively post their potential prior art code at no cost, as well it should be the USPTO's role to search those database.

    It's not that simple as to return the responsibility to search prior art to the potential prior art providers, the developers.
    That would just mean you want the developer do the job which should be done by the USPTO.

  • I don't understand the answer. I didn't say the USPTO should keep patents sealed.

    An open source code developer by definition has already released his code to the public. The code is not sealed away. The patent application from a proprietary software company will also not be sealed from the public anymore in future. The patent, after having been granted, was never sealed away from the public either.

    The question just remains who is obliged to scan a database specifically designed to provide the USPTO an easy tool of scanning open source code software-based business methods, which might represent prior art to proprietary software-based
    business method patent application.

    In my opinion it should be the duty of the USPTO and not the duty of the open software developer to do the job for the USPTO. Therefore it should be the USPTO who should support and provide the funds for this sort of open source code prior art database. I made this statement in my previous post in opposition to the current offer to provide the implementation of such database by a commercial company.

    I am not clear why you understood my post as saying I want the USPTO seal patents. Patents were always given out to make an invention publicly known and to protect the inventor's monetary interests in the invention.

    Prior art, in form of open source code, carries no monetary interest of the inventor/developer, which needs to be protected, nor does it need specifically to be made publicly known, because as open source software it already is public.

    What needs though to be protected is the open source code-based implementation of a business method from being stolen by a proprietary software company for purposes of patenting said business method based on proprietary software.

    It is not logic, why the USPTO protects only proprietary software developer's interests and not open source code software developer's interests.

    Open source code is a donation to the public. That donation deserves protection from being misused by companies who use the open source software for their own "inventions" for which they seek protection of their monetary interests.

  • Thanks for the answer.
  • I'm not so sure that fighting fire (the perils of IP) with fire is in our best interests. In direct contradiction with free software, patents serve to protect and exclude knowledge from others in the pursuit of profits.

    We should be careful not to blend the two worlds -- profit vs. passion.

    Let's stick to our principles and keep beating' Tha Man(TM) where it hurts -- in his wallet and on the techie playground.
  • Did you read about the Indian who patented smell-o-vision - TV with a stench ?

    Now, I could easily imagine the Slashdot crowd whining over the patent if it was an IT patent, but the fact is, that nobody has yet has success in bringing smell-o-vision to the public.

    I think this patent is definitely an example of a patent that has been granted in the spirit of a license, much like tax farmers or governorships in the republic of rome, or like the deal between the big two railroads that linked the US East to US West.

    In the spirit of competition, patent owners should be forced to license out their patents at a predetermined fee(or less).
    Why ? It is kind of pointless to pursue Microsoft for monopolism (and bad habits of course), while fostering monopolies with the patent system.

  • For example open or free source discloses invention I, which is improved by Corporation C, and then is patented by C as invention J.

    Unfortunately, invention J is the next logical step for invention I. But the open source project cannot work on it, since it will get sued. They might win in court, but they cannot be sure.

    If open source had filed a patent for I, they would able to trade patent I with Company C to get access to patent J - ideally forcing company C to open or freesource J as well.

    This shows the flaw - the way someone else formulated it, why can you acquire rights to an invention by patenting it, instead of earning the rights to the patent if you can prove in any way that you had the idea first ( - and that it wouldn't be an obvious idea, considering the timespan till the patent expires ).

  • Oh, of a certainty, he's George II the Usurper, AFAIC, one can only imagine what wonders he'll have in store for the patent office, once his hench^H^H^H^H^Hsupporters turn their attention towards IP.

    --

  • But, but, but (Score:4)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:05AM (#350389) Homepage Journal
    As Jim Allchin, a Microsoft troll, put it, this kind of thing is a challenge to innovation! I mean, the guy has a point. If you can't hoard the patent, a-la Rambus, and use it to crush competition, do a product very badly, and protect the worst crap you really want to sell, what's the point.

    And just this morning, I read that our very kind President Bush wants to ensure we have enough arsenic and heavy metals in our drinking water.

    God, the flag, Mom's apple pie, and barbarians at the gate, what could be more american?

    --

  • You're kidding me. (Score:3)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Wednesday March 21, 2001 @05:18AM (#350390) Homepage
    (surprisingly, with the Patent office's promise to check their database)

    Wow, there's a shocker. I mean, it's simply unfathomable that there may exist patent officers who aren't Shameless Corporate Bribemongers. In fact, I'd recommend you investigate your sources on that one--that is, if I didn't know that the suggestion would fall on deaf ears...

    Honestly, folks. Yes, the USPTO has more than it's share of problems, and there are a number of bad apples in the bunch, but it's just snide to exhibit such shock at the thought that there may exist government employees who want to do their job right.

    It'd be like me expressing surprise that there might exist a Salshdot editor that doesn't proselytize every time he or she posts a news article.

  • The patent office checks claimed inventions against the "prior art" to make sure that patents are granted only on new inventions. Unfortunately, they do a lousy job at it and don't have access to many publications that may contain prior art that may block a patent. I don't know whether the economic model of this service is good, but the concept is a very valuable one.

    Stopping stupid patents is something that individuals can do. As an example, several years ago a company obtained a patent on a channel access method for digital radio systems. It turns out that Phil Karn, a ham radio operator/networking guru/author/coder extrordinaire had published an article about this same concept -- even using the same name and acronym for it -- several years earlier.

    The patent office hadn't seen it because the article was published in the ARRL/TAPR Computer Networking Conference/Digital Communications Conference Proceedings [tapr.org], a journal fairly well known to hams who do digital radio, but not to the outside world.

    Phil filed an objection to the patent based on his published prior art, and the patent was invalidated. Had the patent office known about the CNC/DCC Proceedings, the patent would never have issued in the first place.

    The moral is that sometimes, the little guy can win!

  • A few months ago I attended a speach of Eric Raymond in which he said that his biggest activity regarding software patents at the moment was to get opensource software recognized as prior art. Does anybody know more about this?

    I am rather worried about the effects of a the proposed filing system. We would provide a nice list of our best inventions to anyone who borrows to read them. So far so good. But we aren't lawyers and we don't think like them either. So the site might become a mining ground for treasure hunters with follow up patents. Suppose for instance someone publishes a real alternative for MPEG-4. Next some guy grabs that idea and patents the idea to use the protocol for television, surveyance camera's and whatever he can think of that the publisher forgot to mention. Is it really necessary to provide our best ideas in such a vulture friendly way???

  • The purpose of patents and patent law in general is to prompt innovation through guarantee of exclusive rights to profit from said innovation.

    If organizations like this are created whose purpose is to actively discourage corporations from making money from innovations, than what is the point of patents? Why even have them at all?
    ---

  • The purpose of patents and patent law in general is to prompt innovation through guarantee of exclusive rights to profit from said innovation.

    Fine. A noble purpose. Unfortunately, too often, patents don't work that way. Nowadays, a lot of software and "business model" patents serve either to stilfe innovation, or give companies whose true innovation is the use of predatory legal practises the ability to profit from technical non-innovations.

    If organizations like this are created whose purpose is to actively discourage corporations from making money from innovations, than what is the point of patents? Why even have them at all?

    Because this service isn't going to be listing the "new innovations" that companies are making so that they can exclusively profit from them. This service is going to be listing the things that are either (a) out there and as old as the hills, or (b) written by free software developers without the time, money, or desire to attempt to file a restrictive real patent. What this service will hopefully do is prevent businesses from giving up on innovating themselves because they find it's much easier to be the first to the pole with a patent on an obvious or old idea, and because they then find it much easier to profit from the innovations of others.

    The current patent system has no real checks and balances, and the mess that is civil law in this country only makes it worse. The sort of people that this new service is hoping to protect are the sort of people from who can't afford to defend themselves against the threat of a patent lawsuit.

    -Rob

  • This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void.

    Personally, I rather don't care of "patents" on stupid ideas do become void. As far as I'm concerned, the idea is to keep businesses from patenting, profiting from, and then (most significantly) preventing others from using ideas which are obvious or which have existed in the free software community from a long time. If that is your goal, you don't care if your patent becomes void-- you just care that somebody else doesn't get a non-void patent on the idea which they are then going to attempt to use to profit, leech-like.

    I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.

    This should be in a FAQ, the memorization of which is required before one is allowed to post (even anonymously) on Slashdot. COPYRIGHT!=PATENT

    -Rob

  • I would wait until I had a full 12 months of demonstrable prior art (e.g. a released open source program) before even considering using this system.

    Why? Because publishing something does not prevent others from patenting it. If an applicant has up to a year to file the initial application for a patent (e.g. if their own notebooks or old source shows they had the major components of an idea, say, ten months before the publication, their application would be unimpeded). What is a "major component", according to this criterion? That is a little fuzzy. What is clear is that an applicant is guranteed a full year to 'develop' the idea before filing the patent.

    I suspect that this database would instead be harvested by patent-hungry companies. At best, ublication of a "new" idea in this database would trigger the 'use it or lose' reflex (pushing the company to patent things they might otherwise let slide). At worst, one might see a flurry of "variant patents", since "prior art" does not enjoy the same rights of enforcement as an actual patent.

    The Japanese patent system, for example, if a living demonstration of 'variant patents' run amok. This resonates with Japanese business practice, because it virtually forces quid-pro-quo "cooperation" among companies. If you patent a new type of bulb, Mitsubishi may later patent mounting it in a bayonet base, or using it for growing plants, etc. Net effect: you will have a tough time exploiting your patent, and Mitsubishi has strong leverage to force you to license to them on very favorable terms
  • This doesn't even begin to address the problem. Why have open source hackers submit ideas (at $20 a pop)? So we can sue IBM if they try to patent the same idea? As if I have the resources to sue IBM - even if I CAN prove them to be wrong! The real solution isn't an intellectual arms race... the best solution is to fix the patent system as a whole. - and who really believes the US Patent office is looking up anything before awarding patents?
  • They are anti-corp firewalls. IP.com gives programmers a way to keep big nasty corporations from exploiting their inventions for free, and keeps the software available to end-user consumers. This is possibly the ultimate combination for innovation: corporations can use open source software, but they'll have to pay for it, and we, the consumers, won't have to pay a cent for access to the ideas.
  • The article is not talking about patenting Open source, it is talking about being a legally-secure repository of prior art, just as you propose.

    The idea is to set up a database where you submit your idea, which then gets timestamped and protected so that it can be used as a clear demonstration of prior art in any cases that come up later.

    Sounds like a great idea to me, except for the fact that it costs $20 per "publication", and anyway, if your software is open-source with anything like a decent popularity then it will be a good-enough demonstration of prior art. About the only time that this would not work is if the patent application and your open-source occurs at almost the same time. Then it will be difficult to prove that you really were before the patent, whereas with IP.com, you can just check the datestamps.

    I guess the other advantage of IP.com is that it claims that it can prevent patents from being issued. Probably true, but if there is anyway a clear demonstration of prior-art (ie your Open-source), then the patent is not so useful.

    So - my conclusion would be that IP.com is probably the safest way to prevent some other company from patenting the same idea, but unfortunatly its a bit expensive. I think that its probably much easier to post your idea to a newsgroup and let google archive it for you - who knows, maybe youll be able to cash in on it later from bountyquest.

    Chris

  • The Open Source movement would do just as well by having a central repository or library of "prior art" that can be used by the patent office to determine if a "new invention" is indeed a new invention. We need to make it easier to prevent patents on core knowledge; I don't see the point in making more patents when our goal is to prevent patents.

    You didn't actually read the article, did you? What you're suggesting is precisely what the article says they're doing. The open source software that's submitted to this group isn't actually being used to get patents, it's being used to create a searchable database of prior art that the PTO has agreed to refer to.

  • IP.com could be a "fishing expedition," attracting nifty new ideas for use by who knows whom. I don't see anything that limits what they can do with the "publications" that appear on their site.

    Isn't that what open source is all about? ;)

    I understand what you're saying. Any one of us could easily write up an idea, put a timestamped digital signature wrapper around it, and post it on our own Web site. The centralization concept is both the good and the bad.

    The good is that the PTO knows where to find it, and it's in a standardized format that's easy for them to search.

    The bad is that it costs money and depends on the future existence of a company that may or may not survive.

    I see no inherent evil in this plan. Let those who believe the good outweighs the bad use it. Let those who don't, not.

  • Yeah, sorry bout that, just checked my ref. Probably should have done that BEFORE I posted :-)
  • No shit a copyright!= patent. If you read the post, the copyleft works fine on it's own, meaning that it is not a patent, nor was such a thing even implied.
  • This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void. This means that open source programmers would have to start the same legal bs that big companies use to protect their patents. Bad idea. I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.
  • The information on the IP.com web site referrring to $109 per publication is NOT for the open source product, but instead for the (already released) Disclosures Database. This is a similar product, but geared more toward traditional business IP protection.

    The product mentioned in the Salon article is not yet listed on the IP.com website.

    Salon.com quote:
    "The Foresight Institute, a nonprofit nanotechnology think tank, will announce later this month that it is forming an alliance with IP.com, a Rochester, N.Y., start-up dedicated to protecting intellectual property through the publication of new ideas."

    (i.e. the announcement is not formal yet)

    - vin

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