Alan Cox on Patent Law and GPLv3 191
tykev writes "Linux kernel guru Alan Cox talks about kernel features, cooperation with hardware vendors, and software patents. From the interview: 'I don't think [Microsoft's patent threats] are the biggest danger. As Microsoft has been finding out recently it is the patent trolls, and organisations with buried patents in interesting areas that are the biggest threat in the USA. The real answer to that problem, however, is to pull the USA back into line with the majority of the world which simply does not recognize patents on software but respects them as literary works subject to copyright law.'"
No s***. But "recently"? (Score:2)
No s***. But "recently"? Part of Microsoft's stated reason for building up its patent collection over the past 15 years has been to defend against patent trolls Microsoft knew would be coming for Microsoft ASAP. (In fact, I think a near-dup Slashdot story in the past week ha
Re:No s***. But "recently"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea of the patent troll is that they don't have any business to defend so that they can use their patents offensively without worrying about (non-karmic) retaliation.
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If you are sued on patent violation claims, and you don't have your own patent collection, you are screwed. If you have a fat collection then you counter-sue, because the other party most likely is violating one of your patents; in the end you'll most likely end up cross licensing each other patents and move on.
I know, is stupid as hell, but it's the way it works right now. Thank the US of A for the idiocy of the patent system.
Of course,
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How do you figure ? A patent-troll is a company that produces no product and offers no service. They exist *only* to extract money by threathening with their patent-portofolio. As such, there is little chance that they'll be violating any of your patents. How could they when they literally don't do or produce *anything* ?
The principle you mention, a kind of Mutually Assured Destruction, works when two large companies, both with patents in eachothers fields clach. Microsoft certainly infringes IBM-patents,
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AC, Anonymous Coward? ;)
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Ouch! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the US is the majority of the world...
At least my TV says so.
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He's Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux (and OSS) needs to support Windows. To do that, (in theory) they need to infringe on MS patents. It really is in Microsoft's best interests to allow this to happen, as it keeps people on their protocols, and tied in to their software.
The point of the threat was to scare commercial OSS users (the ones that can't take the PR hit of a lawsuit) into buying the Novellisoft "covenant" thingy that people have been bitching about. They never would have even sued those companies the Novell deal targeted. It just doesn't make sense, and would destroy their image even more.
Their plan? They know the power of open-source software. They know how well it works together, and with proprietary software (I think you can even use a Samba server to be a PDC in a Windows domain). They just want to keep people using their software in some form, rather than not at all. (If I didn't want to get sued, I'd force Windows to work with NFS, not Linux to work with SMB, or become an all-ODF shop...) This way, they can still cling on.
Re:He's Right (Score:5, Insightful)
When I buy a car, I can take a sludge hammer to it. I can chop it up into tiny pieces and re-sell it. I can repaint it, put new seats in, I can even replace the engine. Why should software be any different? Are there any other industries protected by such a strong veil?
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Seeing the success of Microsoft, Ford and GM introduce EULAs for cars...
Re:He's Right (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you didn't. You paid for the right to use software - for some very specific rights, actually; not even all you'd wish/can think of/consider are entitled to.
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Yes I did. It depends on your jurisdiction.
You typically aquire software by doing something like the following:
Notice that at -NO- point was there any mention of any kind of license, any set of specific rigths, or anything of the sort. It was a plain and simple sale, just like buying an apple
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Enter a shop. Pick a product from the shelves.
Walk to the counter. Say something like: "I'd like to buy this, please."
"That'll be $39.95, then, is that all ?"
Yes, thank you. Here you are. (cash changes hands)
And from that point it is your book. You can tear it apart, burn it to stay warm, resell it to someone else. You might even read it should you want to.
However, you cannot just start making (partial) copies of this book, the law put
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In other words, software that runs from the HD can be installed to the HD. If it needs to be copied into RAM, it can be, etc.
And, you do *own* your copy of software. You're allowed to sell it.
The law in no way recognizes any of the rights software companies try to claim thro
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I am actually happy everytime US law take another step towards insanity.
The thing about patent-law is, it's bad, but it's not bad - ENOUGH that normal average people are aware of it and have an opinion on the matter. The same is true for copyrigth-law, but there it's actually nearing the tipping-point, more and more people *have* heard of it and *are* critical of it, even though too many still accept the *AA-propaganda
So, every step in the direction of increased insanity is, in my opinion, a step toward
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Although, I fear you risk creating a Catch-22 situation.
Making patent enforcement more draconian and patents ever more far reaching is the mark of a sane, albeit subversive industry intent on destroying patent law, and the mark of a sane and responsible legislature who accede to their desires.
Therefore the greatest insanity, would be to observe a moratorium on changes to patent law, or even to tighten up on some of the definitions such as 'obvious' and 'novel'.
So, every step toward the
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I'm not, since the US has a tendency to export their silly laws to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world swallows them, hook, line and sinker, since "the US has the world's greatest economy, so any of its laws even distantly relating to the economy must be first rate".
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Re:He's Right (Score:4, Insightful)
You were doing great until that last sentence. Microsoft wants everyone to use Microsoft software, everywhere and all the time. This latest round of manoeuvres on the patent front is simply one aspect of a concerted attempt to de-commodify software, standards and protocols.
This is not news. We've known since the Halloween Documents [catb.org] first appeared in 1998 that they might do this:
Protocols are by their nature immune to copyright protection, but not to patents. It seems clear that Microsoft sees patents as a necessary weapon in their fight against open standards. I think they're right. Software patents are anathema to open standards, and that's why software patents have to be stopped.
For my part I find it a little disturbing that people who've been in the FOSS game for this long should so easily forget this. Microsoft's take on the patent issue seems to be that they're big enough to cope with the madness of patent litigation. They'll take some hits in the short term, but ultimately, they'll end up holding enough of the patent pie that they'll be unassailable.
FOSS, however, suffers far more than Microsoft ever could. Even today, the presence of sharks in the patent waters might be enough to stop the next Linus Torvalds from sitting down and writing the Next Big Thing, or perhaps to convince the next Richard Stallman that the battle is already lost. The more they drive developers into the embrace of large corporations, the more they can influence - if not dictate - the directions software development takes.
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They never would have even sued those companies the Novell deal targeted. It just doesn't make sense, and would destroy their image even more.
really? thats funny, i could have sworn they were doing this by proxy through SCO via Baystar. if you don't know what i'm talking about then perhaps you should google 'autozone lawsuit'. over the course of the SCO lawsuit i have been constantly reminded of a humorous piece i saw some years back about the
Getting rid of patents takes care of things. (Score:2)
You inflate the value of M$'s legacy code and misunderstand M$'s goals. This is evident when you say:
Microsoft simply can't sue individual OSS developers or users.
That's obvious, despite attempts to extort and control individuals by our slow learning, MAFIAA friends.
They hope to control distribution and make money that way. Don't believe me? Ask Novel and Xandros.
M$ is a patent troll and a very dangerous one. With M$, software has always been a tool to make money. They owned it, promoted it and
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The dangerous part is how such notions have warped morals and US government policies. "Owners" have convinced a large portion of the US government that "IP" is the way to tax the world, to become some kind of thought and idea owners and make everyone else do the dirty work.
A while ago I read an interesting text about why this is the case. The argument was that the US and the rest of the western world have realized that it is only a matter of time before they will be out-competed by low-cost countries in the third world on all material goods. To survive, IP will be the new and only export of the western world. Since IP by its nature can be copied, the entire world has to enact incredibly harsh laws regarding IP, so that nobody will infringe, simply out of fear for their life
How to compete? (Score:5, Interesting)
How can people stay positive on an economy that seems neither ultimately market-based rather than litigation based and where what used to be virtues (hard work, creativity, taking a chance) are punished by the government and unworthy trolls/big_players get the gains instead?
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They gave those away too.
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If we didn't stay positive about our economy, we'd have to face the reality of it. At that point, the only people that would have jobs would be psychiatrists.
And it helps to have alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
Satire (Score:5, Funny)
20 years! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Software ideas don't need to be "protected". They won't get hurt if someone else uses them.
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A monopoly for one year is only about 1/20th as bad as a monopoly for 20 years, but it's still bad. Companies don't need monopolies in order to do R&D, and if they tell you different it's just because they want government handouts.
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Patents (in theory) protect individuals as much as companies. I agree that the current patent law needs reforming, but a 1 year patent sounds kind of foolish.
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Patents, in practice, are government granted monopolies that the owner can sell. It should be immediately obvious from that the effect they have: A large company buys a bunch of them, and then goes ahead and acts like an abusive monopolist. A little guy may incidentally get some corporate pocket change for the license transfer, but his gain will be more than offset by the economic damage caused by the monopoly itself.
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That scenario sounds great, doesn't it. We'll protect the little guy who invented something amazing from "unfair competition" by the big guy. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way in any significant number of cases.
Here's some more realistic scenarios:
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The point I was trying to make in my post is that software patents don't provide an overall benifit in the real world. That'd still be true with shorter durations.
As for your other three points:
The Silent Enemies (Score:2, Interesting)
Like in the forest, you look for the bears, but it's the snakes and cobras that ultimately get you. You don't see 'em until it's too late.
Everyone looks and waits to be sued by Oracle, AMD, Ford, GM, Union Pacific, Amtrak, United, Fidelity, Morgan, Carnegie, Microsoft, IBM, Boeing, Raytheon, Intel, Nike, McDonalds, Disney, or any other household name.
But it's some un heard of patent troll, some unknown law firm from the middle of nowhere, who will kill you at t
I don't mind software patent or copyright if (Score:2)
- Patents and copyrights must have a limited time frame, and can not be extended (don't make me talk about that mickey mouse thing)
- All copyrighted materials must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. Otherwise, you don't the protection of the law. If you don't register, your work becomes public domain.
- All patented "inventions" must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. If you are patenting softwar
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There could be an issue with fake claims of copyright ownership, though, but I guess we already have that possibility.
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Simplify the whole thing (Score:4, Interesting)
A piece of code can be protected by patents, can be copyrighted, trademarked and even held a trade secret (closed source). What's so special about software that it mandates so much protection? I'd love to see just one protection available for software. For instance, if it's trade secret (closed source) then you don't get patent or copyright protection. If it's open source, then you get only copyright protection. For really core and non-obvious algorithms, you can get patent protection, but you will lose copyright protection in that case (say you will need to submit the code as part of the patent application, making it public domain).
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Now it could be argued that the source code is only the 'recipe' an
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No. That's not the deal. The deal is this: in a free, capitalist marketplace, it is nearly impossible for someone to produce creative works and make money at it. If they don't ma
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Re:Alan Cox can suck it (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Organically-evolved law"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire history of time until 1998: for the most part, neither algorithms nor business practices are held to be patentable, since they are both held to be "abstract ideas," which are not patentable. There are exceptions, but they are rare.
The State Street ruling [findlaw.com], 1998: Hey, let's change the legal test for patentable software from "causing a physical transformation" to producing "useful, concrete and tangible results". Vague enough for ya? Awesome. And while we're at it, let's also apply the same completely meaningless legal test to business practices, too!
The history of software patents since 1998: One patent on Zocor! One patent on Viagra! SIXTEEN patents by Microsoft of movement and positioning of a cursor! Gee whiz, maybe we should fix this problem. Oh, wait... we wouldn't want to "dismantle organically-evolved law from the top-down", because Anonymous Coward says that such actions always result in DISASTER!
"Dismantle organically-evolved law from the top-down". Fantastic. What the hell does that even *mean*?
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My guess is:
* 90% chance its a new buzzword / troll crossbreed hybrid creation
* 10% chance its someone that owns some of those overly broad submarine patents and doesnt want the law actually fixed between now and the time he pops up with it in the next decade.
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Right on! I'm more interested in his sister, Nikki [google.com], and her aural contribution
> You can't dismantle organically-evolved law from the top-down; that's never, ever worked in any
society and always results in disaster.
Er, yeah. Ok. zzzzz
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Stick it in your ear!
Re:Alan Cox can suck it (Score:4, Insightful)
That only worked because the founders were remarkably principled and selfless individuals. If any of them had been Stalin or Robespierre type figures who believed they should have absolute power, the American revolution would have been a disaster like the French one, or the Russian one. Or pretty much any revolution apart from the American one in fact.
Americans are right to celebrate their founders, particularly George Washington. He could easily have ruled until he died and then found some constitutional device to pass power to his heir. As Jefferson put it
"The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."
Comparing the first post revolutionary leader to a project manager is disingenous in the extreme. You basically need to have an almost perfect leader in this situation who will allow a system to be set up which will constrain his actions to set a precedent for his successors. It's all to easy to use real and imagined threats to the regime as an excuse to set up a tyranny.
Typical USian ingoramus. (Score:3, Insightful)
And I wonder how many of those principled gentlemen had slaves. G. Washington did, I am too lazy to find about others.
As for the success of Revolutions all is relative. You say other revolutios were a disaster, that is clearly bullshit. Revolutions like the Soviet, French and Mexican one allowed hughe swathes of the opressed population to better themselves. You can say whatever you want about Stalin the monster, but once he
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Jefferson did, and quite probably fathered children by a slave. Children who were raised as slaves.
One thing I find remarkable about the Founding Fathers is that they were racist and sexist, yet in their writing and in the Constitution their language rises above their own racism. For example, outside of the part about counting the slave population at 3/5th for purposes of representation whi
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can't copy paste code , but every time you write a program from scratch you don't end up infringing 2347 vaguely worded patents preventing you from implementing even the most trivial computer tasks.
I think you do not know what patents en copyrights are.
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I know the
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:4, Informative)
The objection people have to software patents is due to the fact that they cover concepts, not specific mechanisms that embody those concepts. Your example of thousands of different and possibly overlapping compressor designs illustrates this nicely, because applying software patent principles to the hardware world would mean that somebody could hold a patent on processes that reduce the volume of compressable fluids which would (in summary) read something like this:
1) The fluid is drawn or pumped in from a higher volume source.
2) One or more mechanical processes reduces its volume by compression.
3) The resultant compressed fluid is then either used directly, or stored in a suitable compression vessel.
So all those thousands of compressor designs would have to pay royalties to whoever owned that single broad patent on "Compressing Compressable Fluids", even though the patent itself doesn't tell people how to do any of the things it covers, so it's completely useless to anyone who has to design a compressor. Then, when people were breathing a sigh of relief because it's at the point of expiring, the patent office grants an extension because the original owner added some "innovative steps":
4) If used directly, the compressed fluid can distributed via rigid pipes or flexible tubes.
5) In cases where it is stored in a pressure vessel, the vessel may form part of the device.
6) If it is not part of the device, and therefore is a separate component, this component can be placed in a storage facility.
7) Components in storage facilities from step (6) can be given or sold* to others who do not possess a device for compressing compressable fluids.
*Please see separate patent number 8199477728 "A Process For Giving Away Or selling Stored Compressed Fluids"
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It's possible that the patent office is really bad at reviewing software patents, b
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Unfortunately, there are so many patents that (a) cover concepts rather than impl
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Well, I think that what's unusual is not software itself, but the software industry (and also the business method industry). Patents are meant to serve the public interest by encouraging the invention and availability on the market of novel, nonobvious inventions, to disseminate and preserve the knowledge underlying those inventions, and to make those inventions free to all as much as
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One reason is that in the non-computer world it can cost thousands of dollars to manufacture even just a prototype. When it comes to software, anyone can do it with a little time and interest. Patents were supposed to make that initial investment worth the risk
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In fact millions or even billions of dollars
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Good software can also take thousands or millions of dollars and 10 years to develop.
Not everything can be reduced to a simple micro-prototype that "anyone" can code "in their spare time".
Barriers to entry in a market exist for a reason. Where none exist, it can be beneficial to impose some.
Being from Europe, where our socialist governments tightly control everything, there are even limits on how many companies y
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you have to deposit at least 5000 euros as "social capital" before starting ANY company, as a guarantee that your creditors and employees will have some money left over if/when you go bankrupt.
Ehrm, no. That is the case with joint stock companies [wikipedia.org], i.e. companies that are owned by shareholders. The reason why you have to pay this amount is because of the limited liability this type of company gives. Other company types make the owners personally liable if the company cannot pay their bills. I would be very surprised if the US does not have such a requirement on joint stock companies (known as business corporations in the United States).
I suggest that you read up on corporations [wikipedia.org], especially the
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Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not. Copyright pertains to the expression portion of software, but not the underlying ideas, functionality, etc. Ultimately, maintaining this distinction takes priority over copyrightability. For example, where there is only one or only a limited way of expressing a given idea, the idea and expression are considered to have merged, and there cannot be a copyright, lest it effectively protect the uncopyrightable idea. This is known as the merger docrine.
There's also the scenes a faire doctrine, which makes uncopyrightable things like stock story elements. For example, in horror movies, someone originated the routine bit where the mood is set when you see a wolf howling, silhouetted against the moon. But it's unprotectable since it's a common, stock element. The doctrine is used in the software field, both for elements which would be common across much software, as well as for portions of the code which are dictated by external considerations such as efficiency or platform compatability, and so lack some originality.
Finally, there's the fact that copyright infringement has nothing to do with identicality, but rather has to do with originality. That is, it isn't unlawful for Alice's program to be identical to Bob's program, so long as Alice didn't copy her program from Bob. For many works, independent creation -- when it happens -- can still be tricky to show. But for closed source software, it would be tricky for the alleged infringer to have seen the source. The accused would want to have kept some records to help vindicate themselves, and if they did have some kind of access (e.g. Alice used to work for Bob's company and could reasonably have snuck a copy out), they'd have a pretty strong case. Reverse engineering can qualify as access -- e.g. if you decompile the binary -- but again, the underlying functionality isn't protected by copyright, only the way in which it is expressed can be, subject to the limits discussed above. That's why cleanroom reverse engineering is a good strategy to follow.
You might also want to look at the abstraction-filtration-comparison test in the Altai case to see how courts will often compare two pieces of software to see if there has been infringement.
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:4, Insightful)
And after 20 or so years of seeing their proprietary code reverse engineered and opened up for the public to use, large companies like Microsoft decided that only Software Patents would turn back the rising open source software tide.
Sadly, for all of us, after they subverted the U.S. Patent system for their profit, they still failed to kill open source (is it even theoretically possible to kill an idea?)
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Cox says that the rest of the world doesn't allow patents on software. That is entirely wrong. Most do, even the European Union allows them
Ehrm, no, the EU does not allow software patents, there is simply no (single) rule about them. The EPC (European Patent Convention) does not allow software patents. The EPO* (European Patent Office) issues software patents, but their legality depends on whether the jurisdiction recognizes them as valid or not. In other words, it is up to the individual member states whether to recognize software patents as valid or not. Some states do and others don't.
Software patents were on track to become legally val
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Insightful)
If all software were public domain, there would be nothing preventing people from releasing GPL'd software as binary only, and refusing to share the modifications. (because there is no longer anything that holds them to the copyleft license)
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Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Informative)
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Does the presence of the citation have an effect on the purpose and character of the use? No, not really. The use of the quoted material is still just as commercial or non-commercial, or whatever, either way.
Does the presence of the citation have an effect on the nature of the work the quoted material comes from? Absolutely not.
Does the presence of the citation have an effect on the amount and substantiality of the quoted material
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Who gets to decide what is art and what is not art? Is there any completely fair and honest authority for something so subjective?
The existence of IOCCC indicated to me that at least some people take artistic pride in software programming, how ever warped that pride might be.
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Insightful)
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Software patents are a bit of a misnomer, further polluted by frivolous patents (which a
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As I understand it, software patents just say what the software does, not how it does it.
That depends. I think that some patents are pretty specific, such as the RSA patent or the LZW patent. They cover a specific algorithm to do a certain task. Such patents are acceptable if we must have software patents. What is unacceptable are the "concept patents", that are overly broad and cover ideas, not algorithms. The Acacia Technologies patent on streaming media over a network is a prime example. When you have a network and a digitized media file, it is trivial to "invent" streaming media over the
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Surely the more obvious conclusion would be that posters on slashdot are so clueless about other fields that they refrain from judging about patents either way.
For what it's worth, most hardware patents that I've had to come across are pretty stupid too. My company makes hologram printers and we have various patents for stuff like "if you overlap the pixels, you can get w
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How utterly and completely wrong! The vast majority of "impleme
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No, copyrights are for written works or other forms of expression, not implementations of arbitrary ideas
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A patent system that is not consistently applied is worse than useless.
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The same argument could be applied to every other industry, for better or worse. Which is my only point.
A patent system that is not consistently applied is worse than useless.
It should be applied to exactly those fields where it translates into bigger growth. Current research indicates that such fields are far between.
This shouldn't about fair. It shouldn't be about what "deserves" protection. It should solely be a matter of what gets the most growth. And every bit of research in this area I have seen indicates that for software, the effect is large and negative. Thus, software would be a good area to abolish the patents as a test balloon.
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It should be applied to exactly those fields where it translates into bigger growth.
Exactly. This was a problem in the process to ram the EU CII directive through the accepting process. Many corporations argued that they were necessary for continued growth in the software industry, but no economic research showed such a prediction. Many well-known economists actually argued that software patents would harm the software industry by stifling innovation and harming small and medium-sized businesses in favor of the large multinational corporations.
Re:One extreme to the next (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because he is advocating copyright (Score:2)
x-y=1
A patent would protect the full million ways to arrive at this result.
Copyright would recognize every different way to arrive at this result.
And since software is nothing else that
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Or a book/film genre. Like if someone patented the drama, action or police procedural, to name a few popular movie/television genres. That each of those could have an element of the others just make it a better analogy (one invention is often covered by multiple patents).
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No, not that one, this [wikipedia.org] one.
Nectar.
Re:Respectfully disagree. (Score:4, Insightful)
little difference between the current admin and Microsoft.
Re:Wait For It (Score:5, Funny)
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So please, let's start respecting patents and lets stop violating them at every opportunity.
Please make up your mind before posting. What is it, you are doing quit right and should go on violating patents at every opportunity? Or you are doing badly and should change that as soon as possible?
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--jeffk++