|
|
|
| Authored by: pem on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 07:46 PM EDT |
I agree with you that the problems are more to do with patents in general than
software patents in particular.
I think, in today's open-source society, that there is a very simple law change
that would improve patents tremendously.
After a patent is filed, publish _just_ the description of the problem to be
solved from the patent. Then attach any submissions from the public on how to
solve this problem to the patent file. Anything submitted within a certain
timeframe (say, three months) should be presumed to be either prior art
(somebody did it previously, wrote it up and sent it in) or obvious (somebody
figured it out and sent it in).
Combine that with a requirement for a clear, proper categorization (or multiple
categorizations) of the patent, so that people looking for patent applications
in their area of expertise won't miss one, and the patents resulting from the
process will be much better -- combining a more concrete description of the
problem to be solved with a more definite problem area, and a solution that must
be better than interested practitioners can come up with in three months.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: jonathon on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 04:08 AM EDT |
But we want those solutions to be novel and
nonobvious.
The tricky part here is what is obvious, and what
is non-obvious.
道德經 is a manual on conducting
warfare. More precisely, it explains how to get the other side to defeat
themselves. It also is a manual on constructing autonomous buildings. Both of
those are blatantly obvious to those within those fields, but blatantly
unobvious to those outside of those fields. In the only marketing class I took
offered by the MBA department, it was required reading, because of its
advertising/marketing content.
Whilst that is enigmatic book, the mere
fact that it can be used as a textbook in virtually every field of endeavor,
simply reinforces that what is obvious to person A, is irrelevant to person B,
and completely unobvious to person C.
With software, what one sees, is
the grabbing of things one once did by hand, to do on a computer. The only hard
thing is in learning the math, so that the task need not be done by hand. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 12:28 PM EDT |
The patent systems (going global) prevent almost all
innovation because they exclude anyone except the big
players. Consider you are making a product in the software
realms and that on a conservative estimate the top 6 players
have 10000 patents each on software and other electronic
related
things. You have 60000 things to worry about if you want to
safely (within the law) bring your product to market.
If you spend 3 minutes examining each one of those in
relation to your product you have approximately 1.1 man
years (on a 7 day week) to inspect them all. You could risk
ignoring them but any marginally successful product will
then be locked out of every market immediately as each
competitor finds two or three things you need to license
from them or be locked out.
We have whole branches of the executive and judiciary
devoted to spotting and preventing anti competitive and
monopolistic behaviour. Yet with the other hand those very
things (monopolies) are granted routinely in massive
numbers. Where's the logic to that? The patent's day is
done, it does not fit with a world where any person with
brains and time can produce a complex product.
This especially true now that free form groupings of
individuals can work together to produce highly complex
products such as Linux come Android. Patents prevent
cooperation.
The best way to defeat them I wondered is GPL style jujitsu.
If there
were a handful of patents out there that granted universal
use provided any product in which they were used adopted the
GPL you could poison the patent system.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Tkilgore on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 05:32 PM EDT |
> I hear you, but is this an issue with software patents or
patents in general? Someone else would have invented the
cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the
television, the transistor, etc. given enough time and
requirements (and in some cases, someone else did!). And all
the people who were second or third to do so had this same
complaint. I'm not saying that it's not a valid complaint -
I'm just saying that I'm not sure software is the issue.
No. It is the issue. None of the examples that you mention had the protection of
copyright. Software is protected by copyright. Software became somehow
"protected" by patents in addition to being protected by copyright,
after it was already protected by copyright. Software in this respect is totally
unique.
The unique situation in which software seems to have landed bothers a lot of
people. It bothers them a lot. Most of those whom the situation bothers the most
are from the set of people who actually write or have written software. That in
itself should be food for thought. Copyright protection is completely
understandable and is generally welcomed. Trade secret protection additionally
exists for closed-source software. Patent protection was not asked for and was
not welcomed. Many even perceive that software patents have no valid legal
mandate in the first place, having (according to that point of view) been
introduced by judicial fiat from the CAFC in the first place, and not by any act
of Congress.
Whoever would deal with the problem of software patents needs to realize that
software patents are indeed a unique case because of this double or triple
protection.
Whoever would deal with the problem of software patents also needs to understand
that a problem induces reactions. For example, some believe that the whole
edifice of software patents has arisen from dubious and illegitimate origins,
from judge-made law emanating from federal courts, and from the overreaching
greed of large corporations. One does not need to believe such things in order
to understand the consequences if many do believe them. The beliefs of those
many have then become part of reality.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 08:09 AM EDT |
Rightly or not I like to consider myself as an artist.
The software is my palette and the device is my canvas.
My understanding is that the expression of the idea on the canvas is protected
by copyright.
I would never consider it correct to try and protect the sunflower.
I like living in a world where many artists are free to paint sunflowers.
rgds
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
