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| Authored by: mrisch on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 07:21 PM EDT |
Well, like I said - if you are not a fan of patents, then
there's no way I'm going to convince you...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 08:56 PM EDT |
Patents are never granted to a company. They are only granted
to people. The people may then ASSIGN a patent to a company
(and is usually part of an employment agreement.) At least,
that how my patents operated.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 10:17 PM EDT |
This is not an argument, this is a moral position or belief. As such, it can not
be proven correct or incorrect. The US constitution gives congress the right to
issue patents and copyrights for a limited time. To implement a "no patents
at all" system requires a constitutional amendment. That is not going to
happen given that the legislative and legal arguments are over how much patent
protection should inventions have, not should inventions have patent protection.
In the same vein, inventors are not going to get control of their inventions
forever. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 10 2012 @ 10:20 PM EDT |
In effect, to get *FULL* documentation on inventions and to get them into the
marketplace, the government offers inventors exclusive rights for a limited
time.
This is the bargain....and as inventor, I promise you, patents help me to get
the help I need moving my inventions from between my ears to being utilized for
the public good.
Not that they aren't abused, and not that change isn't on the way, especially
these Lodsys patents....
source code: Yep, got to be part of a software patent.....IMHO
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 07:58 AM EDT |
I agree, but you are never going to change anything with
ideological arguments, especially when there is so much
money involved.
The main problem with Risch's article, is that while it
wants to appear pragmatically grounded in reality and
compromise, it is in fact almost totally ideological. It can
be paraphrased as: "innovation is good", "innovation needs
to be encouraged", "patents do encourage innovation (even
though there are some bad ones)", "the system isn't broken,
it is misused, if people used it properly everything would
be fine".
Apart from the last statement this is pure ideology. And the
problem with the last statement is that it is utter
nonsense. The behaviour a system creates ARE PART OF THE
SYSTEM. You can not argue that the system is correct
ideologically, therefore it is a good system. If a system
encourages the wrong behaviours then it is broken BY
DEFINITION.
The real discussion has to be about how to fix the system
and the article has no practical solutions for this.
The argument about software Vs physical patents is
irrelevant. The difference with software patents is that the
high rate of innovation and growth in software exposes the
deep flaws with the patent system. But it is the system that
is broken and the flaws exist for any type of patent, even
though they may be less visible for 'hardware' patents.
The argument is never going to be won ideologically or in
the abstract. The problem with software people is they work
in the abstract a lot of the time and therefore tend to be
quite ideological in all their views. To change the system
we need to show it has practical flaws and offer a better
solution. And as far as business and politicians are
concerned better means 'cheaper and more profitable', not
better in the 'fairy-tale' sense of the ideological
arguments that are always put forward by both sides.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 09:38 AM EDT |
The industry and software engineers don't need software
patents. They certainly don't need a 20 year exclusive right
to basic methods and practices which is what were embedded
in the Oracle/Google fiasco when all the lawyer speak had finely been stripped
out of the claims.
Being pragmatic about it the system as is currently
implemented for software patents is broken and is unfixable.
1. The quality of patents issued is just way way too low
2. Legal defence against software patents is off the scale
in terms of costs.
3. Software has a life cycle incompatible with a 20 year
fixed term monopoly.
The explosive growth of of non practising Patent entities
must surely spark the alarm bells, the burden of proof being
on the defendant is ludicrous and the tactics used amount to
legalised extortion.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 01:20 PM EDT |
Re. the example Patent 7,098,896 [claims]
Does this differ from reading the 'shape' of the key strokes and doing a 'like'
comparison ala SQL. If
it is similar to a problem solved by the use of a tool
developed to solve such problems then no it does not deserve
a patent.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Stefan Wagner on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 04:23 PM EDT |
I understand the math-argument, and from a certain viewpoint, I can agree that
software is pure math. But there is more than that one viewpoint.
From a certain viewpoint music is just math. Or take a poem - it's just words.
Is it?
You can take a dictionary and tell a machine to produce every thinkable 300
pages book, and the algorithm to do so is trivial and can be written in one
afternoon. Of course it would take years to really produce them, but from this
viewpoint books aren't written - just discovered.
The situation for software is similar, but many patents we see are just some
well known, higher order software modules applied to a trivial task (double
click).
---
don't visit my homepage [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: celtic_hackr on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 01:51 PM EDT |
| I believe that it's entirely possible to determine what is good for the public
and what isn't. It's good for the public to remove: murderers, cannibals,
violent attackers, thieves, and abusive people from the general population to
protect those of us who are not lying, thieving, brutal people eaters. The
details of drawing the lines are where it all matters. Lines can be fuzzy, in
reality. And anarchy has been show to be, shall we say, unpalatable. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 02:20 PM EDT |
A bigger problem is that the patent system made certain assumptions about human
character that in this day and age no longer seem to apply. The Idea of a patent
was not for something to be used as a club for the purposes of extortion, but
rather to allow someone who put the effort into the idea to be able to be
rewarded for that effort. The rules make the assumption that the person filing
the application would make a good faith effort to provide both the pro and con
side with his application. (I think back to an attempt to patent the ISAM File
Access Method, hide the prior knowledge...) When those filing the application
are deliberately not displaying a good faith effort, the system fails because
the process in now "Game the System: and the rules are not designed to
respond to that approach. The problem with the patent system is a symptom of the
state of our culture. The ends justify the means, and he who wins must have been
right. At one point in time there were those who believed that the means were of
greater importance than the ends. It meant that they followed the rules because
they could then have a valid claim. Now it seems to be the process that I have a
patent, so therefore my process (lie, cheat and steal) must be justified.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: mbouckaert on Wednesday, June 13 2012 @ 03:37 PM EDT |
First, I think the overwhelming majority of posts here agree
that anything that does not directly impact the physical
world significantly cannot be patented; that includes math,
which includes software.
With that out of the way.
I think we should also look at the impact of software-based
solutions to technical problems, specifically on the
patentability of solutions to them.
My opinion is that the growing number of solutions that do
include a piece of software as a central part of the
equipment, makes many areas where solving problems would
result in worthy patents in earlier times unlikely to
generate more patents. And, for the remaining ones, creates
new problems regarding the scope of a patent.
Essentially, three aspects of the development of software
would cause that: (1) Software is abstracted from the
physical domain of use; and (2) Solving part of the problem
using a software device makes the non-software portion of
the apparatus less complex; and (3) combining mathematical
modeling and physical equipment makes several physical
components of a solution unnecessary,
Because of (1), the same "software component" can be reused
where physical parts couldn't. Before, a physical component
in a piece of equipment had to handle its own physical
characteristics - this does not necessarily scale well, and
runs into limitations of the physical world: look at the
cams of a 1940-era mechanical adding/multiplying machine.
There were many patents awarded for clever ways to handle
these limitations. No need, anymore.
It probably is even more visible in industrial processes
involving corrosive products - software doesn't corrode or
melt.
Examples of (2) can be found everywhere in cars. A lot of
mechanical inventiveness went into carburetor designs, and
were rewarded by patents: such designs had to handle the
details of turbulent air flows under impossible conditions,
and were in fact analog computers calculating optimal
air/fuel mix dynamically. Current fuel injection systems are
table-driven, scale well, no need for all that fluid
dynamics complexity (it moved from the carburetor to
designing the remaining parts of the engine, where the
fluids actually do their things). The part of the engine
betwwen the air filter and the cylinders will not generate
many patents anymore.
And, because of (3), the software program can dispense of
intermediate sensors that were once necessary to control
industrial processes: No need to measure such anymore, the
parameters are under enough control that mathematical
modeling through software can give a value that is often
more precise than a sensor would deliver.
Now, that raises another question entirely:
Assume that a combination of physical devices and a piece of
software is awarded a patent, that the resulting apparatus
is non-obvious and novel and useful.
The software part includes, for the sake of argument, a
pattern-recognition component. All such have quirks and
limitations.
I am the inventor. I get the patent. I build the device.
If, at some later date, I replace the pattern recognition
algorithm with a "better" one, without touching anything
else:
* Is the patent still valid, because the software part is
just a "...and here a miracle happens..." component ?
* Do I need to file an amended patent adding a changed
description of the software? How long will that amended
patent give me monopoly rights?
* Can I file a completely new patent now, because the
pattern recognition improvement results in an improved real-
world result? Even without hardware changes? What if I can
do a cost-reduction effort thanks to it?
Oh well.
---
bck[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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