I've got no problems with people patenting THEIR inventions if that is
what they are patenting. If I was to patent a new kind of mouse trap in the
style of a software patent, all further mouse traps would be in breach of my
invention because they catch mice.
Software patents are so woolly even
sheep have difficulty recognising the animal underneath.
The USPTO requires:
The specification must include a
written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and
using it, and is required to be in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as
to enable any person skilled in the technological area to which the invention
pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the
same.
And yet most of the software patents that have been passed
are nowhere near this requirement. As a programmer I would expect the
blueprints for how to build it, ie an exact, clear, concise, detailed
description of the algorithm for the mechanism to achieve the output from the
inputs, included in the patent. Instead, all I see is a patent on the output
given the inputs (sometimes not even them) regardless of the black box in
between. It's like a patent on software for adding large multi-storage numbers
where the input and outputs are given and the bit that does the actually adding
is a black box labelled "+"; then when someone implements such a function, the
patent holder screams that they've breached their patent even though they've
done all the hard work working out the black "+" box with no help whatsoever
from the patent. (It may not even be the same black box that the patent holder
originally [may] have had.)
So, yes, if you are willing to patent
/your/ invention and ONLY your invention, I have no problem, but if it's
going to be made so woolly that it covers all implementations of the inputs
-> output, even if the algorithm used is totally different to what you may
have discovered, then I do have a problem.
The biggest problem is the
re-writing from computer speak into legalese for the patent application; trying
to use the patent requires another translation from legalese back into computer
speak.
An example of a problem using Google
translate:
Starting with the French "Il pleut des hallebardes", get it
translated into English and it becomes "It's raining cats and dogs" (correctly);
now translate it back into French and you get "Il pleut des chats et des chiens"
- total nonsense.
Don't think the conversion between computer speak and
legalese is immune to such errors; in fact, I'd go as far as to say that based
on the comments here of someone whose software was "translated" for patenting
when presented with clear, concise, detailed details of the invention in
computer speak, the legalese was unrecognisable as (a) the invention and (b) so
woolly to cover much more than the original invention without being specific.
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