I began reading that Wired article, and came across this
line, perhaps near
the bottom of the first page...
That’s key, because,
ultimately, these
lawsuits are all about innovation.
So I
just kinda got stuck there, because that is all a
myth, that this is about
"innovation". They keep saying that
over and over, as if it was true, but any
engineer can tell
you that for 99% of the software patents I have seen they
are just the ordinary work product of software engineers. I
know that, because
I am one of them. Those patents I have
read about, and I have read about every
single one that I
have ever come across, certainly do not describe anything
that remotely resembles "innovation".
To call something "innovation", I
think it needs to stand
out. Sure, I innovate every day too, but that just my
job,
and it is expected of me. I like to think my work stands
out, and take
great pride and passion in it, but in the end
I have to admit, at least to
myself, that there are millions
of engineers all across this world doing what I
am doing
every single day - that is, doing what they are trained and
paid to
do. And I and they and the engineers at Apple and
Microsoft are all doing the
same thing, but if you work for
a big powerful company like Apple or Microsoft,
by and by
their patents lawyers will come around and talk to you to
see if you
have anything they might stake a claim on. That
is the only
difference.
I think we need to attack that word whenever and wherever
we see it, because I am sure they confuse non-technical
people into thinking
these patents mean something special
about what they are protecting.
Non-technical folks have no
way of judging this by themselves.
Back to
that article... Well as I said, I got to that
line, and just got kinda stuck
there. I copied into my copy
buffer, and went around searching for some way to
give that
author some feedback, to help her understand the error that
prevented me from reading the rest of the article. There was
no way to contact
her. Maybe she doesn't want any feedback.
Maybe she is not even a real
journalist or tech blogger, but
somebody with a mission to confuse people. She
didn't
confuse me though. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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