Software Patents Have Got to Go

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374861,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585

by bakbak • 16 years ago

103 67 16 years ago

pcmag.com

Synaesthesia• 16 years ago

The instant I saw it was John Dvorak I closed the tab.

sigzero• 16 years ago

Don't let your hatred blind you.

Lagged2Death• 16 years ago

I can understand this reaction, but even a crazy pundit can be right twice a day.

dasil003• 16 years ago

Dvorak doesn't deserve the page hit even if he's right. His trolling methodology fills the world with uninformed hyperbole, which should not be rewarded even if it's occasionally right.

billswift• 16 years ago

But is it worth the time and trouble of figuring out whether this time it is worth reading? I have a whole list of websites and people mounted on the wall over my monitor who have been so outrageously incompetent in the past that I avoid reading them. If they have shown such a low quality of accuracy on things I do know about, there is no way I can trust them on things I don't already know, so there is no point to reading them. (Note I only do this for actual facts that were flagrantly wrong, I read a lot of opinions that I disagree with.)

iwwr• 16 years ago

Not just software patents, but intellectual "property" in general.

Boldrin & Levine: "Against Intellectual Monopoly" http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

wazoox5• 16 years ago

34 years after Bill Gates' open letter to the "pirates" and decades of heavy propaganda and legal actions from the BSA, RIAA, etc, the general public still isn't convinced that copying bits is wrong. If after decades trying you can't change people minds, it must be that you're wrong and they're right. Intellectual Property must die.

klbarry• 16 years ago

Just because the public wants something doesn't make it right.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

And the South would still have slavery.

You need to ask the supposed victims of said crime, not the beneficiaries of it.

tgflynn6• 16 years ago

I think that some degree of copyright protection for a person's intellectual works is fair and probably necessary within the current socio-economic system. A person should definitely have the right to profit from their hard work. However I don't think it's fair that an author can continue to receive revenue from a work 50 years after authoring it. It seems even less fair that the investors in large corporations like Microsoft can continue to profit from the intellectual work of that company's employees indefinitely.

It seems to me that a fair solution would be to maintain copyright but limit copyright protection to say 5 years. That should be enough for authors to obtain a reasonable revenue from their works while greatly improving the common good by eliminating artificial scarcity after a fairly short period of time.

agazso• 16 years ago

Keep in mind that copyright is also a form of intellectual property. Do you really want it to die as well?

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

Yes.

aristidb3• 16 years ago

Copyright can be simulated using purely private contracts (basically requiring everyone who gets the content to sign an NDA, which may be impractical, but possible). This legitimises copyright somewhat IMO.

Also, the damage from copyright is probably much smaller because it is very unlikely that you independently come up with the same content as somebody else, whereas with patents that happens all the time.

flipbrad2• 16 years ago

not just simulated, but it's being actively extended in that way. the recent Blizzard v MDY touches on it, there's a SABIP report on contracts and copyright... lots of stuff out there.

but it's not quite the same. By way of example, for breach of contract, the remedies are far less attractive than the US remedy for copyright infringement (statutory damages).

Jach2• 16 years ago

I flagged this since we don't need a new one of these articles every day...

dean• 16 years ago

It's depressing to see a respected and influential software industry icon resorting to patent trolling like this. I expect it from lawyers and corporate-raider types, but was surprised to see Paul Allen doing it.

To cherry pick a quote from Dvorak's article: Paul Allen says he has a patent for a "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information...".

On the other hand, corporations love a monopoly, and I guess Paul Allen wants to be involved in another one.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

How likely is Paul Allen doing this as an attempt to weaken software patents? MS is trying the SCOTUS in an effort to make it more difficult to assert claims. Wonder if this might be part of the same strategic play. Doubtful, I know.

ergo98• 16 years ago

Very unlikely. He targeted everyone but Gates. His attack is legitimate.

However Allen can feel just, I guess, given that he has dedicated most his wealth to charity after he dies. So he's essentially playing Robin Hood.

tkeller6• 16 years ago

> Basically, Allen got an omnibus patent that covers all these characteristics

No. He didn't. And regardless of whether software patents need to go, ignorant media coverage certainly needs to go.

aristidb3• 16 years ago

Most people, including myself, cannot actually read patents. Being told that the summary is irrelevant does not help at all. What are we supposed to do, ignore the patent because we don't understand it?

tkeller6• 16 years ago

Rabble rabble rabble. I hate this attitude: I don't understand software patents, and I'm not going to take the time to learn about them, therefore they need to go.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

If you're a programmer, you can read software patents.

If you're a mechanical engineer, you can read mechanical patents,

If you're a farmer, you can read farming patents.

See how that works? The language is dense, and you must read carefully, but the patents I have actually read are not particularly difficult to understand.

blhack4• 16 years ago

You really are defensive of this whole Balmer thing. Do you have a vested interest in software patents like this or something?

(I was talking to you yesterday about "understanding the world around me")

tkeller6• 16 years ago

No, I don't. I just get annoyed at all the misinformation that gets repeated about patents in general and software patents specifically.

The discourse around HN is generally of a pretty high level, and it's disappointing to see people just blindly accepting the party line: software patents bad, I don't know how to read a patent and that's ok, and anyone who disagrees is just stifling innovation.

maeon3• 16 years ago

Software Patents should be allowed, however the rules on them need to be heavily modified so that the real spirit of the patent can reward resourceful hard working innovators.

Patents were meant to protect programmer, however since programmers tend to work for big businesses and the big businesses absorb all the rights to the code, the software patent is only protecting businesses. I propose a change.

Software patents should have timeouts that increase and decrease depending on the amount of genuine innovative breakthrough contained in the code. If I make a new website that does something people like that never has been done before, then I get so many cents for anyone else using it for so many weeks (something like this would need to be strictly enforced).

Now suppose some programmer created a new bit of software that takes Human DNA as input and outputs a list of instructions on how to reverse aging on that version of the human genome. In this case the software patent would be Longer, with more of a payoff for others who copied it and used it inside the time frame.

Software Patenting isn't evil, it was meant to protect US, the programmers, it is just a completely broken system so that it isn't helping at all.

aristidb3• 16 years ago

Maybe they were meant to protect the inventor. But if they cause more harm than benefit, that is no excuse to keep them.

Results matter, not intents.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

> Software Patenting isn't evil

Except that it is.

sorbus• 16 years ago

[Citation needed]

cletus• 16 years ago

This isn't anything new. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about software is against software patents except for a few with a vested interest.

The patent system was originally created to protect investment and foster innovation by providing exclusivity but requiring disclosure to further research by others and of course there is a time limit.

The problem is that ideas (which is what software patents and business models come down to) have next to no cost (unlike, say, new drugs that have substantial R&D costs, trials, etc).

Lawyers have gotten very good at perverting this system [1]. I remember reading about Intel's system bus (I think in relation to Nvidia producing chipsets without a license). Basically parts of the system were patented, some copyrighted and the rest was a trade secret. Combined it meant Intel basically didn't have to disclose anything but could still go after those who reverse engineer.

Once I used to support pharma-patents but I'm changing my mind on even that. I believe the high cost of health care in the US is in large part to the protections and monopolies suppliers have. The counterargument is that many of these things wouldn't exist without these protections but I think the pendulum has swung too far.

Something like two-thirds of the budget for a new drug goes on marketing [2].

Worse, we're starting to see copyright trolls [3] who are basically producing reams of crap in the hopes that someone inadvertently infringes on that so they can be sued.

So IP is horribly broken, not just for software.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Overlap_with_co...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll

EGreg6• 16 years ago

Thank you!

I was just writing about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2039527

roadnottaken• 16 years ago

As a biochemist, I can assure you that if pharma-patents went away, drug-development would disappear overnight. One can argue over the specifics, but some form of IP protection is necessary in that arena.

tgflynn6• 16 years ago

My understanding of the traditional drug development model is basically that companies spend millions of dollars testing large numbers of substances in vitro, then in animals then finally in human trials to find a very small number of drugs that work. Once such a drug has been found and approved by the FDA it is fairly trivial for a competitor to reproduce, which in the absence of patents, would allow the competitor to essentially appropriate all the R&D the initial developer did.

This development model is extremely different from that seen in software and related technologies where many small ideas are combined to form compelling technological solutions. I suspect this difference in development models is the main reason for the much slower (linear) progress seen in medicine compared to information technologies (exponential). I also suspect that as our understanding of biological systems improves, the pharmaceutical industry will evolve towards a more information based development model.

In any case, it seems to me that in the present, IP policy needs to accept that different industries have different development models and that a one size fits all IP policy is not a good solution.

tgflynn6• 16 years ago

US patent law (as well as copyright law) derives from Article I section 8 of the Constitution which grants Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The question is do patents actually promote the progress of science and technology ? I suspect that they do not because while they create additional monetary incentives to pursue innovation at the same time they restrict the free flow of ideas which is the driving force behind scientific and technical progress.

The free exchange and use of information is probably the source of the exponential progress in "information technologies" that Ray Kurzweil has discovered. It seems likely that impediments to the exchange and use of information, such as patents, can only reduce the rate of exponential growth.

Perhaps if patents had never existed our technology would be far more advanced than it currently is.

If it were ever possible to prove conclusively that patents impede rather than promote progress, they would become unconstitutional in the US.

EGreg6• 16 years ago

Agreed, however there is something to be said about giving incentives to the little guy. Basically what entrepreneurs who are just starting out think NDAs should do, but better.

Say you come up with a great new idea in software. And you want to make an agreement with someone to implement this idea. Without patents, they can have "their uncle's company in China" to do the idea (think CrunchPad), rename it to avoid any trademark issues, and screw you. How would you protect against this? This issue faces almost every inventor of an idea, as they will have to make business agreements with someone. Thus, although you would be encouraging free flow of information within the tree, you would be cutting off a large source of it -- individual inventors.

Patents won't be going away because it's hard to distinguish between the above example, and a patent troll.

tgflynn6• 16 years ago

Yes, I've often heard this argument.

Personally, speaking as a "little guy' who is interested in advancing technology and making a good living doing it, I am far more worried that some corporation will be able to claim patent "protection" over my ideas. This seems far more probable to me than the inverse situation of someone else independently discovering my invention and beating me in the market. Also even if that happened I'd much rather compete in the market than in a court room.

As for the specific case you mention, I think, especially in software, that it's becoming far easier for an individual inventor to take his invention to market rather than needing to sell it to a large corporation. Also this argument seems largely based on the notion, which I think is most often incorrect, that most value lies in a simple idea rather than in the execution of that idea. In other words that you have some idea that can be stated in a few English sentences that has tremendous value and that no one else has thought of. You only need divulge that idea and anyone on the planet will be able to beat you in the market. Such ideas, if they exist at all, are exceedingly rare, maybe once in a generation occurrences. All recent examples of highly successful innovation: Microsoft, Google, Facebook relied far more on the quality of execution - the construction of solutions from many small ideas - than on one overarching genius discovery. And it is exactly this form of value creation which patents impede.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

How do you think patents "restrict the free flow of ideas?"

A patent must publicize what is being claimed: you are given a explanation of the design or process. You just can't make it and sell it. However, by knowing someone's design, even when patented, it can inspire someone else to build something even better.

tgflynn6• 16 years ago

Well they clearly restrict the free use of ideas. An idea that I can't use is of limited interest to me.

Have you ever read a software patent ? The ones I have seen have been written in a very strange way (ie use of non-standard terminology for technical concepts) which seems aimed at obscuring the nature of the ideas being patented rather than clarifying them. If patent descriptions were really intended to convey useful technical information they would read more like journal articles rather than some strange dialect of American legalese.

I'm sure that some innovation occurs through efforts to work around existing patents however I doubt that effect comes close to matching their effect of preventing ideas, even if independently discovered, from being incorporated into new technical solutions.

As for the notion that people are going to read 20 year old expired patents for their ideas that seems pretty unlikely to me given the pace of technological development.

EGreg6• 16 years ago

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Patents were originally intended to encourage investors in a time when bringing a product to market could take years.

In the software industry, that assumption is, to put it mildly, totally off. Therefore, in the software industry, granting someone a 17 year monopoly on an idea just encourages another, destructive type of strategy that hurts the entire industry: PATENT TROLLING.

Seriously, it is a legal strategy to describe something to the government, wait a few years and then go after the people who actually BUILT IT (even if they came up with it independently, as long as they can't prove they came up with it before you described it in a patent application).

That's BULL CRAP. You didn't do anything except write some paper. If you're good at it, you don't even need a lawyer. And you get to collect money from the hard work of others.

On the other hand, I feel that if you DID write a patent, AND you tried to make it work, AND you are succeeding, you SHOULD be able to prevent your competitors from just copying what you did. But not for 17 years. For two years at most!

It is in this latter sense that the patent system is great. I'd get a provisional patent over an NDA anyday. Because it's more legally enforceable. Say a company meets with me and I tell them the idea. First of all I don't have to require them to sign any NDA. Secondly, suppose they say, "nice idea, we are going to do it ourselves". I can tell them, "I have a provisional patent, and I will sue your ass in 2 years." Or I can tell them NOTHING, go ahead and convert it to a real patent (probably $5k out of my pocket) and go sue them 2 years later. Not 17 years later.

This, I don't mind. They wanted to screw me by stealing my idea, they got burned. This will encourage companies to NOT screw individual investors and actually decide if they want to wait 3 years before making this, or work with the inventor.

With NDAs, there is no way to prove anything. I spoke to Bobby, and they signed an NDA. Then, Charlie Inc. comes out with my product. I didn't make Charlie, Inc. sign anything, and Bobby doesn't have the $5 million dollars to pay me, and I can't prove he told anything to Charlie, Inc. OOPS.

That's what software patents should protect against. That's it. They currently do, but we don't need 17 years of that kind of protection!

Software Patents Have Got to Go

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