Top judge: ditching software patents a "bad solution"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/top-judge-ditching-software-patents-a-bad-solution/?comments=1#comments-bar

by Cadsby • 14 years ago

7 6 14 years ago

ktizo• 14 years ago

Is like asking a duck what it thinks of all the flooding after a tsunami.

shib71• 14 years ago

His arguments triggered a sense of deja vu. I've made those same arguments with clients who want a system to process a specific product differently to all the others, and colleagues who think our framework should have special code to handle a rare use case.

Those arguments are valid - from the perspective of the architects. Maintaining and learning to use such a system is incredibly difficult, and resistance against special cases is healthy and helps promote simplicity.

But the purpose of law is to promote quality of life not quality of law, and life is messy.

Tmmrn2• 14 years ago

My idea would be a weekend workshop "How to create a modern Video Codec without violating patents" with a walkthrough of the process you would need to innovate there.

Since according to the Microsoft vs. Motorola case [0] there are over 2300 patents for h.264 alone you would have to read a pretty big stack of patents before doing any actual work.

Then, present a little insight how hard it is to work around all of them and ask the question whether it it is the intention of patents that all innovations need to implement hundreds of time consuming workarounds.

Then one could cover whether buying a license for h.264 and creating dependent work is feasible. And of course we have this hilarious example of again a Motorola vs. Microsoft case: Banning Microsoft from selling Windows 7 and the Xbox in germany [1].

There are too many patents relevant to h.264. It kind of worked until now because all of them were kind of at the MPEG-LA and they managed to sell licenses for all of them together but in reality anyone with such a patent who is not directly at the MPEG-LA can sue anybody who uses h.264 in a product.

But don't worry, we can suspend the patent system just fine if it affects a big company:

> Based on the evidence before it, the court finds that Microsoft has shown that a German injunction enjoining the sale of Microsoft Software and the Microsoft Xbox in the country of Germany will result [in] irreparable harm. Microsoft has provided this court with convincing evidence that it will lose market share, which will be difficult to regain, and suffer harm to its business reputation.

I'm sorry, I didn't follow fo a little moment? Infringing patents is just fine if you would be adversely affected by enforcing the law?

Wat.

[0] http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...

[1] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/20182089...

tzs• 14 years ago

Motorola says Microsoft infringes patents, and got a German court to agree, allowing Motorola to stop Microsoft from selling certain products.

Microsoft says that Motorola is breaching a contract to license those patents to Microsoft on reasonable terms. That case is currently being litigated in a US court.

The US court is, quite reasonably, not allowing Motorola to take action on stopping Microsoft until the contract issue is resolved. If Motorola is allowed to stop Microsoft now but then loses the contract case (and so Microsoft gets a license to the patents) this will cause great damage to Microsoft. If Motorola wins the contract case, then they can enforce their injunction in Germany. Any extra harm Motorola suffers by not being able to enforce the injunction immediately can be addresses by a simple increase in monetary damages later.

Tmmrn2• 14 years ago

Ok, I didn't read that right. I had to look up what preliminary injunction means and it's clearer now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preliminary_injunction

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

> excluding software from patentability was an "odd way to divide up the world."

Here in Brazil software cannot be patented. We still write software, make money off software. In fact, in the last couple of years we're seeing a huge number of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors migrating here, because the tech startup scene has been getting really hot.

The point is. Our industry doesn't need patents to exist. We do fine without it. Patents are just an artificial bandage trying to fix flaws in other industries. But these flaws doesn't exist in tech, so the artificial bandages are just getting in the way for no good reason.

Top judge: ditching software patents a "bad solution"

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