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Patents Software Linux

Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Attack 357

Posted by CmdrTaco from the patents-schmatents dept.
canuck57 sent us a story about Linus Torvalds has joined the chorus of voices speaking out against software patents. Talks briefly about the recent patent releases by IBM & Sun, and notes that there are 'an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 registered software patents in the U.S. alone.'
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Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Attack More

Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Attack

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  • infringing my patent (Score:5, Funny)

    by wawannem ( 591061 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:22PM (#11551288) Homepage
    Unfortunately, Linus was immediately sacked for infringing on my patent: Patent 1,234,567: Speaking against software patents in a public forum.

  • It will only get worse before getting better (Score:3, Funny)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:23PM (#11551292)
    Considering the nature of Microsoft's ongoing assault on Linux, I'm surprised they haven't tried to patent Linus yet.

  • Will Apple follow IBM and Sun? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:23PM (#11551297) Homepage
    Most of their patents are hardware, but they do have some software patents.

    They do have a strong reliance on the open source community (Mac OS X contains a ton of open source code, as does Safari).

    I'm guessing they will in the next year follow IBM's lead an open up a bit.

    As to what they will make available, and what they will not, I really don't have a clue. Any guesses welcome.

    • Re:Will Apple follow IBM and Sun? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Archibald Buttle ( 536586 ) <`steve_sims7' `at' `yahoo.co.uk'> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:32PM (#11551390)
      On this subject, this may be of interest:
      Apple patents issued in the last month [thinksecret.com]

      As you can see most are for hardware innovations, but there's a few software patents in there too. Given the trend for patenting software it's a good thing too - it gives Apple ammo to deal with other companies challenging them with patent breach allegations. The norm these days is to strike up a cross-licensing deal, so they need such patents for their self-defence.
    • I'm guessing they will in the next year follow IBM's lead an open up a bit.

      I think that will never happen. Apple is like Microsoft in disguise. Why did they chose a *BSD kernel? So that they can close it whenever they want.

      Apple just pretends to be friend of Open-Source. They're not friends of Free Software, though.

      • Apple has a similar enemy IBM and Sun have.

        Microsoft, which LOVES patents.

        Apple's working with IBM, Sun, and Open Source gives Apple a stratigic advantage. Apple wouldn't be around if it wasn't for all 3 of them.
      • I think that will never happen. Apple is like Microsoft in disguise. Why did they chose a *BSD kernel? So that they can close it whenever they want.

        This is completely confused.

        The reason apple chose a Mach kernel (containing much BSD code, but not "a *BSD kernel" in the usual sense of "Net", "Free", or "Open"), is simple: OSX was pretty much taken wholesale from NeXTSTEP (remember NeXT, Jobs' other company [er, besides Pixar]?), and NeXT had used a Mach kernel since its inception in 1987 or whenever; if

  • Ugh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#11551301)
    "patent WMDs"

    PLEASE let that term just disappear and never be used again...

  • patents vs spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#11551303)
    300,000 in the U.S.? At this ever increasing rate, software patent propagation will likely exceed spams being sent in a decade or two.

    The two will likely merge, with today's spam list sellers producing software that is guaranteed to generate 100,000 software patents a day.

    And don't dare to delete that spam. You will see a message in it that says "The methodology of pressing a delete screen button or similar control on a web form in order to ignore email advertising is covered under US Patent 4,005,544,202,499,003-A. If you attempt this, you will be charged with a patent violation."

  • Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#11551308)
    I find it ironic that Slashdot is always slamming software patents, when at the same time, in their company's 10Q and 10K statements, they're discussing how they are going to profit from creating and defending software patents. Beautiful.

    • Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MustardMan ( 52102 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:29PM (#11551366)
      Yeah, it's almost like the slashdot editors are allowed to voice their own views and not follow a company line set out by the people who own the site. Imagine that, editorial freedom in a news site! What a novel idea!

      • It's unamerican (Score:5, Funny)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:38PM (#11551459)
        Yeah, it's almost like the slashdot editors are allowed to voice their own views and not follow a company line set out by the people who own the site. Imagine that, editorial freedom in a news site! What a novel idea!

        It's downright unamerican [foxnews.com]!
        • Quite apart from the views expressed, that transcript is near-impossible to read because neither of them even gets to finish their sentences! Are all American programs like this, or just Fox?
          • Are all American programs like this, or just Fox?

            Eh... sort of. Most American news programs are shitty, but shitty in their own special way.

          • Re:It's unamerican (Score:3, Insightful)

            by jc42 ( 318812 )
            ... neither of them even gets to finish their sentences! Are all American programs like this, or just Fox?

            No, but it's the norm on "conservative" shows, radio or TV. I've listened to a lot of them, out of curiosity, and I've found that this is the main thing that stands out. If a guest or caller tries talking about something that doesn't fit the moderator's ideology, it had better be expressible in "bumper sticker" form, max 4 or 5 words. If the thought requires a complete, coherent English sentence t
      • Then wouldn't it be intellectually consistent to boycott Slashdot as many in the community boycott Microsoft and other non-open source products?
        • Then wouldn't it be intellectually consistent to boycott Slashdot as many in the community boycott Microsoft and other non-open source products?

          We wouldn't know ... because those people are boycotting Slashdot.
      • Yeah, now it's called editorial freedom. When it's elsewhere then it's (random insult of the day).

        The grandparent post is truly hilariuos and a great discovery!

        Poor /. bastards... It was time for them to take taste of their own medicine.

        This is like Red Hat preaching freedom and at the same time boasting to the analysts about the lock-up effect of their Enterprise Linux...

        Hah, hah, that's really outstanding!

  • any software patent is bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:25PM (#11551320)
    I'd say any software patent is bad, simply because they're so ambiguous. It doesn't matter if the company in question is supposedly benevolent, or that they're not actively enforcing them: all it takes is a single lawyer with no scruples to cause a lot of pain. In any organization of significant size, you can rest assured they've got at least one bastardly lawyer.

    Not only that, but there couldn't possibly be that many new, patentable techniques or technologies being discovered. Is it actually good practice to patent everything? While it might be "good" for open source with IBM supporting us and all, what's it do to the smaller companies that get (potentially) shafted by such absurdity? At the very least, it increases their cost of development due to necessary research.
    • Stating that any software patent is bad on the basis that they are too ambiguous is the same as saying that software patents could be good if they were more precise. Patents were created to protect inventors from having their ideas ripped off and used to profit another. If you think that there are no new ideas out there ready to be patented then you lack imagination. I participated in the creation of a patented software process. This process has a extraordinary effect on the business intelligence availa

      • Re:any software patent is bad (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:08PM (#11551741) Homepage
        Patents were created to protect inventors from having their ideas ripped off and used to profit another.

        No, in fact that's what patents are intended to do: to get inventions that are reduced to practice into the public domain so that everyone can use them without paying inventors. And as implemented, we further make it difficult to get patents by requiring novelty, nonobviousness, filing before the statutory bar, etc.

        Patents are intended to promote the progress of the useful arts, for the public benefit. Not to benefit inventors, though that may incidentally occur.

        A good analogy is this: Imagine the public is a farmer who has a cart of vegetables he wants to take to market. He has a donkey (the inventors) but it is unwilling to do very much without some special incentive. If the farmer is willing to spend one of his carrots by dangling it in front of the donkey, getting it to move and therefore act productively, he can achieve his greater goal of getting all his stuff to market.

        The farmer doesn't want to give the carrot to the donkey, however. Then he's out one carrot. But it's an okay cost if it profits him more in the end by getting to market.

        Likewise, it is a bad thing to grant patents for their own sake, or for the sake of inventors. But if they are not a significant burden on the public, and the public benefits much more than we lose by virtue of encouraging inventors to do useful work for us, then it's okay.

        So the problem with software patents is that the software industry seems to have been doing somewhere between good to awesome without them. There is no indication that there will be more invention in this sector by adding them, and there is a very real problem with software patents slowing down the pace of innovation in software and in getting those inventions in useful products.

        So software patents don't seem to be worth it: they produce no benefit and incur great cost. We're better off without them.
      • If we had not patented it, anyone could take the idea, implement it and make money from it without paying us a cent

        Oh no! And then we'd have a competitive economy, where companies struggle against each other to provide better service or lower prices!

        Good thing patents are there to protect monopolists and save them from needing to keep on working to stay ahead! That whole "free market, invisible hand, survival-of-the-fittest" stuff was just baloney.

    • Re:any software patent is bad (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Shalda ( 560388 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:41PM (#11552162) Homepage Journal
      It's not that all software patents are bad, just most of 'em. Take the LZH compression algorigthm. It was a pretty good patent back in the early 80s when it was granted. It was sufficiently narrow (one specific method of data compression) and reasonably not obvious (for that point in time). The problem is that the patent office has no concept of 'novel' or 'obvious' and that prior art means 'already patented'. Also, there's a tendancy by the patent office to let the courts decide the actual merits, whereas the courts like to defer to the patent office.

  • Shouldn't the real question be... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:25PM (#11551331) Homepage Journal
    why has he waited so long?

    If this isn't the first time he's spoken out against them, then why is it news?

    • " why has he waited so long?"

      I believe this has more to do with the fact that he is someone that does [as in can accomplish things]. He leaves the political and legal parties to their own while he does his own thing.

      Until he is pulled into a mess, seemingly due to his being successful, he does not typically rock the boat by dictating policies of what they should or should not be, unless it is something of his own creation - much as it should be [in general]

      That's my take on it - could be wrong though...

  • Not much Linus in there... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:26PM (#11551333) Homepage
    It looks like the article picked a few lines out where Linus said that many of the software patents that have been issued shouldn't have, and added a lot of filler to make it look like he's saying that software patents are inherently bad.

    I don't see anything in what he said that says that software patents shouldn't ever be issued, only that in a lot of cases, they were issued in violation of the USPTO's own rules.

    "Joins the attack" is a bit overzealous, to say the least.
  • I'm really happy to see this article. I've had programming classes in college and you can be caught for cheating the same way software patents work, if you use the same method or logic to do something. People need to understand that when there's a better way of doing things, everyone should not be strangled for finding and using that method.

  • Anti-Visionary (Score:4, Funny)

    by Omniscientist ( 806841 ) * <matt@nOspAm.badecho.com> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:31PM (#11551379) Homepage
    Torvalds: "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions,"

    Hmm.....now I know why my kernel patch submission to him was rejected!

  • ... his reputation allows him to speak with a louder voice than we mortals do. After all, how many people can claim their hobby project morphed into something that makes the übercorpies fear for their market share? I would have expected him of all people to have spoken out sooner though?!?

  • Patents are ok, if they are inventive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RedLaggedTeut ( 216304 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:34PM (#11551414) Homepage Journal
    Patents would be ok, if they were inventive as required by the law. Unfortunately, there is no way on Earth to measure or judge inventiveness, so all a patent examiner can do is to judge whether the application is novel. Something which any patent application can do as long as it mixes in some new technology, like computers or the internet.

    To make things worse, many software patents usually don't come with a useful description of how to actually do stuff, which is sad, since software can be documented by the sourcecode and printed.

    • Re:Patents are ok, if they are inventive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @02:01PM (#11552403) Homepage
      Patents would be ok, if they were inventive as required by the law. Unfortunately, there is no way on Earth to measure or judge inventiveness, so all a patent examiner can do is to judge whether the application is novel.

      There is, but it involves going to court.

      But that is the big problem.

      The whole patent system needs reforming. Patents are too easy to get, can be obtained for ideas that are trivial extensions of existing ideas (particularly in the software area)- and there's little or no downside to getting such a patent. So companies just play the percentages, get lots and lots of patents.

      Meanwhile, individuals are rarely well advised to get patents- a patent is just a license to sue, but individuals often can't afford to sue anyway, so then the patent isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

      There's also big problems with patents in that nobody really knows what a patent covers. Remember that patent that BT 'had' on the world wide web? It wasn't a slam dunk that they wouldn't win that one, it was close. Patents don't only cover the exact invention, they also cover similar inventions. And the web was sorta similar to their patent; but the court decided it was too far, in that case, a different court might have decided otherwise. That's what makes it all impossibly complex.

      To make things worse, many software patents usually don't come with a useful description of how to actually do stuff, which is sad, since software can be documented by the sourcecode and printed.

      That would be stupid- a patent application has to be written so that one 'skilled in the art' is able to reproduce the invention. Not doing that might well invalidate the patent.

  • Is Linus more than a techie for non techies ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:35PM (#11551431) Journal
    I mean, this is a political problem and I am not sure how Linus is perceived by politicians (outside Finland where he appears to be well-known).

  • It's simple... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Corson ( 746347 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:36PM (#11551446)
    Back in 80s there wasn't so much patenting going on in Silicon Valley. In those times you needed to innovate and bring the product to the market so fast that you couldn't afford to apply for patents; even two weeks counted on the learning curve. And people became instant milionaires.

    Twenty years later, after a recent bumpy ride in the IT sector, investors (who generally understand little in terms of technoloy) would not invest unless they see there is some IP protection -- a.k.a. patents. Hence, the pressure for software patent legislation comming from companies that want to positively attract investor's attention. Big sharks such as M$ shouldn't really need software patents unless everybody else moves in that direction. They also probably learned a lot from big Pharma that patent everything they "discover" and then license those "discoveries" out to smaller companies. It's a different game these days, a different kind of race that, I'm afraid, the small fish (read: open-source developers) will unfortunately lose.

  • The headline seems a bit misleading to me since there's only a few quotes from Linus in there:

    "Software patents are clearly a problem, and I think it's a problem that the open source community has been pretty aware of for the last five years," said Torvalds. "The good news is that a lot of proprietary vendors are starting to see it as a problem as well."

    The last one is pretty good though:

    Torvalds was reluctant to make predictions though. "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions," he sai

  • Favorite quote! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:50PM (#11551579) Homepage
    Torvalds was reluctant to make predictions though. "I'm the anti-visionary. I distrust people with visions," he said. "You don't see what's right in front of your face and you don't see the technical issues that face everyday users."

    While I don't think he'll ever say it directly, this is as clear as he ever needs to be when it comes to his opinion of RMS.

    • Re:Favorite quote! (Score:3, Informative)

      by mickwd ( 196449 )
      "While I don't think he'll ever say it directly, ..."

      Since when has Linus Torvalds been afraid of being direct ?

      "...this is as clear as he ever needs to be when it comes to his opinion of RMS."

      Are you really sure this was aimed directly at RMS ?

      RMS isn't just a "person with a vision" - he got off his a*se to do something about the problem he saw (i.e. founding GNU, writing GCC, Emacs, and others), with the aim of helping what were (at that time) everyday computer users.

      I really don't see why so many

    • Re:Favorite quote! (Score:3, Informative)

      by npsimons ( 32752 )


      While I don't think he'll ever say it directly, this is as clear as he ever needs to be when it comes to his opinion of RMS.

      Why must you bash RMS? Why must you make it so "Linux vs. RMS" when it doesn't need to be, and, indeed, it isn't?

      Did it ever occur to you that RMS was an "everyday user"? That he had a problem "right in front of his face" and he "saw the technical issues" that needed to be overcome (ie, lack of source and drivers for a printer he wanted to use)?

  • I think the problem isn't with software patents, it's more with the quite obvious things that we allow to be patented.

    Free software is an awesome cause, but for those brilliant minds out there who put in months of work to come up with some new idea, there should be other options than to have to let someone else steal the idea or to keep it completely secret.

    I think ideally we'd have a patent system that protected such inventions as RSA and MPEG compression, but recognized that one click billing is not

    • Re:For Software Patents (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jonabbey ( 2498 ) *

      The plastic packaging for a razor blade is a material good that has non-zero fixed and marginal costs. To make and distribute plastic packaging for a razor blade requires the creation of a factory, and the cost of materials and distribution for each package produced.

      While software does have considerable fixed costs, they do not equal the cost of a factory. One person with one computer + time = software. And once the software is made, it literally costs nothing to make as many copies as anyone could eve

  • No Further patents should be granted until the patent issues and problems are fully worked out and brought to acceptable terms to the entire American Public. This has gotten bad real bad...and it needs to be fixed.

    Companies can still submit them for review they just need to realize that it might take 10 years beofre they are approved or rejected while the system gets properly reworked.
  • Just limit their lifespan to, say, 3 years, and don't give out patents for ridiculous shit (one-click shopping anyone?) and there you go - problem solved. Innovators can profit from their innovations, everybody wins.
  • It used to be that patents were granted because of the originality of an idea, and making sure that the inventor gets some return on their amazing ingenuity. A patent like "virtual shopping cart" issued, for example, in the year 2000, would've been completely pointless as there were countless prior art examples. I think patents are bad because of that one type of patent, not that patents are intrinsically a bad idea.

  • Cool... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:17PM (#11551865) Homepage
    "Anti Patent Attack" were one of my favorite DC straight-edge bands from the 80s. I saw them warm up for Fugazi and they ROCKED! Does anyone know what instrument Torvalds even plays?!

  • Linus joined Transmeta too, and wow, look where they're at now.

    If someone develops something new, technology-wise (like a new compression scheme or something), I don't see what the problem is with them patenting it if they so choose. The whole problem is with the over-generalization of some of the existing software/business "process" patents that are such bullshit.

  • Read what Mitch said ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sdanis ( 562791 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:25PM (#11551966)
    Part of the problem is that the US Patent Office has been lax in granting patents, said Mitchell Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development and a prominent backer of the Mozilla browser. "There have been tens of thousands of bad software patents issued which never would have been issued if the Patent Office had actually been following its own rules," he said.

    The patent laws make some degree of sense. The patent office does not. The stuff they let through is totally unbelievable.
    You can either wait to be hit with an infringement case (not a lot of fun) or you can submit a reexamination request to the PTO.
    The worse thing you can do is to read the patents of your competition. Once you do that, you had better react quickly. Willful infringement in the US gets you treble damages.

    What a wonderful world we live in ...
  • Where do you draw the line between hardware and software? Hypothetically, if software patents did not exist, could you implement in software a hardware patent to drive a custom built patent-free robot to create a piece of patented hardware?

    Are there any ideas as to what is the theoretical difference between hardware and software?

    If the difference is that hardware is or creates something physical and software is/does not, then couldn't I just easily port software algorithms into a mechanical device essent

  • Not the first time Linus speaks out (Score:4, Informative)

    by tetraminoe ( 525428 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:38PM (#11552137) Homepage
    Last Nov., Linus co-authored an appeal to the EU opposing software parents. Read it at nosoftwarepatents.com [nosoftwarepatents.com]. That's about as clear as you can get, I think.

    (By the way, don't forget to thank Poland [freeculture.org].)

  • Open Source solution for patents (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As I have said before: since the Open Source community is not only bigger and probably as innovative as the software developers of any company, it should fully take advantage of the current system.

    Open Source should find investors and patent every single patentable software solutions, developed by Open Source projects.

    Open Source would be the patent holder and there is a potential market here to charge big corporations for using Open Source owned patents.

    The key here, is that Open Source has a huge, very

  • USPTO out of control (Score:4, Informative)

    by bitswapper ( 805265 ) * on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @02:13PM (#11552541)
    When they will grant a patent for getting a cat to chase a laserpointer [uspto.gov]

    I think it should be obvious that USPTO doesn't really have the ability to judge whether or not a patent is merited. How can granting patents willy-nilly help things?

    For software of all things?

  • EU vote to restart software patents procedure (Score:3, Informative)

    by xlyz ( 695304 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @06:02PM (#11555470) Journal
    for the time being EU will remain free of software patents

    more info on groklaw [groklaw.net]

    happy to live in EU :)

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