Red Hat Urges USPTO To Deny Most Software Patents 175
Julie188 writes "The United States Patent and Trademark Office asked for public input on how it should use the Supreme Court's Bilski decision to guide it when granting new patents. Not surprisingly, Red Hat took them up on it. The USPTO should use Bilski and the fact that the machine transformation test is 'important' to Just Say No to most software patents, it advised. Rob Tiller, Red Hat's Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP, is hopeful that the patent office will listen and put an end to the crazy software patent situation that has turned patents into weapons that hinder innovation."
They will stop all software patents. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure that's what they will do. After all, they have a long history of putting the public ahead of big business and making sensible decisions.
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Oh, nice delivery!
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Not so long as they get paid per patent accepted they won't.
Re:They will stop all software patents. (Score:5, Informative)
Not so long as they get paid per patent accepted they won't.
This statement ignores a ton of history and implies corruption where there is none. The Patent Office has historically fought tooth and nail to oppose the expansion of patentable subject matter. It opposed patents on genetically modified organisms all the way to the Supreme Court. Diamond v. Chakrabarty [findlaw.com], 447 U.S. 303 (1980) (the 'Diamond' in that case was Sidney Diamond, the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks). It repeatedly opposed patents on software all the way to the Supreme Court. Diamond v. Diehr [justia.com], 450 U.S. 175 (1981); Parker v. Flook [justia.com], 437 U. S. 584 (1978) (Parker was the acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks); Gottschalk v. Benson [findlaw.com], 409 U.S. 63 (1972) (again, Gottschalk was the acting Commissioner). In Bilski v. Kappos, the Patent Office was fighting against the patentability of business methods, again, all the way to the Supreme Court.
In most of these cases (all except Bilski, in fact) it was actually the Patent Office that appealed to the Supreme Court rather than acquiesce to the lower court's ruling, so the Patent Office has for decades consistently fought quite hard against the expansion of patentable subject matter despite being reliant on application and maintenance fees for its budget.
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Then they should be payed per patent processed (either accepted or rejected) instead.
Which means they'll green light anything and everything they see.
Better to pay them to do their job regardless of the number of patents. You know...like much of the rest of the world.
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Right, but under my scheme they don't have an intensive to stamp one way or another, at an accelerated rate. Having someone actually do the job they are paid to do correctly is typically preferred. And given that they USPO is on record as basically saying, "let the courts sort it out". Given a resistance free path in either direction, they'd likely green stamp rather than red stamp, which is basically where we're at today.
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Bad idea.
It will result in everything green lighted. A "green" stamp means that the USPTO is effectively done with it. Move on to the next.
A "red" stamp means that the inventor can come back with changes, questions, etc. It doesn't kill it. That process can drag on another year or more. The USPTO also puts together some reason for it being rejected. It is a lot more work and is drawn out.
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Maybe they should have a big fine for every patent which is later invalidated. Subtracted directly from the salary of the department boss where applicable.
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Yeah.. I don't expect any miracles out of the US federal government.
However, it would be really funny if it was some nutjob like Bilski that ended up causing software patents to be invalidated.
Why I don't like software patents (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a software author. Software patents interferes with my right to publish texts that i write myself.
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I am a software author. Software patents interferes with my right to publish texts that i write myself.
Could you give an example? Have you been sued for patent infringement? Threatened? Did you decide not to market a program after discovering that it was covered by a software patent? Did you contact the patent owner to see if a free or inexpensive license was available?
I have decided not to market (Score:2)
Did you decide not to market a program after discovering that it was covered by a software patent?
I have decided not to market a program after discovering that the boot process on the program's intended platform was covered by patents, enforced by the courts of at least one major country.
I have also decided not to market a program after discovering a look and feel copyright whose owner is notorious for waving it around as if it were a patent. And yes, the owner of this copyright has threatened me and several of my beta testers with DMCA takedown notices about videos demonstrating the use of my progra
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I have decided not to market a program after discovering that the boot process on the program's intended platform was covered by patents, enforced by the courts of at least one major country.
I don't understand how that would have affected your program. Why would a patent on the boot process of the platform affect a program running on the platform? There are no doubt lots of patents related to a PC's BIOS or a Mac's EFI system, but that has nothing to do with someone writing a program for a PC or Mac.
Did y
N's software card patent (Score:2)
Why would a patent on the boot process of the platform affect a program running on the platform?
Such a patent, worded to claim the software card used with this boot process, lets the maker of the appliance sue makers of unlicensed software cards for the appliance.
a PC or Mac
Comparing the boot process of a PC or Mac to the boot process of a mainstream video game console or handheld is very much apples and oranges.
Further, do you reside or have assets in the country in question (patent jurisdiction is generally not transnational)?
I am not aware of such lawsuits targeting United States-based r
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Such a patent, worded to claim the software card used with this boot process, lets the maker of the appliance sue makers of unlicensed software cards for the appliance....Comparing the boot process of a PC or Mac to the boot process of a mainstream video game console or handheld is very much apples and oranges.
I see. Your original post didn't make the architecture of the system clear. Thank you for the clarification. Still, if the product is potentially lucrative you should consider contacting a patent a
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The 'secure location' language is curious to me. That suggests that part of the license involves trade secrets or other confidential information. If so, that's a separate issue from patents.
Suffice it to say that in the world of legitimate software for these appliances, the patents are licensed only to licensees of the trade secrets.
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Suffice it to say that in the world of legitimate software for these appliances, the patents are licensed only to licensees of the trade secrets.
So it sounds like the real problem for you here is not the patent but rather the trade secrets, since they're the reason you can't easily take a license. If your product idea is lucrative then why wouldn't it be worth it to invest in some tiny closet of an office in order to be able to take a license? There are lots of commercial buildings with one room offices.
T's look-and-feel copyright (Score:2)
Copyrights are a vastly more powerful form of IP than patents, at least in the US.
The U.S. Code also has 17 USC 102(b), which appears to exclude methods of operation from the scope of copyright. For example, I believe LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice.org) doesn't infringe the copyright in Microsoft Office 2003 because of this statute, and Quadrapassel doesn't infringe the copyright in Tetris because of this statute. It's called the "idea-expression divide", and as I understand it, it's roughly equivalent to the "functionality doctrine" of trademark law: just as a trademark can't be used
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The U.S. Code also has 17 USC 102(b), which appears to exclude methods of operation from the scope of copyright....It's called the "idea-expression divide", and as I understand it, it's roughly equivalent to the "functionality doctrine" of trademark law: just as a trademark can't be used as an ersatz patent, nor can a copyright. But good luck for a startup company to pay a lawyer to convince a judge of that.
That's a slight muddling of the idea/expression distinction and the ban on copyrighting the functiona
Re:Why I don't like software patents (Score:5, Interesting)
So why should authors of software have different rules than authors of (for example) film plots?
Why shouldn't we allow patents of film plots including (for example) a teleportation device as found in Star Trek?
Re:Why I don't like software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Why shouldn't we allow patents of film plots including (for example) a teleportation device as found in Star Trek?
Because the movie industry is too busy running its extortion racket to follow up on things like this?
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The problem with this is that if I decide to patent "Online Purchasing of Movies", then I will effectivly shut off all other people and get a monopoly on it.
Patents lock down ideas. In software this makes no sense, because there are so many ideas which are the effective 'next step', so its all a race to see who can get it first - no matter how abstract it is.
Patents make sense for certain things. If I design a program to sort a list in the most effective way to date, then I don't believe anyone should use i
Re:Why I don't like software patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents lock down ideas.
This is the problem, the patent system does not lock down ideas, it locks down implementations of ideas, or at least is meant to. The problem is that with software they are patenting the ideas themselves.
If I design a program to sort a list in the most effective way to date, then I don't believe anyone should use it without my permission
Your individual program of course not, that would be limited by copyright. But the method you used to sort?? By patenting it you would essentially be patenting the mathematics behind your algorithm, which is obviously a stupid idea from the get-go and there are reasons math is not allowed to be patented.
In conclusion, the actual instance of software is already protected enough by laws, we don't need patents to block entire segments of the market by patenting the "Idea".
Close, but I think what you mean to say is, specific implementations of algorithms in source/binary are already protected by copyright. People should be unable to patent different mathematical ways of doing the same thing, as well as the general idea.
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You seem to be treating this as if a computer is an extension to a machine. While the hardware of a computer is a machine it is in the software that the wanted functionality resides. Computers essentially only do math, extremely fast math but math.
You don't patent mathematics, in the same way that a mechanical drawing doesn't patent drawing. Let's say you figure out the mathematic substrate of an algorithm: you patent that algorithm (aka process or method), not the mathematics involved. Remember, it's the method, system, or product what you are patenting.
Your argument seems to be that pure mathematics without applied use is not patentable, but apply mathematical formula and methods to a problem and it suddenly is? ludicrous. You would in essence be sectioning off certain parts of math applied to certain topics to
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The problem with this is that if I decide to patent "Online Purchasing of Movies", then I will effectivly shut off all other people and get a monopoly on it
Well, a patent IS a monopoly granted by the state to individuals or corporations.
Patents == monopolies. Let that sink in.
I am a proponent of free markets where anyone can compete. I think monopolies should be abolished. Monopolies or guilds should not exist in a free market economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild [wikipedia.org]
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"The justice system doesn't give a crap whether he read the patents or not, just that his code is similar enough."
The system doesn't even care about the similarity of the code; merely having similar observable behavior is enough to get in trouble for software patent infringement, even if the underlying code is very different.
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If it was in Red Hat's interest to ignore patents, they absolutely would.
patents' real innovation (Score:2)
Patents only brought us one real innovation: litigation innovation.
Response from End Software Patents (Score:3, Informative)
The End Software Patents campaign also submitted a brief, a little more specific:
http://news.swpat.org/2010/09/esp-to-uspto/ [swpat.org]
Red Hat, the owner of many software patents? (Score:2)
Before anyone shrieks "DEFENESTRATIVE PORPOISES OWNLY!!!!!11!!!", please remind me: who now owns all of SUN's patent portfolio?
What's it to be, Red Hat? Are you going to (not) put your patents where your mouth is?
Re:Red Hat, the owner of many software patents? (Score:4, Informative)
Done. http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/index.php
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Are you a Goddamn fucking retard? Seriously? You need it spelled out? OK, I'll type this r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y to make it easier for you: whatever covenants Red Hat has made, when - not if, when - they get acquired by Oracle #2, those promises won't be worth the paper that they aren't written on, and the same patents that were "protecting" the "GNU/Linux environment" will become the ideal tools with which to attack it.
Are you labouring under the bizarre misapprehension that it can't happen to Red Hat
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Not just Software Patents... (Score:2)
New Government (Score:2)
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Wake me up when U.S. citizens are ready to take back their country from the corporations.
Oh, we are -- everyone I know bitches about how the corrupt government is in corporate pockets. We just don't know how to do it without armed revolution. Nobody wants a war on their own land unless there are already a lot of casualties.
A lot of people I know are simply ignoring government, regulations, and laws entirely unless forced to comply at the end of a gun barrel. Illinois has passed a "no smoking" law that outla
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OK, you will have a long, LONG snooze. Hope you have put on a good layer of fat.
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That'll only happen after campaign finance is reformed... pity the people, particularly right-wingers, love to vote against their own interests on that topic.
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But that's the whole purpose ... (Score:2)
"... hopeful that the patent office will listen and put an end to the crazy software patent situation that has turned patents into weapons that hinder innovation."
Hindering innovation is exactly what patent is for, and that's what it's always been for. There's been enough written on the topic over the past few centuries; you'd think that people would understand this.
The only thing you can do with a patent is to take it to the courts to prevent someone else from using it in something they're building. If t
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Insightful)
The USPTO isn't going to change their policies to help one small company steal ideas from others.
That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
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That would be quite a feat, as stealing ideas is just not possible.
It is if I use my patented brain eraser on you!
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This is demonstrably false.
When I was a kid my old man invented a tool for fitting high pressure hoses to fittings. A trusted friend was supposed to provide funding for the patent application process.. Instead of partnering with the old man the guy just went down and applied for the patent in his own name and became very wealthy. He stole the idea and patented it, and almost all tools that you see today for press-fitting hoses to fittings
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You have got to be kidding me. The invention was the idea. The product invented was stolen through fraud. If you cannot legally profit from your own invention, from your own idea, because someone else is doing just that without your permission, then your idea was stolen.
This is a clear a case of theft as exists.
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With that metric, a legit patent could actually steal your idea. If I independently invent something after someone else did it, I had the idea, and I canno
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That is a straw man argument. If you come up with an idea separately from somebody else, and patent it before he does, then it's first come, first serve, and entirely ethical. It's a matter of both of you exercising ingenuity and imagination, and neither one of you is defrauding the other. The legal system is just set up so that the early bird catches the worm. That's entirely fair and I have no problem with it. It's a matter of timing or luck-of-the-draw, and much of what happens to you in life is pre
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Copying ideas is just life too. You acknowledge that someone beating you out of an opportunity is a result of competition. Better utilization of
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Indeed. It will instead maintain its policy that helps a small company steal an idea many large companies are already using and considered too obvious to protect, and register a patent on it in order to make money from lawsuits.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "steal ideas", it's "copy ideas". And, as far as I am concerned, it is a Good Thing. I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied. Skimming the article, I didn't see any place where someone is asking the USPTO to "help one small company steal ideas from others". In short, I don't know what you're talking about.
What I do know is that many small companies (as which I don't think Red Hat qualifies, by the way) fear software patents. Not because patents prevent them from "stealing ideas" or even copying ideas, but because, as the article puts it: "there are hundreds of thousands of software patents, with tens of thousand more granted each year. Many are so vague that it's impossible to ensure that a new piece of code doesn't infringe on one of them, somehow. This in turn places a big fat bullseye on the back of all software developers, as infringement lawsuits cost millions to defend, let alone actual damages or injunctions." If that sounds like software patents are a great tool for wealthy companies to discourage, slow down, halt, or even destroy competitors or would-be competitors, you've got the right idea.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote from Isaac Newton:
Patents on ideas go against the most basic principles that brought the modern age to be.
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Raw greed tends to do that.
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Like capitalism? Fairness?
Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
If the second inventor wants to directly copy the original idea, the patent allows the orig
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Like capitalism? Fairness?
Fairness is a subjective measurement and thus we can exclude it from this conversation entirely.
\
Now patents are approved that are too broad, and software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life. The basic existence of patents isn't the problem, though.
The question is whether patents help more or hurt more. If they hurt more than they help then the basic existence of patents is the problem. We can argue over that all day, though.
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Let's argue, then.
I define "fair" as a situation where the person that spends resources has an equal chance to recover those losses as either anyone else with the same idea, or himself with any other idea. In other words, no external non-collective influence should alter the chance of recovering losses.
By that definition, it is fair for a bad idea go to market and fail. It is fair to see a good idea go to market and fail because of incompetent management. It is fair for an inventor to license the idea out t
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Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
It sounds like you've never interacted with the patent system. If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
If it comes to court, then you must demonstrate that your method does not overlap with the patented method. While this is taking place, the court may grant an injunction, preventing you from shipping anything until the case is resolved. Even if you win, a small compa
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If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
That's about right. That's why patents include a list of references. Credit where credit's due. How is that bad?
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Because anything nontrivial ends up needing hundreds of patents to implement. It's not just about credit, it's about licensing. If you're a large company, then it's fine - you just sign a cross-licensing agreement with your major competitors and you get to ignore anyone else's patents. New players in the market find that their first product infringes a few dozen of everyone's patents and they either pay a lot of money to the established players or they give up.
Each iteration through the 'X almost works
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Perhaps a better solution is to claim that derivative patents are a valid defense to infringement.
Hypothetically, consider an exception where you can infringe on a patent freely, if and only if there is no trivial workaround, and your improvements to the idea are themselves worth a patent. Perhaps better still is an arrangement where a court-determined percentage of royalties gets paid up the chain, as a form of forced licensing to other innovators.
As an example, a crane with an elbow joint might be worth a
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In the US, the constitutional purpose of patents, is to promote the advancement of science and art, not giving a "fair chance to profit".
Most all ideas behind software patents would be developed whether or not there was a way to patent them.
Software patents are primarily used as weapons or threats against other companies.
Or can you give an example of: "Without software patents, xxx would never have been developed".
In reality, software patents give an artificial monopoly on an idea with an inventive duration
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Without patents, my company's product probably wouldn't have been developed. We run on Hadoop, which is based on technology licensed (free of charge) from Google. Would Google have released the details of its BigTable and MapReduce technologies without patent protection? My guess is no. They might have done the research, but probably not released all the details.
One year for a physical device is far too short. That's why the lifespan is 20 years. I'm fine with that. Software patents should, in my opinion, o
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Now Cialis, as the product of tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in research and clinical trials, gets the chance to make a profit before knockoff labs are allowed to copy it, at the relatively-cheap cost of just copying the molecule. Invention gets rewarded.
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I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied.
The idea is to copy them after the inventor has had a chance to recoup the research investment.
With normal physical-device patents, that takes a long time. With software, everything moves faster. Keeping software patents around for decades isn't practical. My personal preference is that software patents be cut back to 5 years or so. It's enough to provide a fighting change for a new company, but not so long as to hinder development.
Beyond that, I agree with what you said.
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Right, so patent trolls got the idea?
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Might want to ease up on the flavor-aid. Patents are a tool of extortion so people can steal the inventions of others and have no useful purpose in a sane society.
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If the inventions were so useful, patent trolls would spend money on factories that implement the ideas. The truth is they don't really know which inventions are useful. No one does, so no one reads those patents. Any useful stuff in there is independently reinvented, so those "inventors that do pure research and development" don't contribute anything -- implemented ideas would occur at the same pace without them.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, say you hold 3 patents. If you don't do anything and just wait for someone like IBM to infringe, you can sue them and get $$$.
However if you actually try to make something, you might infringe on one or more patents of the tens of thousands in IBM's patent portfolio. So you might have to cross license, maybe even pay IBM more than IBM pays you.
In which case you might not make as much money per capital invested for the risk you take.
So the patent system actually encourages many people/companies to try to patent a vague loose description of a useful idea and then just sit on it, rather than actually build stuff to help society.
And it also encourages the rest to patent lots of crap in defense against each other (doesn't work against the trolls). Not very good for innovation. And overall it just ends up being an unnecessary tax on society. Useless friction on the wheels of progress etc.
Ideas are easy. Many of us here can come up with lots of ideas. The difficulty is getting them done.
Plagiarism on the other hand is something different. So to me it's fine for you to copy someone, but you should not claim you are the first if you aren't - that would be lying (and if it's lying for gain it's fraud).
To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation. These would be judged in hindsight (hindsight is easier right?). You could have many different categories, and two classes of prizes - one judged by the Public and one by Experts in the Field.
So even if the expert snobs think your invention sucks, if the Public think your invention is good, you still could win a prize.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
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To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
In France, we have subventions for innovation by an organization called Anvar.
You have to present your R&D advances, and if it's innovative enough, you'll get money to help you pay your development team (they'll pay you a percentage of your expenses for the R&D salaries).
Of course, all companies are taxed for this organization, but the money is redistributed to the innovative ones.
In my opinion, this is a better way to handle innovation than patents, since you can be paid around 2 years after having
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As I said, doing it in hindsight is easier. Plus if your invention is so ahead of its time that it takes 40 years to get finally get recognition, you could still win the prize (hopefully not posthumously
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"Patent trolls" foster innovation because it seeks out inventors and encourages them to do pure research and development.
Ah, so I shouldn't be scared about the missed calls I have on my answering machine (while asleep after a larval stage [catb.org]), the patent trolls were trying to encourage me, not threat me with patent-law suits.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:4, Insightful)
To give a counter-example:
I just patented "Commenting in an online news aggregation website" - now do research and development on that. You can't in fact. You can't get around it. My code was protected WITHOUT the patent. In fact, allowing ideas to be free and watching people make their own code and their own implementation and twists on it is what increases research and development.
To give a good example of this - there are TONS of sorting algorithmns. If someone had patented "Using a computing device to sort a list" there would only be one.
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You're confusing two issues. One is patents on software, one is patents that are two broad a scope. Your claim is analogous to saying that patents on drugs are a bad idea because someone could have patented 'using chemicals to prevent the spread of illness' and prevented any advances in medicine for 20 years. The problem would not be with patents on drugs (in this case - there are other problems with them), but with the patent office accepting an overly broad patent.
A more convincing argument would be
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Patent 5960411
"Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network"
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You should examine how many patents are actually created. You couldn't be more wrong.
I was a technical adviser during a multi-year patent suit between IBM and Commodore, back in the 1980s. They had thrown a stack of patents our way, going after patent licensing on the Amiga computers, as they had gone after Apple, Atari, the IBM Cloners, and pretty much everyone else. They were also pursing cross licensing -- they were very concerned about getting caught using someone's patent without knowing before hand.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Informative)
Name a single company that hasn't "stolen" an idea from someone else.
Look at the GUI. Originally invented by Xerox. Apple stole it out right and then tried to sue Microsoft and HP for using the idea. When Xerox tried to sue Apple the case was dismissed. Few ideas were as original and trans-formative as the GUI. Companies these days are getting patent protection for ideas that others came up with decades ago or for absolute garbage. I have yet to see a software patent that wasn't overly broad, vague and utterly worthless.
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Name a single company that hasn't "stolen" an idea from someone else.
RedHat.
Re:Help us steal from others! (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, the way patents work nowadays amongst large companies is "We won't tell if you don't"
Which means that Xerox won't sue apple because they'll counter-sue on X other patents.
Which also means that pa-and-ma's software development house can't raise its head high enough to avoid getting sued into oblivion.
And this is good for innovation :)
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Does anyone know of any fledgling software companies that were strong-armed into oblivion by software patents?
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Agreed. Running a startup is a huge amount of work, research, software development, marketing, soliciting investors, etc. According to the USPTO the burden is on the company to watch all new patents and contest ones which are blatantly obvious and or invalid as if the small businessperson had time or money to monitor and tangle with legal engines and patent trolls
I have some good ideas that I want to try to take to the next level. I wonder if there is another country more friendly to startups...
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Sure, but I was more wondering if there was actually a fledgling business who tried to get off the ground, but was hit with a hard lawsuit. I'm not saying there isn't a problem here (I think there probably is), but I was just hoping for a solid, measurable basis for such fears.
I don't know about you specifically, but it can be kinda scary to give up the 9 to 5 and run a business full time. Fears that look big may turn out to be small or non-existent. That's why I'm curious about actually filed anti-competit
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The GUI was actually invented by Dag Engelbart: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa081898.htm [about.com]
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Look at the GUI. Originally invented by Xerox. Apple stole it out right
Interesting definition of 'stole'. Most people regard 'exchanging for something else of value' as 'buying' or 'bartering'. Or are you forgetting the rather large set of Apple shares that Xerox got in exchange for allowing Apple people to look at ideas from PARC and commercialise them?
Re: (Score:2)
And that's a good thing. More power to them.
Anyone can legally copy ideas. Ideas are not supposed to be patentable, not in the least. Patents are entirely about implementations, or at least, they're supposed to be. They are supposed to read on specific inventions, which may incorporate many ideas. But they don't give the patentee a 20 year monopoly on the idea, only on the very specific implementation.
Much of the problem of software patents, and the even worse business method patents, is that they often d
Re: (Score:2)
Congress is unlikely to cut off the corporate gravy train of lobbying dollars, and SCOTUS is too backlogged as it is to take care of anything that comes across its plate.