Here’s a comment made a few months ago that explains the problem with software patents:
Once upon a time, the U.S. patent system served a useful purpose. It was meant to encourage inventors and innovation. Ha! Boy, was that a long time ago. Now patents, especially software patents, serve only as bludgeons for patent trolls — companies that do nothing but own patents and then threaten to sue companies that actually do something with ideas — or they’re used by big companies to beat up on smaller ones. I had hoped that the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) would do the right thing in the Bilski case and slap both business process and software patents down once and for all. SCOTUS didn’t. While SCOTUS ruled against Bilski, the Court left the door open for IP (intellectual property) patents (PDF Link) to be granted. [...It] seems pretty darn clear to me that SCOTUS punted on IP patents.
Open Source software developers are having issues from companies like Oracle. Even Microsoft, no stranger to the courts on software patents, has been having it’s own software patent issues.
And then there’s the latest where Paul Allen is suing practically everyone except, oddly enough, Microsoft:
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed far-reaching patent lawsuits against Google, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, Facebook, AOL and eBay, among others, alleging the companies violated patents owned by his now-defunct idea lab Interval Research.
The four patents at issue allegedly cover basics of online commerce, including recommending products to a user based on what they are currently looking at, and allowing readers of a news story to see other stories based on the current one. Two other patents relate to showing other information on a web page, such as news updates or stock quotes.
[...]
Interval Licensing owns most of the 300 patents from Allen’s Interval Research, and the suit comes just a week after Oracle decided to sue Google for patent violations over the open source Java programming language in relation to Google’s mobile phone operating system Android.
Someone please give Paul Allen a big warm hug.
Parasite!
But what did you expect from a founder of Microsoft?
Mr Dvorak should patent the shape of a tomato and then sue every restaurant in America!
It’s not the Supreme Court’s job to decide what is the most beneficial way to use patent law. That is the legislature’s job. It is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the laws that have been passed are being followed appropriately.
Software patents are generally ridiculous.
One of the important original ideas behind patents was that it was expensive to do the R&D, so the government gave you a time limited monopoly so that it was worth while investing in expensive R&D.
Thats not what goes on with software patents in a few ways
1) The development is generally not expensive at all (ie it doesn’t need special treatment)
2) It’s not R&D it’s just a side effect of basic development
3) Partly because of 2 – its rarely truly novel, it’s generally just one of the ways you’d do it
The original motivation was for the public good – it provided a mechanism for the government to encourage very expensive R&D.
That’s as good a metric as any for patents current failure – as generally and more specifically with software patents they do not serve public.
Where the patent truck runs off the road nowadays – as a developer of sorts, is the cost of filng a full innovaiton patent in the various WIPO regions.
It’s easy and affordable for me to lodge a ‘worldwide’ provisional patent to protect my date of invention for twelve months, but if I approach an investor, they simply wait a year to lodge their own full patent based on your provisoinal claims.
Voila – they own your IP to exploit at thir leisure, with zero effort to create the original concept. No liability to you or your input.
Sure they spend the money, but would it have been more equitable to shave off 5% for the person that created the opportunity, and obviously approached you in good faith to help them commercialise the invention?
Naah.. Shareholder value comes first – over ethics, compassion, or social conscience
My patent is described as a complex hydro carbonic mass, with 70 – 85% water, that is able to multiply. The structures communicate by sound waves, can move from one location to another location, planned or at random, slow and fast. Furthermore are designed with 4 extremities of which two enable horizontal movement, while all four can be used for lateral movement. The extremities can assemble carbon, mineral and mixed chemical matters to among other but not limited to, generate energy, as well as enable it to design, compile and construct a space in which it will provide protection from environmental challenges, such as but not limited to, heat, moisture, cold and other objects that will influence, challenge and alter the complex hydro carbonic mass’ expected life tim.
Stupid? Oh yes it is – but you’d be surprised to discover how patents are written, and approved.
Any truth to the rumor that Paul Allen was wearing a T-shirt that said “The Internet, yeah, that was my idea”?
Well, perhaps the answer is to add a third mechanism for ideas that are not physical (software) or that are processes.
I think that’s probably the overall problem, the patent system isn’t the answer and using the copyright system would mean that excellent code snippets could be held effectively forever.
The simplest answer is to break non-physical idea/concepts into their own categor(ies), give the authors/designers six to ten years use of them (in our current world, if you haven’t implemented within 5 years you are not GOING to), and then they go to public ownership.
I think these patent disputes are the computer industry equivalent of structured finance products to banks. They get to a point where all the smart mass market products are developed, but one must expand to be seen as successful.
How do you expand? You start doing things that antithetical to what makes your business useful.
Software was a great growth opportunity because it unleashed creativity. Once you get many layers of management on the coders creativity takes a crap. The answer is to stifle creativity of others.
In the banking world, domestically, people stopped saving and reliable people decided they had enough debt. To keep expansion going you’d need to find unreliable people to take debt. Once investors decided the debt being sold was taken by unreliable people, the banks themselves became the consumers for their own debt products. The carnival barker became the mark.
The central idea is that things shouldn’t always grow. Partnerships. and other types of privately held companies. have understood this forever.
Where is the next engineer in a garage developing the next killer app? In a garage developing that app. Where will he be in 5 years? In court getting his pants sued off!
Here’s the problem for Paul Allen. When BT in the UK tried to pull patent on Hyperlinks they were reminded that as patent holders ANY issue regarding their “invention” would be held under EU laws of being “fit for purpose”. In other words, if the hyperlink failed, BT would be held responsible.
So Mr Allen, I’ve been recommended ALL SORTS OF CRAP on the internet. Where I do sent my invoice?
They should never have allowed software patents. Toss ‘em all in the bitbucket.
It seems the Patent Office’s attitude is “Just Patent it and let the Courts sort it out”
and the Court’s attitude is “Well if they issue Patent then it must be Patentable”
In the end only lawyers win
“Windows 7 was my idea.”
-Paul Allen
# 18 Skeptic read my mind,
“This is a good time to enforce my patent on the method of registering patents.” =]
I would also like to add my patent on the ‘creative thought process’. I will make this patent open source so that greedy old men can take a hike. Take that patent trolls! Yes it’s ridiculous, but then again so is our 18th century patent system.
Over enforcing software (and technology) patents leads to monopolies, stifled creativity, and happy lawyers like many of you have pointed out.
I agree that software should be copyrighted, instead of patented. Mainly because there’s no physical substance to point to. Software is just code that exists on some media. And it doesn’t do anything, on its own, without something to run it. like a PC. So its more like music. Or a movie. And some movie productions cost over a $100 million to make, yet the end results in only copyrightable. Show me one piece of software that cost that much to make from beginning to end. Besides all that, software relies on a vocabulary of words, to describe how it functions, or what it does. And often that’s very vague, and subject to broad interpretation. Whereas some solid gizmo demonstrates it function or use, and ISN’T subject to broad interpretation. A cam opener opens cans. You can see it do that, without something needed to help it perform (like a can opening environment). And it’s not remotely to be confused with a steam iron or rolling pin. But simple, straight forward, engineering descriptions aren’t so adaptable to computer software. It’s something that manipulates certain kinds of information, a certain way. But what’s being manipulated, and how, is pretty much up the the authors’ definitions. And anything that requires so much new terminology to make sense of it, ought to be considered as ART. Not a tool.
Software is more like some person’s skill, turned into a set of instructions for a machine to follow. A skill isn’t patentable.
Usually, software is the implementation of a design, which in turn is often the implementation of some bad analysis, which in turn is often the result of poor thoughts (if any at all) on what really needs to get done. Patents on software are really not related to the any quality synthetic thought and very seldom original. The patent office as it stands now is ineffective, and society would likely benefit greatly if it were reinvented without outside influence from big money grubbing corps or their limp dick lawyers/owners.