
Microsoft pushes for single global patent system - nreece
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10334285-92.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
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wildjim
I hope it never happens.

There are certain Americanisms that have infected other countries patent
systems over the years (e.g. software patents) that have done far, far more
harm than good AFAICT, especially to the smaller countries that have been
strong-armed into efficiently hamstringing their own nascent technology
ventures.

The appearance that patent law in America is only about leverage against all
your competitors with patent _lawsuits_ rather than protecting truly original
discoveries (especially those of smaller companies who can't adequately defend
themselves against the super-corp's) is an utter travesty.

It puts me in mind of the same erosion that allowed us to become part of a
worldwide debt economy (i.e. hardly enough real resources to back the debt).

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xcombinator
Microsoft is not the best company to talk about patents. They are a software
company and in a lot of places in the world mathematical concepts, ideas and
software could not be patented.

This is the main issue Microsoft wants to change making an universal system,
in fact what they want is to export the American system over the other
countries.

Patents favor the powerful, witch get a monopoly, witch makes money to the
powerful, who spends money on new patents, new monopolies. That works great
for Microsoft(witch was created when USA software patents didn't exist),and
maybe some USA states(all world software needs to be done on Seatle or
California), but is bad for the rest of the world, we became a colony, like
USA were from Britain.

Imagine you are not American, you are an intelligent, smart person of the rest
of the world. Would you give external people the monopoly over what you make?
Am I not going to think because you bought the exclusive right to it?.

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gjm11
Ugh, lots to dislike in this article. For instance:

1\. "a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the
3.5 million pending patent applications around the world": er, no, obviously
that isn't what he said.

2\. Look how they pair the FSF up with the Pirate Party. Is that because c|net
thinks the UK Pirate Party is a vital force to be reckoned with in
international politics? Or is it because they hope to make anti-software-
patent positions look silly by associating them with marginal-sounding groups?
Hmmm, tough one.

3\. Wanting a globally unified and more efficient patent system is not, in
fact, at all the same thing as wanting patents to cover more things. No one
benefits from having patents take years between application and grant, for
instance. No one benefits -- at least, not in ways any reasonable person could
approve of -- from having lots of crappy patents pass examination. (Note: this
latter is one of the things Gutierrez complained of. Being from Microsoft does
not imply never getting anything right.)

I've no idea whether the particular changes Gutierrez wants make any sense,
either for Microsoft or for the rest of the world. His blog posting (linked
from the c|net article) is a bit too much oh-and-everyone-should-get-a-pony
for my liking. But the c|net article seems to me to consist mostly of
digressions.

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electromagnetic
And ulterior motives abound. The only reason for a single global patent system
is to reinforce the powers of the patent hogs to quash innovation by smaller
companies.

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snprbob86
I'm willing to bet that this has more to do with the time, money, and risk
associated with global patent searches, applications, and portfolio
management. Microsoft is sued over patents far more frequently than it sues;
it is a difficult problem space.

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JulianMorrison
Their effort would be better spent working to get software patent laws
globally repealed.

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snprbob86
That seems like an unrealistic goal. There are many arguments in favor of
patent systems and a motion for repeal would face insurmountable opposition. I
suspect this to be particularly true of non-software industries.

The design processes that would go into the development of a global patent
system would likely re-examine and re-evaluate the principals, successes, and
failures of many existing patent systems around the world. In all likelihood,
the resulting system would be sufficiently less painful to justify tolerating
the inherent problems with patent systems for many more years to come.

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ZeroGravitas
Maybe the post got edited, but you're replying to a suggestion to repeal only
"software patents". This is not impossible, indeed many places don't even have
them in the first place.

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snprbob86
_scratches head_ I don't recall it saying "software" before, but I don't want
to throw around acusations of edits. I really wish there was a "history" link
next to edited posts.

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JulianMorrison
Didn't edited posts used to have an asterisk? I'll edit this one to see.

Anyhow, software patents was what I remember typing in the above. MS would
have no interest in opposing hardware patents.

