
EFF: Stupid patents are dragging down AI and machine learning - Deinos
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/eff-stupid-patents-are-dragging-down-ai-and-machine-learning/
======
revel
The unfortunate reality is that the 20th century legal code is ill equipped
for dealing with software firms. Up until about 1980-1990 it didn't matter all
that much, but tech firms are now the largest, fastest growing and most
powerful companies in the world. We can't punt on these issues any more.

There are 3 forms of IP protection: copyright, patents, and trademarks. The
crux of the issue is that, for software, copyright protection is too weak and
patents are too strong. So called "stupid patents" are a symptom of this
issue, but not the cause. Software ideas don't work well under either of these
existing protection models. Further, software patents are especially broken
since they've deviated from their originally intended purpose of helping
fledgling inventors launch their creations without larger firms stealing their
work. Now every large firm has an arsenal of allegedly "protective" patents
that can be swiftly mobilized to crush upstart competitors. Similarly, patent
trolls can sit on the sidelines and exact royalties far beyond the economic
value that their inventions contribute. Bluntly, there needs to be a new form
of IP protection to deal with this reality -- this isn't to say I have any
strong ideas of what this form of protection should be, just that these are
the characteristics of the problem.

The same core issue is starting to become apparent in anti-trust law. These
laws are inappropriate for tech firms because they don't scale like
traditional businesses (how do you deal with an industry with super high HHI
but massive barriers to entry and no easy way to split up existing
competitors?), but that's a topic for another thread.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't agree with your analysis that copyright is too weak.

Copyright was helpful in an age of boxed products, but is now largely
irrelevant in an age of SaaS.

But in an era of SaaS, trade secrets law seems like more than enough to defend
a company's IP.

If you invent a new data storage system, as another comment suggests, you can
protect it quite effectively with trade secrets if you start a data storage
SaaS.

IANAL, but trade secrets law also seems to provide some protection against
reverse engineering even if you ship a boxed product:
[http://cdfirm.com/pitfalls-to-the-defense-of-reverse-
enginee...](http://cdfirm.com/pitfalls-to-the-defense-of-reverse-engineering/)
Though it's not iron clad and varies by jurisdiction.

Personally, I'm much more comfortable with trade secrets law being iron-clad,
rather than patents existing.

~~~
rayiner
Copyright and trade secret is too weak. How do you protect, e.g., video
encoding techniques with copyright, where public disclosure is necessary for
interoperability? Patents worked really well to create an interoperable world
of content and players from MPEG-1 to today. Or the software algorithms
sitting in your WiFi chipset. Someone has to pay for all this R&D, but for the
technology to be interoperable it has to be disclosed.

Putting the technology in a pool and charging implementors for patent licenses
is a good way to do that. In my opinion, it’s better than depending on Google
to bankroll all these things with their advertising money printing machine
(VP9).

~~~
Eridrus
I don't think MPEG is a good argument for patents; I don't think we should be
patenting protocols. The idea that you can't interop without a patent license
seems like complete bullshit.

Interested parties will still do development on these technologies, even
without patent rights. Everyone still needs to sell the next version of their
product.

And honestly, I would trade protocol protections to get rid of all the
bullshit patents which outnumber anything meaningful at least 1000:1.

~~~
rayiner
MPEG isn’t just a bit stream format. The magic is the encoding techniques.
That is very hard to protect without patents, because the techniques are
exposed in the bit stream formats. And ideally you want to have a reference
implementation with source code so you can get lots of high quality
interoperable implementations. Same thing with the algorithms underlying WiFi
and LTE. Trade secrets don’t help because you can’t have interoperability
without making it public. Copyright doesn’t help. The software is the easy
part. It’s capital intensive to develop the algorithms.

Interested parties would develop these technologies, but they wouldn’t make
them open. Where are the alternative models for developing something like
MPEG? There is the Google/VP9 model, which is to bankroll the R&D it with
advertising dollars. Then there is the BBC/Dirac model with public funding
paid for by a mandatory tax. To me those models are worse and less
sustainable.

~~~
Eridrus
IMO industry leaders have pressure to reinvest their profits in R&D and put it
in their new products, regardless of whether they can get patent protection
for them or not.

I'm not an expert in codecs or wireless protocols, but afaik most wireless
telephony standards are practically trade secrets, requiring payment of tens
of thousands of dollars to even read the spec.

And I can't say I'm really a fan of the situation where people are forced to
buy Qualcomm chips because they hold key LTE patents which they're managed to
get people worldwide to agree to use.

But one thing I do know about standards is that they often trademark their
name, and then require certification and payment for use; it should be
relatively straight forward to setup industry bodies like this where you
cannot use the trademark Bluetooth without paying into the body, which pays
for R&D.

Sure, you have to get creative and you can't just sneak something you patented
into a standard and land in a billion dollar monopoly, but frankly, I'm not
really crying for Qualcomm and co.

[EDIT]: By way of analogy: we don't let newspapers patent facts, even if they
are the first to report them. This makes it hard for news orgs to protect
their content, and while it was easier for news orgs pre-internet, Reuters,
AP, NYT, BuzzFeed are all doing well. There's no need to prop up every
industry.

~~~
rayiner
> IMO industry leaders have pressure to reinvest their profits in R&D and put
> it in their new products, regardless of whether they can get patent
> protection for them or not.

They do. What they don’t have is any incentive to open up that R&D for
competitors to use unless they have a way of monetizing it. Selling a patent
license is better than many of the alternative such monetization models (e.g.
Google’s model of developing Android for free so it can slurp down all the
data pushed through Android phones).

As to standards essential patents—-the whole point is that you don’t have to
buy the product from the same company that did the original R&D. You can buy
someone else’s chip, and the original technology developer still gets
compensated with a royalty. This is a system that works really well in a whole
host of areas everyone depends on. MPEG, WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth, DDRn, PCI-E,
all of these ecosystems are mediated by patents. Companies spend a lot of
money developing the technology, then implemented who generally don’t have the
expertise to develop this sort of technology themselves pay licenses to
implement the standards essential patents. It works and it’s way better than
the alternatives.

------
teddyh
Stallman was right.

 _Why Patents Are Bad for Software_ , 1991:

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.m...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.mit.edu/issues.article)

~~~
tehlike
as extreme as he is, he usually is right when it comes to IP, privacy, etc.

------
kflop
Patents used to keep inventors from taking their secrets into their graves,
but now it seems they only support some kind of cold war between big players
that can afford to produce lots of bogus patents possibly usable for
retaliation. Also, and this is a nice side effect, everybody who cannot afford
to waste money on this is kept out of the game.

~~~
CalChris
No. Trade secrets can be taken to your grave.

Patents are in the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:

    
    
      The Congress shall have power ... To promote the Progress
      of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times
      to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
      respective Writings and Discoveries.
    

Rights to their Writings means copyright. Rights to their Discoveries means
patent. Promote the Progress means incentivize.

~~~
oldandtired
Limited time is the critical point here. The way things are now, the times
applicable are way too long. The other factor is that the way copyright and
patents are implemented in law means that they are way too broad, way too
broad.

In relation to patents, most patents issued are not justified. They do not
promote progress in any form. Historically, progress based on a patent occurs
after the patent expires. If you look at many of the patents issued, one will
see that they are either obvious to someone skilled in the applicable arts or
are a failure obvious to one skilled in the applicable arts.

In regards to copyrights, its purpose is to allow a short period of time for
an author to make money if he/she can convince the paying community to do so,
thereafter it is in the public domain for others to use as a basis for new
works. The way it is today, the authors get little or nothing and the
publishers (of whatever kind) get to control for extended periods of time (or
the descendants who did nothing to create the work in the first place).

This mindset of sitting on your laurels is now progressing into other areas.
Yet for the bulk of us, one we have created something and sell it that is the
end of it for us.

Trade secret law ends up leading ot serious industrial espionage and often
with the backing of the various agencies of ones government (when doing so is
against foreign companies).

Today, little progress is being made (in relative terms) by copyright, patents
and trade mark law. These areas are about slowing and controlling the
dissemination of knowledge for the betterment of society.

The specific part of the US constitution means that Congress can make laws
that abolish all copyright and patents as well as locking them down. This is a
aspect that is rarely, if at all, acknowledged by those who strongly support
copyright and patents.

I have had discussions with a supposed patent holder and challenged him to
actually supply all the patent numbers of his supposed creative work. He
wouldn't do so and in not doing so, completely diminished all of his arguments
because his arguments depended on us taking his word for how creative and
important his patents were.

~~~
CalChris
_Limited time is the critical point here._ First to file and 20 years is the
world standard.

 _They do not promote progress in any form._ Great, then the patentee has just
wasted $10K on a pointless patent. Problem solved. If your patent is nothing
you have nothing.

 _Congress can make laws that abolish all copyright and patents_ Yeah,
Congress could do that. It would take a sharknado of Trumps to be that stupid.
Could happen.

I've read a metric shit ton of patents and I have no idea what _all the patent
numbers of his supposed creative work_ means.

~~~
oldandtired
First to file - this means that they are happy to allow patents where they are
obvious. This undercuts any actual justification for the patent. Hence, making
them not worthy of being patented.

If a patent doesn't promote progress then why allow it?

Patents are issued with a patent number, hence I can't see what your problem
is in understanding what this means?

------
DesiLurker
I also blame USPTO execution, IMO USPTO should not be shielded from lawsuits
for assigning patents on obviously BS innovation like 'rectangle with rounded
edges' etc. if it does not even meets the common sense a decade ago then there
should be some liability of enforceability on uspto.

on a general note I feel like everything in US is translating into a money
fight. from congress to law to carpool lanes, there seems to be only one goal
left that matters in life, money. apologies for tangential rant!

~~~
belorn
On a conceptual level, USPTO is operating on the same procedures that was
initial created more than 200 years ago. Practically every other form of
government administrative operations has change, but the patent process has
not.

Following 19th century government standard, USPTO is only really responsible
to take in a patent request and check its own records to see if a patented
idea is new or not, and then allow the skill government clerk who took the
request to make a judgment based binary decision. The assumption in 19th
century government process is that anything not in the records are not
something for which the government can be held responsible to make a judgment
on. Anything beyond this is assumed to be the courts and juries
responsibility.

And in the past they did also have a few safeguards. A working model had to be
added in order to make sure that function and copy of the idea is guarantied.
The scope of patentable ideas was also narrowed down to a few areas for which
a skilled government employee with a massive record could make a relative good
guess if something was novel or not. Both was removed about 50 years ago, and
a explosion of "new" patents has been requested ever since.

~~~
ash
> And in the past they did also have a few safeguards. … Both was removed
> about 50 years ago, and a explosion of "new" patents has been requested ever
> since.

Patent model requirement was abolished in 1880, not 50 years ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_model)

(I don't know when the "scope of patentable ideas" was widened.)

~~~
belorn
That happened with the Patents Act 1953, where the phrase "or process" was
added by Congress.

According a legal law professor this was also when they removed the
requirement for a working model, but I suspect that this was actually the date
when the process to deposit a model was removed. There is plenty of models
being sent after 1880 to USPTO (according to museums who write about their
collections), so clearly it didn't all stop 1880. Also according to internal
policy documents from inside USPTO that dates to early 1960, "the only thing
you need to bring us a working model of is anything you claim that reverses
entropy", which again highlight a change in attitude during that time in
history.

That said, you are right that the official date when the requirement ended was
1880.

------
betterunix2
I always loved the end-run around the limits on patents: just say it is "on a
computer" and suddenly it is not a patent on math. Never mind what sort of
computer is covered.

~~~
josaka
The "on a computer" trick doesn't work post 2014. Alice v. CLS Bank killed it.
Business method + a computer now gets you into an art unit with a sub 5%
allowance rate. [http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/06/two-years-after-
alice...](http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/06/two-years-after-alice-a-
survey-of-the-impact-of-a-minor-case-part-2.html)

~~~
betterunix2
So what is the new trick? Software patents are still being granted and the
nature of software (as a kind of math) has not fundamentally changed.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Why do you think software is more "a kind of math" than e.g. mechanical
engineering?

~~~
betterunix2
Other than convenience, does it make a difference if you evaluate an algorithm
by hand (e.g. with a pencil and paper) versus using a computer? I assume you
have at least used the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
algorithms on paper at some point in your life -- the results are the same (up
to human error) as they would be if you wrote a program that did the same
operations. It does not matter how you compute something, all that matters is
what you compute. Writing an algorithm on paper is just as good as writing it
using Emacs in some programming language.

There is also the question of representations. How you represent an algorithm
is not terribly important, and programmers routinely convert one
representation of an algorithm to another (e.g. with a compiler). One
representation available for any algorithm is a lambda expression, and there
is not much room for arguing about whether or not lambda calculus is a field
of math (it absolutely is, especially when you consider typed lambda
calculus).

For mechanical engineering, simulating something on paper is not the same as
building it, and the particular materials, shapes, etc. that you use in a
mechanical system make a big difference. There is math involved in ME, but the
math is not the final product. Yes, some ME work today is purely algorithmic,
but that is just overloading the term "mechanical engineering" to cover a
particular subset of CS that is of interest in ME.

~~~
CalChris
Rewording that, other than convenience, does it make a difference if you
manufacture a widget by hand or with a machine?

 _Utility classes. Utility patents, issued under 35 U.S.C. 101, protect any
new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any
new and useful improvement thereof._

Software is a process. Now there are judicial exceptions:

 _laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas_

The business method patents getting nuked by _Alice_ [1] are abstract ideas
tied to a computer with a shoestring. The software patents getting issued by
_Enfish_ [2] "improve the functioning of the computer itself".

Stallman, as always, is too simplistic.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp).

~~~
betterunix2
"Software is a process"

Except that the "process" is poorly defined, as the representation of the
software is not actually relevant. Changing the compiler flags will change the
process; certainly changing the compiler will. Writing the same algorithm in a
different language will change the process, in some cases dramatically (e.g.
an imperative language versus a declarative language). Evaluating an algorithm
by hand will involve a very different process than using a mechanical
computer, which will be different from using an electronic computer.

An algorithm is an abstract idea, and it can be expressed or evaluated in
infinitely many ways (this is well known). An algorithm can "emerge" from a
system unintentionally, as an abstract consequence of a system (template
metaprogramming in C++ is an example -- it was an unintended consequence of
how templates are processed).

If software represents a "process," what exactly is "processed?" Different
representations of an algorithm can have totally different input/output
encodings, intermediate states, etc. It is the same algorithm regardless,
certainly for the purposes of a software patent (otherwise the patent would be
pointlessly narrow and very easy to evade).

Basically, the only meaningful way to patent software is to have a patent that
covers infinitely many "processes," without regard to the specific
intermediate steps of the "process" or even to the particular inputs and
outputs (just their abstract "meaning"). In other words, what is patented is
the _possibility_ of some particular computation -- which is exactly how
software patents play out in practice. That is an abstract, mathematical idea,
"tied" to "a computer" that is completely hypothetical (what CPU architecture?
what hardware configuration? etc.).

~~~
CalChris
> If software represents a "process," what exactly is "processed?"

Class 719:

 _A coherent sequence of steps undertaken by a program to manipulate data such
as an internal or external data-transfer operation, handling an interrupt, or
evaluation of a function._

[https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/glossary/gl...](https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/glossary/glossary_alpha.htm#c719t17)

> Basically, the only meaningful way to patent software is to have a patent
> that covers infinitely many "processes," ...

No. There are the judicial exceptions: law of nature, natural phenomenon, or
abstract idea. Really, the software patents you don't like are covered by the
abstract ideas exception.

Basically, I don't think I'll change your mind and that's ok. But I do want to
know how you expect to incentivize software developers to take risks without
protecting their work?

~~~
betterunix2
"A coherent sequence of steps undertaken by a program to manipulate data such
as an internal or external data-transfer operation, handling an interrupt, or
evaluation of a function."

Except that the _sequence_ itself is poorly defined, as it depends on the
particular language used, the particular compiler and compiler flags used, how
the software is run, etc. This is true for _all_ software; so if you want to
patent software you would need to specify all the above, which would be almost
pedantically narrow.

"Really, the software patents you don't like are covered by the abstract ideas
exception."

What I stated is true for all software, so I guess I do not really understand
what other software patents you are referring to. At most all I can see is a
patent on some larger machine that happens to use some software e.g. in a
microcontroller, but that does not seem like a "software patent" as most
people understand the term.

"I do want to know how you expect to incentivize software developers to take
risks without protecting their work?"

First of all, patents are one of the three ways developers typically "protect"
their work. Copyrights and trade secrets are a much better fit for this
domain.

Second, I cannot think of _any_ software innovations that would not have
happened without software patents. In almost all cases the patents seem to
just be after thoughts that some corporation or university insists on, without
having much relevance to the willingness of innovators to try new things.
Patents are completely irrelevant to open source software, and major
breakthroughs tend to be announced in academic venues long before patents are
granted.

Finally, in almost all cases I personally deal with (as a cryptographer),
patents only _slow_ the pace of innovation and are actively harmful to our
ability to actually deploy innovations. Just the other day I found out that a
technique I have seen used in dozens of research systems was patented, and
therefore _too risky_ to use in any real-world system -- the latest in a long
line of such patents. Put simply, software patents _hamper_ our ability to
innovate far more than encourage it; software patents have _always_ been a
drag on crypto, going all the way back to the early patents on PKE and RSA.

~~~
CalChris
I think Diffie Hellman Merkle key exchange was a brilliant idea and an awesome
patent. I understand that the Brits had discovered it in secret but didn't
have the compute power at the time. That actually didn't invalidate it; the
interplay between trade secret and patents is not one sided either way.

Diffie Hellman Merkle was assigned to and prosecuted by Stanford as was Larry
Page's PageRank patent. I do not think Stanford or other universities (non-
practicing entitites really) would develop so much IP if they didn't get
something substantial back.

Yes, it is the nature of the limited monopoly of patents to both impede and
incent. It is the rare patent, Diffie Hellman Merkle key exchange was rare,
that is truly amazingly novel. Most patents are incremental and society
benefits from the increment.

------
dvdhnt
Patents are great in a vacuum, but long term in a system of capitalism, they
too tend to coalesce under ownership of the wealthiest.

Edit: grammar

Edit 2: word usage

~~~
microcolonel
For future reference: _coalesce_ does not work this way as a word.

~~~
dvdhnt
Good catch, fixed.

------
codedokode
That is fine. Countries where there are no software patents (for example:
Russia or China) will become the leaders in AI research.

~~~
CalChris
China has software patents. They even have business method patents.

[https://www.law360.com/articles/924934/a-new-era-for-
softwar...](https://www.law360.com/articles/924934/a-new-era-for-software-
patents-in-china)

------
dctoedt
One of the problems is that patent applicants in the U.S. have no obligation
to submit a competent prior-art search; it's the job of the patent examiner to
do a prior-art search. Every time the USPTO issues a patent, in effect it's
making national economic policy, yet someone seeking a patent need only
disclose whatever prior art of which he or she (and/or the patent attorney)
happens to be aware. That's like saying that a Ph.D student doesn't need to do
a literature search for her dissertation because some junior faculty member
will do the search — and then if that junior faculty member judges the
dissertation to be acceptable (possibly in consultation with a senior faculty
member), then the student gets her degree. The flaws in that arrangement
should be obvious, and yet that's how U.S. patents are granted.

------
lern_too_spel
This article mentions a stupid patent, but it does not support its claim that
stupid patents are dragging down AI and machine learning. To make that
argument, you would have to show that stupid machine learning patents are
being litigated.

~~~
rocqua
A patent can stifle work without being litigated. See the recent kerfuffle
with react and graphQL. The simple matter of a patent that might exist was
enough for people to change tooling.

Patents for AI might very well cool business R&D into AI.

~~~
lern_too_spel
It doesn't work that way in this case. No ML researcher goes out of their way
to look for ML patents because the penalty for knowingly infringing is much
worse than the penalty for accidentally infringing. If nobody knows these
patents exist, and nobody is litigating them, then they can't be "dragging
down" research.

------
AsyncAwait
As a remainder, if you find EFF's work valuable, you can donate at
[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

------
ekianjo
Funny, there must be at least 10 years of "prior art" on any kind of machine
learning patent application these days. Guess the patent officers are as good
as they have ever been.

~~~
Nomentatus
The legal meaning of "prior art" has been changed by recent amazing legal
decisions. It means "awfully damn famous" now.

~~~
ekianjo
interesting. any source you could share?

------
m3kw9
Not dragging down entire AI and machine learning, but keeping Americans AI
powess down.

------
miguelrochefort
"Stupid patents" is a pleonasm.

Never have I seen a compelling argument for patents.

~~~
Nomentatus
We certainly don't have proof, but there's a helluva historical correlation
between patent enforcement (or existence) and countries with strong economic
growth, particularly in technology sectors. That has to be referred to as
evidence - since evidence which cannot be misleading, i.e. "incontrovertible
evidence" is actually proof.

Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in
such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear
in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore
investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James
Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a
sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his
new kind of steam engine.

Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly
believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so
are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through
treaties would defeat.)

This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical
context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies
(which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable
to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the
head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them
(sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate
by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When
more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the
same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are
truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are
costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal
with this situation. I wish I knew just how.

~~~
digi_owl
Funny, i would have figured it was the other way round.

The nations that ignore patents, and perhaps also copyright, are the ones that
bloom the fastest.

Best i recall the steam engine saw rapid improvements only after the Watts
patent(s) ran out.

And in a different example, Smith and Wesson sat on refinements for the Colt
revolver for 20 years.

~~~
neltnerb
Developing economies with outside technologies they can copy should do better
by ignoring patents, while economies at the bleeding edge should encourage
more invention and disclosure through having them respected.

Didn't the US ignore patents when it was England that was the superpower? I
wasn't there, but:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes-u...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes-
us-industrial-revolution-was-built-piracy-fraud.shtml)

If you can get all the advantages of well-documented and reduced-to-practice
inventions disclosed publicly without much disadvantage from your own citizens
failing to disclose their own inventions, then ignoring patents seems like a
great idea.

This isn't to say that I think the US patent system actually works, I think
it's all a terrifically counterproductive mess 95% of the time. But there's
historical evidence that whether your country benefits from patent adherence
depends on how advanced your economy is relative to others.

Once China starts generating lots of good new inventions, now that they're
bleeding-edge-adjacent, they're going to see increasing value in enforcing IP
rights. It will protect their industry from competing with infringing imports
from other countries with lower manufacturing costs, same as here, which is a
bigger deal as their domestic consumption increases.

------
mmagin
Remember that time the patent system saved us from Skynet!

------
amigoingtodie
3d printers and fidget spinners.

------
SomeStupidPoint
This can be broadened: stupid patents are dragging down the US economy.

~~~
JoshMnem
And maybe human progress in general.

~~~
saimiam
How do you protect and encourage innovation without patents?

~~~
ekianjo
False logic. It's not like the absence of patents has prevented innovation in
the course of History. Imagine how poor the world would have been if a patent
on "fire" was ever granted to some kind of proto-human organization.

~~~
brians
Twenty years and it’s done. No big deal. But the patent on teepee fires, log
cabin fires, elm fires, oak fires, pine fires that start faster, maple fires,
fire for cooking chicken, fire for cooking turkey, fire for smoking meats,
fire for signaling, fire for signaling with morse code, fire for warmth, Uber
but for fire, charcoal, fire for witches, and firing employees—those would
drown us.

------
Animats
The anti-patent hate group at the EFF is at it again. If they think a patent
is "obvious", let them file a post-grant objection.

~~~
andybak
Would you be so kind as to disclose any special interest that you have in the
matter of patents?

Your comment was fairly strong so I'm curious if you have much skin in the
game.

~~~
Animats
I don't make any secret of it. See my web site, "www.animats.com". Although
it's rather dated at this point.

~~~
andybak
So if we grant you're one of the patent good guys - are you prepared to defend
the whole show? What do you think of the overall quality of patents granted -
when compared to the cost of defending against them? Does it seem like a
reasonable and proportionate system to you?

------
dahart
> Just as the US Patent Office problematically gave out patents in the past
> for computers doing simple things... the office seems prepared to give out
> patents on "using machine learning in obvious and expected ways." Companies
> like Google and Microsoft are seeking to acquire, and in some cases have
> acquired, patents on "fundamental machine-learning techniques," Nazer
> writes.

I find myself in a weird situation. Patents are a drag, and they're misused
and wasteful, etc. etc. But it feels like the author here isn't acknowledging
or appreciating what patents are intended for or good for.

We can't say patents are bad because there are obvious uses of a technology.
Patents protect the people who develop the technology, not the competition who
wants to use it for free after it works.

The issuing of a patent doesn't depend on how obvious the use is, it depends
on how obvious the actual solution is. And deep convolutional neural nets
trained using backprop or adversarial networks, these things are not obvious.
They are even counter-obvious, for 30 years people knew about them and claimed
they wouldn't work.

Again, I know and agree that bad/stupid patents are being issued, and that
trolls who don't develop tech are siphoning money, and all that.

But when someone invents something that works, the patent system is _supposed_
to apply a drag force on everyone else using it, that's it's intended
function. And sometimes, maybe not that often these days, but sometimes it
actually works as intended and deserving people get to see their work come to
financial fruition.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I used to feel that way. Unfortunately we've reached the point where patents
have so damaged and corrupted our industry that none of us can write any
software free of patents. If someone wants to annihilate you with a patent
suit, theoretically they can. Unless you have a patent portfolio.

They are the ultimate anti-individual-programmer. Which is another way of
saying they're a threat to hacker culture.

You can argue that hacker culture had its day in the sun, and that the world
should move forward. But it's important to be clear to yourself that the
culture that built the internet and so many of the tools we now enjoy for free
is being thrown under the bus.

E.g. see Mike Pall's statement on LuaJIT: [http://lua-
users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00089.html](http://lua-
users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00089.html)

 _I cannot guarantee LuaJIT to be free of third-party IP however. In fact
nobody can. Writing software has become a minefield and any moderately complex
piece of software is probably (unknowingly to the author) encumbered by
hundreds of dubious patents. This especially applies to compilers._

Are you sure you want to live in a world where people can't legally write and
release LuaJIT for free without its users facing legal ramifications? Same
deal with machine learning. What will the LuaJIT of machine learning be?

~~~
dahart
> E.g. see Mike Pall's statement on LuaJIT

I am playing devil's advocate here, but Mike's statement doesn't amount to
evidence. I understand he's afraid, and he's saying he thinks it's now too
onerous to do due diligence. And I agree -- he's right. OTOH, it's not normal
to guarantee that a piece of software is free from patent liability. Nobody
could even if they wanted to, and even if the patent system was healthy.
Company lawyers have told me not to look for patent infringement when I write
code, they say just write algorithms that you believe nobody else invented,
and "they" (competition) will let us know via the legal system if they see a
claim.

> Are you sure you want to live in a world where people can't legally write
> and release LuaJIT for free without its users facing legal ramifications?
> Same deal with machine learning. What will the LuaJIT of machine learning
> be?

I don't want to live in that world. But is there not a flip side from the
inventors point of view? If I invented something very useful, and very non-
obvious, and say just for purposes of example, that Mike Pall put that idea in
LuaJIT, released it for free, and my commercial competition then downloaded
LuaJIT and put me out of business, I would probably be some combination of
sad, mad, and poor.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_I don 't want to live in that world. But is there not a flip side from the
inventors point of view?_

I would 100% agree with you if the resources to litigate were distributed
evenly. Unfortunately they're not.

If you were sad, mad, and poor, you wouldn't be able to anything, because
"poor" would disqualify you. No one would even represent you pro bono,
probably.

The only people that meaningfully benefit from patents are corporations. If
you don't buy that argument, let me know, because it's pretty important that I
persuade you. :) Of course, that tends to be the least effective way to
persuade someone, but still.

See Stallman's writing posted upthread
([http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.m...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.mit.edu/issues.article)):

 _In September 1990, users of the popular XyWrite word processing program got
a disturbing letter in the mail from XyQuest, Inc., the program 's publisher:

"In June of 1987, we introduced an automatic correction and abbreviation
expansion feature in XyWrite III Plus. Unbeknownst to us, a patent application
for a related capability had been filed in 1984 and was subsequently granted
in 1988. The company holding the patent contacted us in late 1989 and apprised
us of the existence of their patent.

We have decided to modify XyWrite III Plus so that it cannot be construed as
infringing. The newest version of XyWrite III Plus (3.56) incorporates two
significant changes that address this issue: You will no longer be able to
automatically correct common spelling errors by pressing the space bar after
the misspelled word. In addition, to expand abbreviations stored in your
personal dictionary, you will have to press control-R or another designated
hot key."_

That's the kind of world we live in thanks to patents. Is that healthy?

My mind is open too: If that's a good thing by you, I'd love to hear the
reasoning.

~~~
dahart
> That's the kind of world we live in thanks to patents. Is that healthy?

I agree, it's not healthy.

And I agree completely about the resources angle, if I'm alone, I'm SOL. If
I'm in a huge company then I can fight. This is definitely the core failing of
the patent system that it's biased toward wealth, and being abused by the
wealthy.

> My mind is open too: If that's a good thing by you, I'd love to hear the
> reasoning.

I really appreciate you saying it that way. I don't think it's a good thing, I
just appreciate the intent. And I don't think it fails 100% of the time, I
think it works sometimes and fails a lot. I think getting rid of software
patents has a chance of improving everything, but I'm not 100% certain. There
might be unintended consequences. Like, I guess I'd put it this way: it's not
very likely that the rich & resourceful will stop winning, no matter what
happens, right?

