
Open Invention Network, the Linux-based patent community, exceeds 3k licensees - CrankyBear
https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-invention-network-the-linux-based-patent-non-aggression-community-exceeds-3000-licensees/
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hardwaresofton
OIN still looks like a (currently nice) cartel to me -- if you really want to
stop aggression, release all the patents into the commons.

> You too can sign on to the OIN license. Frankly, if your business has
> anything to do with developing Linux and related open-source software, you
> need to join. It will provide you, your programmers, and your business the
> IP protection you need to become an open-source winner.

Statements like this is what make me suspicious -- these companies are going
in there for "IP protection", for patents that are questionable in the _first_
place. So what happens to companies that don't join this non-aggression
community?

~~~
duxup
That almost really reads like a threat.

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davemp
Whenever software patents come up I think of Knuth’s letter to the US patent
office:

\---

STANFORD UNIVERSITY STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-2140

DONALD E. KNUTH

Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming

Department of Computer Science

[Telephone]

February 23, 1994

Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks

Box 4

Patent and Trademark Office Washington, DC 20231

Dear Commissioner:

Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to
reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes. I
find a considerable anxiety throughout the community of practicing computer
scientists that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and Trademark
Office are making life much more difficult for programmers.

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that patent law did not
pertain to software. However, it now appears that some people have received
patents for algorithms of practical importance–e.g., Lempel-Ziv compression
and RSA public key encryption–and are now legally preventing other programmers
from using those algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under which the computer
revolution became possible, and I fear this change will be harmful for
society. It certainly would have had profoundly negative effect on my own
work: For example, I developed software called TEX that is now used to produce
more than 90% of all books and journals in mathematics and physics and to
produce hundreds of thousands of technical reports in all scientific
disciplines. If software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not
have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably have ever thought
of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else doing so.

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between
mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer
scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as
anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical
laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between “numerical” and “nonnumerical”
algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise
information. All data are numbers, and all numbers are data. Mathematicians
work much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

To Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks - February 23, 1994 - Page 2

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to
mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts
of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle’s
circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It’s
like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-
made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict
fundamental truths.

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented.
Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license
fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic
ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result
threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents
on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to
write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the
words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers,
because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting
products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods
of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?

I realize that the patent courts try their best to serve society when they
formulate patent law. The Patent Office has fulfilled this mission admirably
with respect to aspects of technology that involve concrete laws of physics
rather than abstract laws of thought. I myself have a few patents on hardware
devices. But I strongly believe that the recent trend to patenting algorithms
is of benefit only to a very small number of attorneys and inventors, while it
is seriously harmful to the vast majority of people who want to do useful
things with computers.

When I think of the computer programs I require daily to get my own work done,
I cannot help but realize that none of them would exist today if software
patents had been prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. Changing the rules now will
have the effect of freezing progress at essentially its current level. If
present trends continue, the only recourse available to the majority of
America’s brilliant software developers will be to give up software or to
emigrate. The U.S.A. will soon lose its dominant position.

Please do what you can to reverse this alarming trend. There are far better
ways to protect the intellectual property rights of software developers than
to take away their right to use fundamental building blocks.

Sincerely,

[signature] Donald E Knuth

Professor

\---

[1]:
[http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/patents/knuth](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/patents/knuth)

~~~
dTal
I think on sufficiently close inspection, the lines between all types of
abstract ideas - "algorithms", "copyrightable text or other art", "engineering
techniques", and "patentable technology" \- will prove to be as vaporous as
the distinction between "numerical" and "nonnumerical" algorithms. Even
squishy, unmathematical art is ultimately the product of algorithms running in
our brains - and probably simpler ones than we'd like to admit.

Fundamentally, is there any difference between Vincent Van Gogh discovering
that he can make pretty pictures by flicking his brush just so, and Benoit
Mandelbrot discovering he can make pretty pictures with z => z^2+c ?

