

Software Patent Abolition Petition - Krylez
http://wh.gov/bbn

======
tzs
That's not a very well done petition. Here are some of the problems.

(1) The America Invents act was not toothless. It contains provisions that put
major hurt on patent trolls.

(2) It fails to actually state any realistic action items.

(3) It shows a misunderstanding of the role of the President in the patent
system. What they are trying to accomplish requires Congressional action, not
Presidential action.

~~~
Natsu
You're right and they should use that to improve the petition, but I still
think it's important to show that lots of politically active folks care about
this.

Sure, Obama can't just end software patents on his own. But at least it puts
the opposition on the map, politically. Still, that's all the more reason to
want to make a good case.

~~~
tankenmate
Here is a petition that calls the WH out on the petitions just being PR
stunts; somewhat tongue in cheek, but mostly serious.

[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-
ta...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-
petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-
listening/grQ9mNkN)

------
sp332
Petitions are not a good medium for this conversation. The response to the
previous petition [https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-
pate...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-
office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq) pointed to the place where the
actual discussion is happening,
<http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/faq.jsp> and
<http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/comments.jsp>

~~~
gbhn
Agreed. A petition was worthwhile to elevate the attention given to the
matter. It could be the response was a brush-off, but it might also be an
invitation to the party.

It's pretty hard to overestimate the impact that executive branch policy has
on the PTO. If there truly were a "quality-first" directive, with mandates to
reject hard-to-understand and overbroad applications on teachability and
novelty doctrines, that would have a huge impact on the patent landscape. But
there's a ton of work to do in crafting a suggested directive that would
accomplish that, and petitions aren't really the proper vehicle for such
suggestions.

It might be more productive to interpret the press release as an invitation to
work on that document, and the pointer to the AIA page as a forwarding address
to take the initiative to the next level.

So: what ought be the content of "Executive Order N to the Patent and
Trademark Office?"

------
law
We don't have "software patents," since software (as code) isn't patentable
subject matter. Instead, we have "business method patents," which cover the
systems and methods used by the software in conjunction with an operating
environment that are putatively novel, non-obvious, unique, and enabled.

I'd imagine most people fall into two camps: (1) business methods shouldn't be
patentable subject matter solely because they satisfy the machine-or-
transformation test (as articulated in a trilogy of cases from the 1970s and
most recent in Bilski); and (2) even if they should be, many of the business
methods today fail on non-obviousness grounds.

Proscribing the issuance of 'software patents' _isn't_ the problem. The
problem is that in this digital age, we're relying on the machine-or-
transformation test for business practices that exist in the virtual world.
Because of the prevalence and impact of the internet in the global
marketplace, there's now a fundamental difference between a ROM chip in a
device containing instructions interpreted by a microprocessor and a software
program compiled into machine readable code stored in RAM and processed by
your computer's CPU.

------
ozataman
How about we start spending more than 5 minutes writing these petitions?
Several points are missing and what's there doesn't even convey the key points
clearly.

~~~
anigbrowl
Dude, this is the internet. We don't think things through here, and I think
the President should be weeping for gratitude that the petitioner deigned to
use more than 140 characters to unburden himself. _Weeping._

------
anigbrowl
The credibility of any given proposal is inversely proportional to the number
of pejoratives used to articulate it.

------
cel
This bigger petition received an official response today:

[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-
pate...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-
office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq)

~~~
patrickaljord
The OP petition is an answer to this official response.

------
huhtenberg
I frankly do not understand such black and white take on software patents. I
don't think that _all_ of them are evil. If one invests his time and money in
developing a software algorithm - something non-trivial, say, an IFS
compressor for binary data - why should such invention not be entitled to the
same level of exclusive use protection that a mechanical design receives?

~~~
JoshTriplett
The previous story on this provided the perfect response: "If millions of
people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering
would be incompatible with the patent system too."
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882>)

~~~
hugh3
But millions of people have workbenches and toolboxes in their garages, and
are quite capable of building physical objects and devices.

~~~
marshray
But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a
significant part of an industrial economy. It more or less amounts to "arts
and crafts".

This changed with computers. You could never start a car factory in a garage,
but there was a golden age where you could start a high-tech electronics
company like HP or Apple.

Today you can start a web-based or software company on a laptop in a coffee
shop or library. This is a big deal, let's not kill it.

Software patents have to go away or we're going to be stuck in the industrial
age, which would be bad because we've already sold off most of our factories.

~~~
anamax
> But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been
> a significant part of an industrial economy.

Actually, it has. Large scale production may have usually been in a factory,
but often that factory was small production multiplied. Ford and the like were
anomalies, even in the car biz.

> You could never start a car factory in a garage

I don't know about you, but literally thousands of folks did exactly that.

~~~
marshray
This is an interesting claim, do you have any links or citations?

~~~
anamax
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cars>

See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_brands> . Australia is sort
of interesting as is Britain.

~~~
marshray
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_manufacturers_of_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car_manufacturers_of_the_United_States)

OK, that's probably 700+ manufacturers after duplicates are counted for. Which
is great!

But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original criteria
of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories". Spot-checking the links
from Wikipedia turns up several references to converted bicycle and motorcycle
factories. No references to "two guys in a garage" which kinda makes sense
considering garages probably came after the early automobiles. :-)

No doubt some of them started in barns, but again, I don't think that was a
huge part of the economy.

~~~
anamax
The all in one list doesn't include the countries that had lots of car
companies, such as the US. US only list (which was the biggest) has over 1800,
from 1896 to 1930.

The US wikipedia entry claims that very few car companies were started after
1930. I know a couple from the 60s that didn't make the list which were
literally a couple of guys in a garage. No, they weren't casting their own
engine blocks but neither does Lotus for some of their models.

> But I can't figure out how to tell how many of them meet my original
> criteria of manufacturing outside of "freestanding factories".

Most made very few cars so it's unlikely that they had significant factories.

> I don't think that was a huge part of the economy.

There were two separate claims. The first was that small scale manufacturing
was a significant part of manufacturing. I haven't addressed that.

The second was that lots of car companies had almost nothing in the way of
"factory". That's the claim that I've supported.

------
monochromatic
Has any online petition every accomplished anything? Serious question.

~~~
MartinCron
I can think of one, non-governmental one:

<http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html>

~~~
JoshTriplett
Interesting. Can you point to any official response from Netflix referencing
that petition, or did they just take the desired action without referencing
the petition?

~~~
MartinCron
There was more outcry than just the petition. Lots of people emailed in,
tweeted, whatever.

The official "OK, we're not killing profiles" message does not address the
petition directly: [http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-
going-a...](http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-
away.html)

------
drivebyacct2
Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're
a joke and a waste of time.

~~~
hugh3
Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your
email address.

~~~
sixtofour
Did you notice there's a Facebook Like button?

So Facebook knows when you go to a government site.

I imagine Facebook also knows which petitions you sign, or at least which ones
you click on. I say imagine, because although I'm signed in, it still asks me
to sign in before I can sign the petition, and signing in while I'm signed in
leads to a 404.

