

Software Patents Have Got to Go - bakbak
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374861,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585

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iwwr
Not just software patents, but intellectual "property" in general.

Boldrin & Levine: "Against Intellectual Monopoly"
<http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm>

~~~
wazoox
34 years after Bill Gates' open letter to the "pirates" and decades of heavy
propaganda and legal actions from the BSA, RIAA, etc, the general public still
isn't convinced that copying bits is wrong. If after decades trying you can't
change people minds, it must be that you're wrong and they're right.
Intellectual Property must die.

~~~
klbarry
Just because the public wants something doesn't make it right.

~~~
pmichaud
The reality is that this is exactly how we as a species define "right": we do
what we want to do, and eventually we invent justifications and frameworks to
make what we already do the "right" thing.

Eventually, when enough people don't want to do something anymore, that
becomes "wrong."

I'm not saying this is how it should rightly be, I'm just saying this is how
it is.

I bet you eat animals that have been tortured and killed in factory farms, and
you have a bunch of a really great justifications for that. QED.

~~~
wzdd
>I bet you eat animals that have been tortured and killed in factory farms,
and you have a bunch of a really great justifications for that. QED.

As a vegetarian I feel that bringing out this argument (implying that a
particular person is hypocritical -- and yes, I understand the societally-
approved point), in response to a discussion on copyright patents, is below
the standard of discussion I expect from HN. In general this discussion seems
to include a lot of "no it isn't" / "yes it is" type bickering without much
substance, and to be honest I blame the original article, which was content-
free. Up above we have people arguing for the abolition of all intellectual
property, and others claiming that mob rule is the basis for democracy. I
don't see why the issue is such a binary one. Clearly the patent system needs
reform. It's not at all clear that it needs to disappear entirely.

------
tgflynn
US patent law (as well as copyright law) derives from Article I section 8 of
the Constitution which grants Congress the 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."

The question is do patents actually promote the progress of science and
technology ? I suspect that they do not because while they create additional
monetary incentives to pursue innovation at the same time they restrict the
free flow of ideas which is the driving force behind scientific and technical
progress.

The free exchange and use of information is probably the source of the
exponential progress in "information technologies" that Ray Kurzweil has
discovered. It seems likely that impediments to the exchange and use of
information, such as patents, can only reduce the rate of exponential growth.

Perhaps if patents had never existed our technology would be far more advanced
than it currently is.

If it were ever possible to prove conclusively that patents impede rather than
promote progress, they would become unconstitutional in the US.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
How do you think patents "restrict the free flow of ideas?"

A patent must publicize what is being claimed: you are given a explanation of
the design or process. You just can't make it and sell it. However, by knowing
someone's design, even when patented, it can inspire someone else to build
something even better.

~~~
tgflynn
Well they clearly restrict the free use of ideas. An idea that I can't use is
of limited interest to me.

Have you ever read a software patent ? The ones I have seen have been written
in a very strange way (ie use of non-standard terminology for technical
concepts) which seems aimed at obscuring the nature of the ideas being
patented rather than clarifying them. If patent descriptions were really
intended to convey useful technical information they would read more like
journal articles rather than some strange dialect of American legalese.

I'm sure that some innovation occurs through efforts to work around existing
patents however I doubt that effect comes close to matching their effect of
preventing ideas, even if independently discovered, from being incorporated
into new technical solutions.

As for the notion that people are going to read 20 year old expired patents
for their ideas that seems pretty unlikely to me given the pace of
technological development.

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cletus
This isn't anything new. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about software
is against software patents except for a few with a vested interest.

The patent system was originally created to protect investment and foster
innovation by providing exclusivity but requiring disclosure to further
research by others and of course there is a time limit.

The problem is that ideas (which is what software patents and business models
come down to) have next to no cost (unlike, say, new drugs that have
substantial R&D costs, trials, etc).

Lawyers have gotten very good at perverting this system [1]. I remember
reading about Intel's system bus (I think in relation to Nvidia producing
chipsets without a license). Basically parts of the system were patented, some
copyrighted and the rest was a trade secret. Combined it meant Intel basically
didn't have to disclose anything but could still go after those who reverse
engineer.

Once I used to support pharma-patents but I'm changing my mind on even that. I
believe the high cost of health care in the US is in large part to the
protections and monopolies suppliers have. The counterargument is that many of
these things wouldn't exist without these protections but I think the pendulum
has swung too far.

Something like two-thirds of the budget for a new drug goes on marketing [2].

Worse, we're starting to see copyright trolls [3] who are basically producing
reams of crap in the hopes that someone inadvertently infringes on that so
they can be sued.

So IP is horribly broken, not just for software.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Overlap_with_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Overlap_with_copyright)

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing>

[3]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll>

~~~
roadnottaken
As a biochemist, I can assure you that if pharma-patents went away, drug-
development would disappear overnight. One can argue over the specifics, but
some form of IP protection is necessary in that arena.

~~~
tgflynn
My understanding of the traditional drug development model is basically that
companies spend millions of dollars testing large numbers of substances in
vitro, then in animals then finally in human trials to find a very small
number of drugs that work. Once such a drug has been found and approved by the
FDA it is fairly trivial for a competitor to reproduce, which in the absence
of patents, would allow the competitor to essentially appropriate all the R&D
the initial developer did.

This development model is extremely different from that seen in software and
related technologies where many small ideas are combined to form compelling
technological solutions. I suspect this difference in development models is
the main reason for the much slower (linear) progress seen in medicine
compared to information technologies (exponential). I also suspect that as our
understanding of biological systems improves, the pharmaceutical industry will
evolve towards a more information based development model.

In any case, it seems to me that in the present, IP policy needs to accept
that different industries have different development models and that a one
size fits all IP policy is not a good solution.

------
Synaesthesia
The instant I saw it was John Dvorak I closed the tab.

~~~
Lagged2Death
I can understand this reaction, but even a crazy pundit can be right twice a
day.

~~~
billswift
But is it worth the time and trouble of figuring out whether _this_ time it is
worth reading? I have a whole list of websites and people mounted on the wall
over my monitor who have been so outrageously incompetent in the past that I
avoid reading them. If they have shown such a low quality of accuracy on
things I do know about, there is no way I can trust them on things I don't
already know, so there is _no point_ to reading them. (Note I only do this for
actual _facts_ that were flagrantly wrong, I read a lot of opinions that I
disagree with.)

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tkeller
> Basically, Allen got an omnibus patent that covers all these characteristics

No. He didn't. And regardless of whether software patents need to go, ignorant
media coverage certainly needs to go.

~~~
aristidb
Most people, including myself, cannot actually read patents. Being told that
the summary is irrelevant does not help at all. What are we supposed to do,
ignore the patent because we don't understand it?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
If you're a programmer, you can read software patents.

If you're a mechanical engineer, you can read mechanical patents,

If you're a farmer, you can read farming patents.

See how that works? The language is dense, and you must read carefully, but
the patents I have actually read are not particularly difficult to understand.

~~~
Jach
> If you're a programmer, you can read software patents.

Here I can bring in a different definition of "can". I could if I wanted
browse different software patents, but that just puts me or my company in more
legal trouble especially if sometime later I happen to develop something
similar enough to a patent I've previously read that I get sued over it. It's
not a good idea to just read patents blindly if you have any interest in
building stuff that might get popular.

Though I suppose it's probably safe to read the Linked List patent, which is
one of the clearest and silliest I've ever seen:
[http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
dean
It's depressing to see a respected and influential software industry icon
resorting to patent trolling like this. I expect it from lawyers and
corporate-raider types, but was surprised to see Paul Allen doing it.

To cherry pick a quote from Dvorak's article: Paul Allen says he has a patent
for a "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information...".

On the other hand, corporations love a monopoly, and I guess Paul Allen wants
to be involved in another one.

~~~
kenjackson
How likely is Paul Allen doing this as an attempt to weaken software patents?
MS is trying the SCOTUS in an effort to make it more difficult to assert
claims. Wonder if this might be part of the same strategic play. Doubtful, I
know.

~~~
ergo98
Very unlikely. He targeted everyone but Gates. His attack is legitimate.

However Allen can feel just, I guess, given that he has dedicated most his
wealth to charity after he dies. So he's essentially playing Robin Hood.

------
Jach
I flagged this since we don't need a new one of these articles every day...

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EGreg
Now that's what I'm talking about!

Patents were originally intended to encourage investors in a time when
bringing a product to market could take years.

In the software industry, that assumption is, to put it mildly, totally off.
Therefore, in the software industry, granting someone a 17 year monopoly on an
idea just encourages another, destructive type of strategy that hurts the
entire industry: PATENT TROLLING.

Seriously, it is a legal strategy to describe something to the government,
wait a few years and then go after the people who actually BUILT IT (even if
they came up with it independently, as long as they can't prove they came up
with it before you described it in a patent application).

That's BULL CRAP. You didn't do anything except write some paper. If you're
good at it, you don't even need a lawyer. And you get to collect money from
the hard work of others.

On the other hand, I feel that if you DID write a patent, AND you tried to
make it work, AND you are succeeding, you SHOULD be able to prevent your
competitors from just copying what you did. But not for 17 years. For two
years at most!

It is in this latter sense that the patent system is great. I'd get a
provisional patent over an NDA anyday. Because it's more legally enforceable.
Say a company meets with me and I tell them the idea. First of all I don't
have to require them to sign any NDA. Secondly, suppose they say, "nice idea,
we are going to do it ourselves". I can tell them, "I have a provisional
patent, and I will sue your ass in 2 years." Or I can tell them NOTHING, go
ahead and convert it to a real patent (probably $5k out of my pocket) and go
sue them 2 years later. Not 17 years later.

This, I don't mind. They wanted to screw me by stealing my idea, they got
burned. This will encourage companies to NOT screw individual investors and
actually decide if they want to wait 3 years before making this, or work with
the inventor.

With NDAs, there is no way to prove anything. I spoke to Bobby, and they
signed an NDA. Then, Charlie Inc. comes out with my product. I didn't make
Charlie, Inc. sign anything, and Bobby doesn't have the $5 million dollars to
pay me, and I can't prove he told anything to Charlie, Inc. OOPS.

That's what software patents should protect against. That's it. They currently
do, but we don't need 17 years of that kind of protection!

------
maeon3
Software Patents should be allowed, however the rules on them need to be
heavily modified so that the real spirit of the patent can reward resourceful
hard working innovators.

Patents were meant to protect programmer, however since programmers tend to
work for big businesses and the big businesses absorb all the rights to the
code, the software patent is only protecting businesses. I propose a change.

Software patents should have timeouts that increase and decrease depending on
the amount of genuine innovative breakthrough contained in the code. If I make
a new website that does something people like that never has been done before,
then I get so many cents for anyone else using it for so many weeks (something
like this would need to be strictly enforced).

Now suppose some programmer created a new bit of software that takes Human DNA
as input and outputs a list of instructions on how to reverse aging on that
version of the human genome. In this case the software patent would be Longer,
with more of a payoff for others who copied it and used it inside the time
frame.

Software Patenting isn't evil, it was meant to protect US, the programmers, it
is just a completely broken system so that it isn't helping at all.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Software Patenting isn't evil

Except that it is.

~~~
sorbus
[Citation needed]

