
Inglourious Software Patents - duck
http://nathanmarz.com/blog/inglourious-software-patents.html
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abscondment
In "The unbound Prometheus" David Landes writes about the historical causes
for the industrial revolution in Europe, specifically analyzing the
manufacture of cotton in England.

After noting that many inventors "spent more time enforcing their patent
rights than earning them", he writes an apropos footnote about the incentives
laid by patents:

"A number of writers have laid stress on the incentive effects of patent
legislation. I am inclined to doubt its significance. This kind of protection
was not new; the basis of the system was laid by the Statute of Monopolies in
1624. [...] At the same time, there was good reason to doubt the efficacy of
patents against determined competitors, as numerous inventors learned to their
sorrow, and many an entrepreneur placed his reliance on secrecy, rather than
law."

[http://books.google.com/books?id=axrD2M9dBE8C&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=axrD2M9dBE8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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highfreq
One problem with software patents is that the vast majority of innovation
happens in the minds of individual programmers, and often goes into products
without anyone else in the world being aware. They don't and couldn't be
expected to know about all of the thousands of software patents that could
read on their innovations, and then negotiate licenses. Imagine how little
innovation would happen if it did work like this. But this is to some degree
how the system is supposed to work.

Instead, the system works as combination of big businesses using questionable
patents and threats of expensive litigation as a tactic to protect their turf
from competition, thereby stifling innovation. Others play the patent lottery
filing for or purchasing software patents in the hopes to later find a big-
time infringer to go after, on innovation that most likely happened without
knowledge of their patents and would have happened anyway.

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kenjackson
_The fashion industry is an excellent example of an industry that has no
patents and thrives._

The industry thrives for very few companies. Boutique brands make their money
largely by skimming money from extremely wealthy or showy.

If you hear VCs talk about the fashion industry you'll often hear, "It's a
brutal business, I don't want to be in it". It's all about rack space. The
other issue with fasion is that there's virtually no R&D cost in fashion.
Companies like Nike do R&D, but Sketchers does virtually none.

If we couple two large trends... end of SW patents and app stores, the end
result is probably a few large partners that copy any hot application and then
get profiled in the app store. Word Lens is great, but iLens by Apple is the
one that gets all the money due to the fact that its spotlighted in the
AppStore.

The thing that I always find somewhat interesting is that computer technology
has moved incredibly fast over the past 30 years. Faster than probably any
other technology or industry in the world. Yet it happened with patents. If we
didn't have patents today would we have perfect AI today or something? The
pace of innovation actually seems mighty brisk with our current system.

~~~
brlewis
In what other technology or industry can the practitioners carry everything
they need for innovation around in their backpacks. If machine shops were so
ubiquitous and portable, mechanical engineering patents would be unnecessary
too.

Also, software became patentable in 1991 when a lower court overruled US
Supreme Court precedent that software for general-purpose computers is not
patentable. Some people cite Diamond v. Diehr (1980) as enabling software
patents, but that contradicts what the court opinion actually says.

~~~
kenjackson
I'm not sure what portability has to do with patents? If anything I'd think
the opposite to be true. Patents seem more necessary when the barrier to
replicate is low. If I have to build a $500M fab that will take 3 years to
build, patents seem less necessary, than if I can simply read your code (or
disassmble) and copy your logic in a week (or automate the process to copy
your code, but do some semantic preserving changes to not violate copyright
law).

~~~
jbri
You don't need patents to protect a specific implementation - code is
copyrightable, and stealing your particular code (or even creating a
derivative work like your "semantic-preserving changes" comment suggests) is
illegal even without patents.

In order to avoid running afoul of copyright law you'd need to do a vacuum
reimplementation based just on the description/specification of the algorithm
- all that patents achieve is making such vacuum reimplementation also
illegal, and it's up in the air whether that's even a good thing or not.

~~~
kenjackson
_You don't need patents to protect a specific implementation - code is
copyrightable, and stealing your particular code (or even creating a
derivative work like your "semantic-preserving changes" comment suggests) is
illegal even without patents._

I think the case you're interested in is this one:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_International,_Inc._v._Altai,_Inc).

Based on trials that have used the filtration technique, if I know the issue
ahead of time, I can workaround it.

~~~
jbri
Reading the actual page
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Int._Inc._v...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Int._Inc._v._Altai_Inc.)),
the "workaround" is a clean-room reimplementation. Unless you were referring
to something else?

~~~
kenjackson
That's how they did it in this case, but the precedent for determining
infringement uses filtration, not the process by which you created the
implementation (clean room or otherwise).

Of course, if you do walk this close to the line, you probably don't want to
leave a paper trail that you're doing so.

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piramida
Nice read from an insider of the patent wars (Jonathan Shwartz, former Sun
CEO): [http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-
artis...](http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-
great-artists-steal/)

He describes why the (software) patents are really needed today. In short: to
defend the company against patent lawsuits.

~~~
PakG1
That's a horrible argument. That's like justifying nukes to defend against
nukes. In an arms race where the other side will have nukes independent of
what you want to do, you have no choice. That's why the Cold War was so
dangerous. The overall governing laws of science could not be overturned such
that making nukes was impossible, so nukes were made to increase power in war
and politics.

Patents are not like nukes in that patents are a legal construct regulated by
governments and the legal process. Laws can be abolished and overturned,
though not easily. The difference is that laws of nature are impossible to
overturn, whereas laws of government are only difficult.

~~~
piramida
I also find this reason for patents very wrong, but it's the current reality -
even good-minded company has to have a briefcase of patents to protect itself.

