
BlackBerry claims Snapchat is using its tech - tosh
https://thenextweb.com/apps/2018/04/04/blackberrys-going-snapchat-now-whos-next/
======
headsoup
Option a) work harder to make products people want and create value

Option b) sue the companies that do that

Hooray for patents.

~~~
gaius
BlackBerry was first to (mass-)market with many of these features, and
validated that customers wanted them and would use them. You would assume that
a startup-oriented community would understand that that’s often the hard part,
and that many good ideas are obvious in retrospect.

BlackBerry blundered e.g. by not opening up BBM earlier, but that wasn’t a
failure of the technology nor the product-market fit.

~~~
lordnacho
Good on them for finding something people want.

However, you're not supposed to be able to protect that knowledge with a
patent. If I start making cheeseburgers where the buns are replaced by
croissants, and it turns out to be so compelling that a billion people are
hooked on it, should that be something that can be protected?

No, of course not. We want many entrepreneurs to be able to make these burgers
so that everyone can have them at a sensible price, in whatever varieties are
popular, and where and whenever they are in demand. Allowing one entity to
have control over this "discovery" (cheeseburger + croissant = heaven) will
mean that consumers cannot have any of those things until the discoverer has
built up the business empire required.

~~~
gaius
_However, you 're not supposed to be able to protect that knowledge with a
patent._

In general, IP laws are a recognition of the phenomenon that making something
for the first time is difficult and/or expensive, but once it exists it is
cheap to reproduce. This differs from tangible goods in that much of the value
has gone into the sourcing and manipulation of physical materials.

Once again I find it bemusing that a startup-oriented community doesn't get
this. The system is far from perfect in execution, I'll admit, but it's all
that means that a small company can innovate without immediately being crushed
by an entrenched firm with superior manufacturing and distribution
capabilities.

Ultimately most anti-IP arguments boil down to "I want to be paid for what I
create but I want what everyone else creates for free". That's not
sustainable.

Also speaking of croissants and IP law you might find this amusing
[http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2014/03/bakery-
hit-...](http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2014/03/bakery-hit-with-
cronuts-cease-and-desist-order.html)

~~~
lordnacho
> In general, IP laws are a recognition of the phenomenon that making
> something for the first time is difficult and/or expensive, but once it
> exists it is cheap to reproduce.

You are mixing up a number of things into "IP Laws". Some things make sense,
others do not.

\- For instance, it's perfectly reasonable that people who make some product
can do so under their own brand without other people pretending to be the same
brand. We can't have some new entrant calling themselves McDonalds and selling
Big Macs.

\- Patents are indeed meant to address the issue you are on about. But the
"invention" of cheeseburger + croissant is not hard to produce for the first
time. In this case the patent is pretending to be doing something difficult,
but what it's actually protecting is the first person who happens to test some
random market (what about chicken wings + marmite?). And that is the
distinction you need to be thinking about. Another example of this was the
lawsuit about the "rubber band" effect on UIs. In no way is it hard to produce
the item in question, you just need to know that someone wants it. And the
fact that there is a market for something should not be patentable.

> Once again I find it bemusing that a startup-oriented community doesn't get
> this.

I doubt that anyone doesn't understand this. What's happened is a nuanced view
has developed over the years.

\- People can see that IP is in the first place not easily attributable. Ideas
are like nature: they mix together, things are added and removed by different
people, new ideas are formed on top of old ones. You don't need to actually
make a product to get a patent but if you're first at the PTO you can ride on
everyone who does make a product. Doesn't seem right.

\- What was thought to be protecting the little guy is doing the opposite. If
you're a little guy, most likely you are the employee of some firm that makes
you put all your patents in their name. If you want to go on your own, good
luck with the lawyers. If you look at your average success story here on HN,
try to categorize them: The firm created some item that was patented and
turned it into a major success on the back of that patent, or the firm found
some market that was probably already not virgin, and managed to address it
without particular importance of some patent.

\- Patent seem to be abused easily. I did a patent a few years ago and the day
it got issued the guys I was working with started talking about finding a good
patent troll lawyer. It seems the system has created an unhealthy culture.

> Ultimately most anti-IP arguments boil down to "I want to be paid for what I
> create but I want what everyone else creates for free". That's not
> sustainable.

No, they don't. If what is created is easily duplicated (eg general knowledge
like the area of a circle) then why should it be paid for? I want to be paid
if I'm going to paint someone's circular table, because I can only paint so
many in my working life. But if I invented A = pi * r * r, which all the
painters need, should I be paid?

> Also speaking of croissants

Yes, that was my inspiration.

Ultimately, where you stand on this depends this: Is it a question of
recognizing what effort people have put in, "costs, investment", of invention,
or is the important thing what consumers get out, "value"? And that is why the
HN crowd leans the way it does.

~~~
charleslmunger
"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."

Software patents do not further progress. Neither do retroactive copyright
extensions. Our current atttude on IP law has shifted entirely to rent
seeking.

------
rdlecler1
One problem with our patent system is that the patent duration of a multi
billion dollar drug is the same as a trivial algorithm or design. Why not have
3,5,10,15 year patents that reflect the complexity/sophistication and cost.

~~~
digi_owl
Software should not be patented at all.

Math has not been patentable under any scheme until recently, where over a
series of lawsuits the US courts have effectively made a subset of it
(software) patentable.

And it all started thanks to seeing a computer operated manufacturing process
as something patentable over the same process done without a computer...

~~~
eganist
I don't believe the math patentability rebuttal holds, otherwise it can be
readily extended to the real world through assembly instructions for tangible
inventions, especially with the advent of 3d printing.

I'm not saying the patent system is bug-free, but I am saying it'll be a lot
harder to drive the kind of innovation we're used to seeing here with no
patent protection at all (copyright only protects the implementation, and
trade secrets are things you don't share e.g. as client-side code).

Full disclosure: I've got a few to my name. I don't think any of the inventors
I know would've even bothered inventing the patterns they/we did if the
protection didn't exist. Unpopular opinion, I'm certain.

~~~
eloff
3d printing makes a physical invention, patentable like any other. The manner
of assembly is not relevant.

Software is math and it shouldn't be patentable. I think very little good has
come of that at all.

~~~
eganist
I'm sure I'm missing something, but where would the economic incentive to
develop the majority of (specifically) client-side applications have come from
especially in the era before the .com boom?

~~~
eloff
You still have copyright protecting your code. All a patent does is let you
have a lot of time and money for an option to sue some types of companies
trying to clone your idea. But companies are all about the execution. There's
clones of every successful company, patents didn't change that. But most fail.
It was easy to clone Facebook the website way back when or Snapchat the app.
Good luck beating them at their own game though.

For any startups here thinking patents are a good use of their time - think
again.

~~~
eganist
I'd initially contested the idea of copyright protecting code in my above
comment but decided to redact it to see which direction this conversation
would take.

(Tangent: Trade secrets protect knowledge implemented within my spheres of
trust, i.e. "my systems.")

Copyright protects the literal documentation/expression of knowledge, such as
an algorithm, not the knowledge itself. As an example, reimplementing a novel
algorithm in a different language or over a different framework will likely be
enough to subvert copyright protection over the code itself.

Copyright will ineffectively protect novel algorithms, whereas patents do a
good job of protecting these algorithms in well-exposed contexts e.g. client-
side from unauthorized imitation and usage day zero (or, more realistically,
day 30). Barring a tactical or strategic error in the approved patent — a
wonderful example of this, if I recall correctly, is the Swype patent¹ which
prompts the user to pick a word rather than guess one for the user — the
patent will effectively cover the algorithm in any implementation for the
statutory duration.

A separate issue: "All a patent does is let you have a lot of time and money
for an option to sue some types of companies trying to clone your idea. But
companies are all about the execution."

That's the use case that garners the most press coverage. The sort that's more
prevalent and far less noisy is licensing, and this happens far, far more
often, and generally with not so much as a peep in the press. In fact, this is
one survival strategy used by some startups as they pivot when they've created
novel technologies but have devised ineffective business models around them.
This moots the following statement: "For any startups here thinking patents
are a good use of their time - think again." — it really depends on how the
patents are acquired, such as through deferred equity compensation. I'd argue
against doing so in cash, but doing so with equity could make sense especially
if the startup's novel ideas are expected to be executed in untrusted (read:
client, or "not my systems") environments.

My main argument is that software patent durations need to be cropped. Could
be three years, could be five, but given the pace of software development,
twenty is patently (ahem) anti-competitive in the software world. That's the
argument I'll stand by unless anyone has a proposal to protect and incentivize
the creation of novel algorithms without the use of patents.

Source: the numerous IP lawyers I've worked with during both my day job and
consulting engagements. But I'm not an attorney, which means there's a
nontrivial chance I got some of the nuances wrong, but I'm willing to attach
my name to the overall message.

\---

¹—[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,098,896.PN.&OS=PN/7,098,896&RS=PN/7,098,896)
"The present invention then generates a list of possible words associated with
the entered part and presents it to user for selection."

~~~
eloff
I agree that copyright won't be effective in protecting novel algorithms.
That's what patents _should_ be good for. But mostly they end up being a tool
used by extortionists who produce nothing, parasites basically making the
whole system sick. In their current implementation, whether the patent
duration changes or not, they're horribly broken. I suspect we agree there.
That's typically common ground in the software business.

But I would go further and say that patents are largely a waste of time and
money for startups. With some exceptions, the Swype patent being one. The
things is unless you have a novel algorithm for which there is no
substitutions, it grants you very little protection.

For example, I have a novel database index algorithm that uses SIMD
instructions to do more operations in parallel. But if I patented it, it would
largely be a distraction from the insanely complex task of building a full
database product and a successful business model and sales channel around it.
Sure that algorithm might give me an enduring performance edge over the
competition, in the best case scenario. But whether my competitors copy that
innovation or not, it's such a small part of the whole, and one for which
there are plenty of substitutes - even if somehow mine happens to be the best
(the odds are against that!) it's still a minor contribution and likely a
waste of resources to patent.

You'd need something that's core to the business and which you can't
substitute. If you have an invention like that, by all means patent it. By and
large that's rare though.

And the whole system is so terrible, so utterly broken, so abused by bad
actors and corrupt courts (District of East Texas, I'm looking at you!) It's
impossible to write any substantial amount of code that doesn't infringe
patents. So basically everyone infringes, and some have the bad luck that
others will use that to extort money from them. I wish the whole system would
die in a fire.

I've often wondered how I would react if that happened to me. I'd probably
find the cheapest lawyer I could in the district hearing the case, and
instruct him to draw the proceedings out to the maximum possible extent - run
up the bill as high as possible for the bastards.

------
eecc
If that’s not rent-seeking what else is it?

A patent on showing a read-receipt? For chrissake, that tire-fire of Outlook
Express had it!!!

~~~
lloeki
But Outlook Express wasn't on a mobile phone, so, patent granted. /s

There are worse examples than than, like "email, on mobile", when it's dead
obvious to anyone who knows about OSI layers.

Whether or not people agree on the legitimacy of software patents, I think we
can all agree that the situation is completely out of hands.

------
tylerjwilk00
This is the death rattle of a dying company.

~~~
branch_predict
With revenue growth in software, not exactly a dying company -
[https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1H41NM-
OC...](https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1H41NM-OCABS)

~~~
djrogers
From your link:

“The company’s revenue fell 18.5 percent to $233 million.”

That’s dying. An almost 20% revenue drop, after nearly a decade of declining
revenues and the death of your major product line.

~~~
branch_predict
Yes the total revenue fell, but I specifically mentioned software revenues in
my comment which is growing - "revenue from its enterprise software and
services business rose about 19 percent to $108 million".

------
projektfu
What gets me about the patent system is that there seems to be no requirement
for due diligence on the side of the patent holder. You'd think if BB cared
about these technologies, they'd have sent a letter to the companies years ago
before they amassed millions of users. They could have put out an ad saying
that other companies are using patent protected tech and so you should use BB
to make sure your service isn't disrupted. Or they could be making money now
licensing the tech. For example, WhatsApp sold for billions. It'd have a very
different value if they had to pay a per user license fee, which BB could have
asked for years ago. I think a forgotten patent should be considered
abandoned.

~~~
nugi
Suing early would make them not use their tech... waiting until their tech is
entrenched so you can seek damages and future licencing is the jam nowdays.
Its a legal grey area, but seems to work out more often than not.

~~~
projektfu
I understand the incentive, but if there is an obvious violation and you
ignore it for years, without even a letter to the violator, you should
probably not be allowed to decide to enforce it after that tech has become
entrenched. It should be on the patent holder to explain why they didn't
complain when the problem was small. Trademark owners can lose if they don't
stand up early with a crew and desist.

------
shmerl
Blackberry is getting comfortable at patent trolling. Non coincidentally, they
also don't produce anything of value these days. Someone should sue them for
protection racket.

------
tzahola
Lol. I didn’t know their situation is _this_ bad.

