

In Favor of Software Patents - dabent
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/03/04/in-favor-of-software-patents/

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tsally
Fluff. The author suggests reducing the duration of software patents to seven
years as a solution to current problems. There are no other suggested
corrections. This does nothing to address the "One-Click" class of software
patents. Further, it doesn't even make a very strong case for why seven year
software patents would actually solve problems. I'm pretty sure many software
patent trolls sue within seven years. In addition, the author seems to be
under the bizarre assumption that Chinese companies actually respect US
patents.

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alain94040
I'm the author.

Yes, there are other suggested improvements to the patent office, such as
rejecting obvious patents. Except you can't easily fix that, whereas
substituting 20 by 7 is something that can be done by your average lawmaker.

Regarding China: you must have misinterpreted what I was saying. I pointed to
China as an example of what would happen if we dropped patent protection
completely. Indeed, China doesn't care much about patents currently, and it's
not a world I want to live in.

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Groxx
17 years is long for _anything_ now. Heck, 7 years is long for almost
everything, and anything that invested in their product relies on die-hard
secrecy rather than throwing patents around. IE, cars. Software in particular
moves faster than most because it has _zero_ manufacturing time, so yes, it
should have a shorter limit as long as patents exist. It's very clearly a
special case.

Early-industrial-age, retooling factories took a while. Now, many things are
made to be modular or simply replaced outright for cheap. _Things do not take
as long to develop and produce now as they did when the patent office was
new_.

What may have legitimately been protection to begin with hasn't kept up with
the world, and has become a hindrance. Just like anything else that doesn't
change. Stagnation is death.

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ddlatham
Patents are an incentive to invent something new, with the knowledge that you
alone will be able to profit from that thing for some period of time.

The idea is that this incentive will benefit society with these inventions
more than it will cost society in reduced competition.

Looking at the software market today, I think it's pretty clear that the
incentive that patents create for software innovations is not needed and that
the cost that they create greatly outweighs the benefits. I can not think of
any software innovations that would not have been made without the incentive
of monopoly protection.

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Goronmon
_The problem, you see, is their length. Seventeen years of monopoly is an
eternity in Internet time. Instead, software patents should only be valid for
seven years._

I'd argue even seven years is an eternity in Internet time.

~~~
decode
This whole article is strange.

First, the author can't decide if patents last for 17 years or 15 years. The
correct answer (in the US) is neither: since 1995, US patents have enjoyed
protection for a maximum of 20 years from the filing date. How long this
protection lasts from the issue date depends on how long the application
process took, and how much extra time is tacked on due to PTO delays, and
whether or not all of the maintenance fees are paid.

Second, the author gives no justification for the 7-year period. Why are
7-year terms better than 2-year terms or 10-year terms? And how will any of
them get rid of software patent trolls or fix abuses of continuation-in-part
applications?

The article consists of nothing but unsupported assertion and incorrect
information.

~~~
alain94040
I was vague about the lenght of the protection because it depends on when you
filed your patent. It's beside the point, the point is that current protection
is very very long, roughly 20 years.

You are correct, I have no proof that 7 years is the right number. I'd be
happy for people to debate if it should be 6 or 10 or whatever. But I believe
it's a simple enough fix.

Believe me, I have been through enough patent issues, I strongly wish the
system would be fixed. But most proposals so far are jist plain impractical.
I'd love for patent examiners to really understand the technology and only
grant truly innovative patents. But it's almost impossible. I'd like for
lawsuits to not take so long and not be so arbitrary, but it would require a
full reform of the legal system. Not realistic.

s/20/7/a sounds much easier to me, and achieves a lot. Not perfect, but a
decent tradeoff. I'm an engineer, I do tradeoffs.

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owinebarger
Patents are not a reward for creativity, they are to reward disclosure of an
invention that otherwise would be kept a mystery.

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goodness
Everyone here is negative, but I think the general idea is reasonable (though
not new). I don't know that the length should be 7 years, but something
significantly shorter than ~17 seems like it could help fix a lot of the
current problem.

This would definitely change the cost-benefit analysis on filing patents.
Companies definitely take into consideration the costs of employee time, legal
fees, filing fees, etc. when considering whether to pursue a patent. If the
expected benefit is suddenly less than half of what it was, then decisions
start to change. If some portion of patents can't even make it through the
system in 7 years (or whatever), then that makes the expected benefit of
software patents even lower.

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simonw
Epic strawman: "I don’t buy the argument that just because it’s software, it
can’t be inventive"

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motters
A work of creative fiction can also be innovative, but does this mean that
books should be patentable? Whilst it may benefit large companies who can
afford to spend money on lawyers, patenting software is as foolish and harmful
to the industry as patenting books. One thing's for sure and that's that
software patents do not benefit startups or independent software contractors.

Reducing the length of applicability of software patents does not reduce their
harm. Seven years in a fast moving business like software may as well be
eternity.

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vaporstun
One problem with having a software patent have a validity of seven years is
that it often takes seven years or in some cases even more to get a patent
through the USPTO.

If a patent's validity is up before it is issued, it is pointless.

