

Red Hat Asks Supreme Court to Review Software Patents - sutro
http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/asking-the-supreme-court-to-address-the-problem-of-software-patents/

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launic
I am just curious if there is anyone here able to point a single useful
outcome of software patents. I am a software engineer and I can not find any
good in software patents. Copyright laws and trade secrete are enough to
protect our work.

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mbrubeck
Many software patents I've read seem totally invalid. But there are a few I
think may be reasonable. For example, many audio/video codecs like the ones in
the MPEG standards are developed by companies who make money through patent
licensing. And for the most the ideas in these patents are far from "obvious."

You could argue about whether these patents are good or bad for society, but
at least in these cases the patent system is operating as designed: allowing
companies to profit from novel research through a temporary monopoly on the
results.

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DarkShikari
_And for the most the ideas in these patents are far from "obvious."_

    
    
        predicted_mvx = median(left_mvx, top_mvx, topright_mvx)
        predicted_mvy = median(left_mvy, top_mvy, topright_mvy)
    

These two lines of pseudocode are patented. In reality, they usually are
implemented in just about two lines. There's nothing non-obvious about it; if
you take 15 minutes and go test the only two possible median prediction
methods, this one comes up as the best.

And yet it's patented. And most video coding software patents are just like
this one: stupid.

If you want even more ridiculous ones, just go look at motion search patents;
they've basically patented everything under the sun.

Patents should be on implementations, not ideas. _Algorithms are ideas, not
implementations_. People didn't do this decades ago; the inventor of Quicksort
didn't rush out to patent it. But today, any time anyone comes up with an
algorithm, they instantly patent it, because the system is broken.

~~~
michaelneale
I think DEC did have a patent on link lists in the 80s ;) - but still, your
point remains. It wasn't the inventor that did it either (just someone having
a laugh).

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dstorrs
Last time I did a startup, it was made very clear to me that having IP was
effectively a requirement; without it, our chances of getting investment money
were enormously lower, and our likely value at M&A or IPO would be lower as
well. In other words, _not_ getting a patent would significantly decrease the
chances of success, and the eventual value of the company.

So I applied. The short version of the story: it was a revolting, morally
abhorrent, tedious, timewasting and unbelievably _expensive_ process. It costs
$15,000 to apply for a preliminary patent which offers no protection, but does
set the date of your priority. From the date you file the preliminary patent,
you have 1 year to file the all-up version or all rights expire and you can't
get them back. Doing this second version would have cost $50,000.

Throughout the application process, the lawyers made very clear that:

1) We wouldn't get approved or denied for 4-5 years.

2) We wouldn't ever know until the patent was actually granted if someone else
had already filed one on it that had priority over ours, because some patents
are not visible to a search.

3) The patent was going to be useless to us in court, because a) we would not
have the money to defend it and b) we had probably invalidated it anyway by
discussing the idea in public and/or having a publicly-visible (if
unpublished) alpha version available before the patent application was filed.

4) Whatever protection it did grant was only in the USA; international
protection was an entirely different ball of wax that we'd need to deal with
separately, and probably couldn't have gotten or paid for even if we had
wanted to.

Tell me how this does not describe an utterly broken system that discriminates
against small companies?

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HeyLaughingBoy
The problem here wasn't the patent system. It was that your potential
investors insisted on you having one!

You make it pretty clear that you only went through this "revolting...process"
only because you wanted investment money.

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tsally
Red Hat is so kickass. We need more publicly traded open source companies.

~~~
known
I believe more publicly traded open source companies are possible when SEC
regulates market capitalization.

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messel
Fortune favors the bold.

But unfortunately, if you build something of great enough value patent holders
will do their best to recognize their ideas in your solution.

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aw3c2
This is a prime example why commercial use of open-source leads to benefits
for both sides. Some people think "commercial" == "bad" no matter what. Here
you see that with commercial background, you might be able to help the greater
good with your backing.

~~~
lucifer
Are you entirely certain that RedHat is not worried about future 'submarine'
warfare in future? (Sure, they have a steady supply of peasant soldiers, but
the empire rules the seas...)

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Flipparachi
It was nice, it could be better :)

Who does RH legal talk about here, anybody got link: "The brief of one large
technology company even tried to argue that patents somehow benefit the open
source community."?

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known
Why there are no patents in Hollywood?

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jcl
Someone is trying to create them: <http://www.plotpatents.com/>

Related Slashdot article:
<http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/0239221>

~~~
known
but not as rampant as in Software Industry.

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jhigdon
RedHat++

