

Ask HN: Have you ever used a software patent as a reference? - lmarinho

A patent should be a mean of sharing useful inventions with the world and getting paid in return.<p>I'm curious about how many here have actually read a software patent (or some text derived directly from it) that was genuinely helpful in solving a problem. Specific examples would be interesting to hear.
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marssaxman
If you read a patent, you or your company becomes liable for triple damages,
since it is considered willful infringement. Since you can't know what patents
you might already be accidentally "infringing", the sane policy is to avoid
reading or learning about any patents. This is explicit policy at many
technology companies.

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chc
It's perfectly safe to read expired patents or patents that you otherwise have
a right to. That's supposed to be why they exist, actually. The question is
whether you've read expired patents to learn about the inventions in there or
if you've ever actually used the knowledge in a patent your company has
licensed (rather than just use it as a CYA).

I believe the OP's hypothesis is that software patents don't serve the patent
system's primary purpose of disseminating useful knowledge, and he wants to
test this.

~~~
lmarinho
That is correct. If the safest policy is to avoid touching patents altogether
and people come up with similar solutions to problems without having any
information whatsoever about a related patent it begs the question: what
knowledge did the patent bring to the world?

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ig1
When I was working in finance I used to read patents filed by exchanges so I
could figure out how their matching algorithms worked, but never to find out
how to solve a particular problem.

