
Ask HN: What are some examples of software patents used for good? - Dysiode
In light of all the cross suing, most recently the Apple/HTC lawsuits, and stuff like Lodsys' trolling app developers it's hard to imagine software patents being more than tools for greedy companies.<p>In the interest of not falling prey to sensationalism I wanted to find out if there's more to the story than just "software patents are evil."
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_delirium
One positive example I can think of is that Stanford's computer-music research
center, CCRMA, was funded for years from the royalties they got by licensing
synthesis techniques they invented to synthesizer companies like Yamaha. In
that case, the incentives seem to roughly line up as intended: significant new
computational technique was invented and patented, and researchers who did so
get royalties to fund more research in the area.

Though even there, it mostly looks good if you look at the patents with a
higher bar for innovativeness. Inventing something like FM synthesis entirely
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation_synthesis>) is a bit
different from patenting the Nth variation on some well-known synthesis
algorithm.

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aristidb
I think a problem with this kind of question is that it _requires_ thinking
about counterfactuals. You can't say "this patent is good" without thinking
about what would have happened if it had not been granted.

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gacek
MP3?

It allowed the Fraunhofer Institute to capitalize on their audio research.

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aristidb
Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but at least it's no trivial patent.

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azakai
Indeed, the MP3 patents and a small number of similar ones are the only good
examples of nontrivial software patents. They are, sadly, a tiny fraction of
all software patents.

Regarding whether the MP3 patents were a good thing or not, that is as you say
debatable. It made developing the technology profitable, but it also created
barriers to interoperability - for example, it is problematic for open source
operating systems to support MP3s, and they are forced to do various
workarounds of dubious legality. Compare this to the situation on the Web:
Anyone can write a web browser, without having to pay anyone else.

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ChuckMcM
Well my first encounter with software patents was with the Diffie-Hellman and
RSA patents. Followed promptly by the Lempel-Ziv compression patent and then
the MP3 patent. Can't say that I enjoyed any of those encounters :-)

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sgentle
I bought a new pair of wireless headphones a few months ago. I'd always heard
that wireless audio was a really dumb idea because of the sound quality, but I
really wanted to get rid of that cable.

After some research, I discovered that there's a particular Bluetooth audio
codec called apt-X, which has essentially wired sound quality (and certainly
way better than the awful default Bluetooth audio). No cables, no dongles (my
mac supports apt-X out of the box).

This represents a genuine (patented) innovation - none of the other wireless
audio solutions are as good. I can't help but wonder if the people behind it
would have bothered if they couldn't patent the codec.

I don't know if that makes the patent system worth it for software. I suspect
it doesn't. But I know at least one example where it led to innovation that
may not have happened otherwise.

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arctangent
I find this question very ambiguous. Either software patents (or patents in
general) are a good idea or they are not a good idea.

Asking whether good things have been done with proceeds from licensing
software (or other) patents is a different question entirely, and inevitably
leads to the answer: yes. (Of course _some_ patent holders have used the
income to do good things!)

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arctangent
Care to explain why you disagree instead of just downvoting?

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ChuckMcM
I cannot speak for the HN readership in general of course, but I suspect the
downvotes come from folks who don't believe you've added anything to the
conversation. It is perfectly reasonable to say 'this is an ambiguous
question' if you follow up with 'I chose to interpret it this way ... and my
response is ...' or 'The definition 'good' here isn't well understood, does
good mean socially good or corporately good, or good as in you won't go to
hell if you do it good?'

So yes, the question can be interpreted in many ways, when I read it I felt
the OP was trying to find examples which support the claim that the software
patents are 'good' where good means they provide a net benefit to the
community.

That being said, software patents are an emotional topic here and sometimes
that overwhelms the conversation.

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arctangent
I appreciate your reply. I do think I was trying to add to the conversation,
if only by pointing out that the question itself was not as well posed as it
could have been. Perhaps I should have gone the extra mile and offered an
opinion based on one (or both) readings of the question.

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tzs
It's an interesting question, but of the several responses so far the only one
that actually tried to provide an example is getting voted down. My guess is
that is going to happen to any answer that provides any example of a software
patent being used for good is going to get a bunch of down votes, making any
discussion pointless.

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aristidb
Do you mean _delirium's response? That one seems to be solidly in the black by
now.

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tzs
Yeah. It was greying out when I posted, but now it's back alive.

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j_baker
It's a bit naive to try to judge patents in terms of some dichotomy between
good patents and bad patents. In principle, patents aren't really good or
evil. They're just part of running a business. That said, the patent system
itself can have good or evil effects on society.

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windsurfer
Patents in general are "bad" in my opinion, but they can be used for good.
Just like guns may be considered "bad" in general, there are legitimate uses
for them, and they can be used for good.

The OP even says "used for good".

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Gustomaximus
Not all companies are like this. I work for a company that believes
enforcement of patents stifles innovation. And looking for the next innovation
and gaining a first mover advantage is much more important than spending time
and resources protecting past ones.Plus the end user is much better off in
this market. We will patent to protect ourselves from other companies, but not
enforce it on others.

However this needs an idealistic leader and wont work large scale across
markets so while it annoys me when I see these spiderwebs of who is suing who,
I really put the blame at the fault of the patent system. I don't know what
the answer is but it seems something is seriously broken.

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mugsydean
Let me first say I hate most patents, but they are alowing patents for stupid
things, like a rectagular touch screen phones. Or maybe the patent lenght
should be shorter, so as to give an advantage, and incentive, but not to halt
progress.

Yet, It seems that Google's secret sauce search algorithm made lots of cash
for Stanford to help continue to educate and incubate more ideas like this.
Without Googles edge of a protected formula, the relatively "non evil" company
may not have grown to offer us free services like google voice, gmail, google
docs, and a free OS.

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Vivtek
That's not a patent, it's a trade secret. The difference is that if I
independently invent a search algorithm that happens to be the same as
Google's, they don't have the right to sue me.

I personally find secrecy just fine.

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tobylane
The good patents are the silent ones, the ones broken by people who have never
known of the patent, who describe it in some other but equally unique, novel
and non-trivial way. Along the same lines, Red Hat (and others, even self-
employed full time open source coders) may talk about implementing something
useful, but not make reference to the patent. I'm sure we're heard of
something that was patented for OSS, but not as a patent, as a program
feature.

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Rusky
The best patents in any area are those kinds of novel inventions that people
will look for to solve a problem, not after accidentally breaking them.

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makecheck
Undoubtedly a number of lawyers' children have benefited from their family's
greatly increased income. Otherwise, I can't think of anything.

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patentnerd
How about the Google Pagerank patent?

<http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999>

It explains the primary algorithm behind Google Search. I suppose it could
have been kept as a trade secret all these years, if not for the patent
system.

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azakai
It might have, but it is very likely it would have been published in an
academic paper anyhow (like it actually has).

And in any case, no one actually reads software patents (lawyers tell you not
to!), so even if it was patented but not published or otherwise documented, no
one would have known about it.

While the PageRank patent is definitely not a trivial patent - unlike the vast
majority of software patents - it still isn't an example of a patent used for
good.

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gerickson
>> "it still isn't an example of a patent used for good"

What do you mean by good, then? It has generated lots of cash for Google and
thus provided lots of jobs.

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scotty79
It would still generate and provide the same even if it was not patented.

Unless you believe that it was Google patent on page rank algorithm that
prevented all other companies to get better at doing search.

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xtacy
An interesting view that I got from someone who patents technologies working
at a big company, was that software patents tend to protect yourself (the
company) from getting sued by other patent trolls!

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azakai
No, software patents cannot protect you from patent trolls.

Patent trolls by definition do not produce any actual products. They only sue.
Any patents you have are therefore no defense against them.

A worrying development is trolling by proxy - a real company selling its
patents to a patent troll. This allows the real company to extort money
through its patents, without the risk of a countersuit, since the patent troll
is doing the actual suing.

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keypusher
I believe he is talking about the kind of mutually assured destruction that
keep companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and IBM from suing each other.
They all hold a ton of patents, and while they may infringe on each others
patents from time to time, they keep it to a minimum and nobody pursues it due
to the possibility of retaliatory patent action where both parties lose. Much
like the Cold War.

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azakai
Yes, perhaps that's what he meant, and he said "patent trolls" by mistake.

In any case, that is not really a case of patents being put to good use. They
might help you specifically, as a defensive measure, but only because of all
the bad uses of patents overall.

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xtacy
Yes, that's what I meant, and I used the wrong term. :)

I agree; it merely illustrates the flaws in the system that we have.

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shii
Redhat?

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sliverstorm
Redhat does not rely on patents or licencing. I wouldn't even be surprised if
they did not hold a single patent.

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shii
Are you insane? Redhat has tons of patents. They have a position of not
offensively using these patents against the community, "a promise" as it was
termed when I took a tour of their North Carolina facilities a few years ago.
Here[1] is a link to their patent policy and reasoning behind it.

[1] <http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html>

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wes-exp
Amazon 1-click. Prior to its invention, online purchases involved a laborious
10, 20, or even 100 clicks! It's too bad there isn't a Nobel prize for online
shopping. The inventors deserve some recognition. </sarcasm>

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sliverstorm
Honestly (and depressingly) I think the best examples of software patents used
for good are the software patents written to protect from exploitation... _by
the software patent system_ \- i.e. Creative Commons, GPLv2, BSD Licence, ...

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Natsu
The GPL, BSD, etc. licenses are licenses, not software patents.

I can't think of a good software patent. It's not a software patent, but there
was IBM's attempt to patent patent trolling which was a rather keen bit of
legal satire. I think it actually failed in the face of all that prior art,
but I might be confusing that patent application with another one.

~~~
sliverstorm
You guys are right, sorry. Total absent-minded mistake.

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Natsu
To be fair, I can't really answer the original question either.

I don't really like the i4i case, though it's probably at least closer to an
answer. Microsoft got what it deserved because it partnered with i4i, then
screwed them. There should have been non-patent means of getting justice in a
case like that, though, so I can hardly count that as something good about
software patents.

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gerickson
If I write a great piece of software, patent it, then run a business selling
it, then that patent does me (and my family) a lot of good. I worked hard to
create the software, and I should reap the rewards.

If software patents didn't exist, maybe I wouldn't have based my business on
that software in the first place because I'd worry that somebody else would
notice that it's profitable and use it to run their business. Patents are
necessary to encourage people to innovate, though obviously some patents (that
probably shouldn't have been given in the first place) have stunted
innovation.

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justinschuh
The request was for an actual example, not a hypothetical scenario. Also, you
seem to grossly misunderstand the function of software patents. You don't
patent a piece of software; you have a copyright that provides the full and
appropriate protection of law. In contrast, software patents apply to general
processes, use cases or algorithms, as opposed to specific implementations.

