
The patent system isn’t broken — we are - berberich
http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/11/broken-patent-system/
======
mycroftiv
>If “the patent system is broken” is a lazy rhetorical cheat, then “software
patents shouldn’t be allowed” is the most completely vacuous intellectual cop-
out possible.

What an insulting and unfounded statement. The arguments against software
patents are strong and coherent. Intelligent people can disagree in good faith
about the issue, but labeling the anti-software patent position a "completely
vacuous cop-out" is unjustified rhetoric. So far as I can see, he doesn't
really provide anything other than "math is hard, companies spend money on it"
to support a contrary position, and the philosophical point that physical
inventions are based on mathematical physics is true but outside the scope of
legal reasoning.

The whole piece irritates me, because it is really just repeating the standard
arguments for the utility of the patent system in general which all serious
participants in the debate already know. The implication is that opponents of
software patents are just too ignorant to know the basic issues - which may be
true enough of Random Internet Commentators, but is certainly not true of the
many experts who are opposed to software patents.

~~~
mikeash
I particularly enjoyed the bit where he starts with, "What we keep calling
'software patents' are just regular old patents", then spends several
paragraphs discussing the history of software patents and how they've been
treated differently than others.

~~~
berberich
There's a difference between patents that happen to cover software and a
carved-out subsection of patents designated specifically for software by law.
We currently have the former - Niley believes we _should have_ the latter.

~~~
mikeash
That's certainly true, but as I understood it, he's arguing that patents that
happen to cover software are no different from patents that happen to cover
anything else, and then he goes on to describe in detail how patents that
happen to cover software are different from others.

~~~
GHFigs
I'll attempt to clarify, but these my own words, not Nilay's:

1\. There is nothing inherent about "software" that suggests you can't create
a patentable invention with it, therefore statements like "software patents
shouldn’t be allowed" are wrong, or at least equivalent to "patents shouldn't
be allowed".

2\. Software has certain properties that result in undesirable side-effects or
ambiguities under the patent system at present, therefore we should adjust the
treatment of patents on software to mitigate those effects and clarify those
ambiguities. An example would be reducing term lengths to something more
compatible with the pace of innovation.

~~~
mikeash
> 1\. There is nothing inherent about "software" that suggests you can't
> create a patentable invention with it, therefore statements like "software
> patents shouldn’t be allowed" are wrong, or at least equivalent to "patents
> shouldn't be allowed".

I don't understand, how does that work? Let's get rid of the word "software"
for a moment. Say I think that patents involving ducks shouldn't be allowed,
for whatever reason. There's nothing inherent about ducks that means you can't
make a patentable invention with a duck. But that by no means implies that my
stance against duck patents means I'm against patents as a whole.

~~~
GHFigs
"One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against duck patents,
you're against patents in general. Gradually our machines consist more and
more of ducks. Things that used to be done with levers and cams and gears are
now done with bills and feathers and webbed feet. There's nothing special
about mechanical embodiments of control systems that should make them
patentable, and the duck equivalent not." --
<http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html>

I would also point out the other possibility in what I said before: that
statements like "duck patents shouldn't be allowed" are wrong. Maybe "wrong"
sounds too absolute, so substitute "incomplete" if you like. " _Some_ duck
patents shouldn't be allowed" is a different proposition, and probably closer
to what most people actually think, but Nilay is specifically addressing the
absolutist rhetorical frenzy on you see on sites like Quacker News.

~~~
mikeash
The ubiquity of software (or ducks) in modern machines isn't really relevant
to the implications of the positions people hold. Just because software is
used everywhere doesn't mean that being against software patents implies being
against all patents. I think what you and others are trying to say here is
that if you're against software patents, you _should_ be against all patents,
but that's substantially different. It's taking an invalid rhetorical shortcut
of assuming the other person has no good reason to make the distinction,
rather than actually asking whether he does.

As for "some", you may be right, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any
worthwhile software patents. Really, the fix for software patents is probably
to reduce the term and vastly increase the requirements for novelty rather
than eliminating them altogether, but on the other hand I really don't see
much downside to simply disallowing it completely. Maybe I'm missing it, but
patents don't really seem to be a requirement for software innovation.

~~~
GHFigs
That isn't what's being said in that paragraph at all. You're fixating one one
sentence (the second) and completely ignoring the latter two. It's not about
ubiquity, it's about software and mechanical parts being equivalent in their
ability to comprise inventions. They're just different materials you can build
inventions out of. It speaks no more about the merits of an invention than any
other material.

Put another way: What's so special about "not-software" or "not-duck" that
excludes it from the issue you have with software or duck patents?

~~~
mikeash
> Put another way: What's so special about "not-software" or "not-duck" that
> excludes it from the issue you have with software or duck patents?

That's pretty much my point. The original construction assumes that not only
is there nothing special, but that the person arguing against software (duck)
patents thinks that there is nothing special.

My real complaint is phrasing it by saying that a person who argues against
software patents _must be_ opposed to all patents, when it would be much more
correct and much less insulting to say that this person _should be_ opposed to
all patents. One reduces the other person's argument to an absurd degree
without allowing for any possibility that they might have a point, and the
other just states why _you_ (or whoever) think they're wrong.

~~~
GHFigs
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry you were insulted
by something I didn't say, and that you feel the argument you didn't make was
unfairly reduced to absurdity. I was only trying to help.

------
bediger
This is a rubbish article. It attempts to paper over obvious, horrible
problems by blaming the people who try to game the system. It also attempts to
marginalize objections to the current patent system by blaming people.

For starters, the anti-patent (or even anti-"Intellectual Property") position
is _not_ a default mindset, even today. The anti-patent viewpoint is not an
"intellectual cheat", if the arguers back up the position with research, facts
and examples, which, oddly, this article even gives.

Secondarily, the article even raises the basis for patents in the USA: to
promote progress in science and engineering. If the patent system doesn't do
that, then what is it's purpose? If the patent system just ends up giving
incumbents in the market ways to limit competition,the it is indeed well and
truly broken.

~~~
johnpapps
Very well said, this article is misleading to say the least.

I take issue with article suggesting that all anti-patent views want that
patent system abolished. That is absolutely not the case. The patent system
should be brought into line with the rate at which industry is capable of
innovating today. Furthermore, software patents need special treatment in
their own right. They are simply not specific enough, and it is the
generalisation that stifles innovation.

Again, I refer to Martin Fowler's excellent blog post on the subject of
software patents <http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwarePatent.html>

------
jbooth
Can someone summarize what the hell this guy's point is? I read 5 different
paragraphs closely and skimmed the rest (he needs an editor) and can't figure
out what he's saying, besides calling people who have a beef with software
patents "lazy".

What's his solution to Intellectual Ventures, et al? One of the paragraphs I
did read compared them to buying up land in the middle of town and setting up
a strip mine. Which isn't a favorable comparison and, incidentally, we have
zoning laws against that.

~~~
crxpandion
His main idea is that the way software patents are classified now does not
make sense. He then suggests that a new class of patents be created just for
software with special rules and regulation.

I'm not too sure why his title blames people because in the end he ends up
blaming the current laws.

~~~
Symmetry
Also, he talks about how patents of well known things aren't a problem,
because current law prohibits that.

EDIT: Of course, I don't agree.

~~~
jbooth
And unironically provides a trivial math equation land-grab by Apple as proof
that patents are providing value to society, on the other hand.

------
joebadmo
I recently asked a patent lawyer acquaintance of mine the question: "Do you
think patents encourage innovation?"

His answer was: "There's absolutely no question at all whatsoever."

Which I was certainly a bit suprised by.

Maybe the truest conclusion I can come to is that, well, because he's a patent
lawyer and his livelihood is based on that being true, he has every incentive
to believe it.

I think it's worth pointing out that Nilay Patel is a laywer. [EDIT: non-
practicing lawyer, never a patent lawyer] It's clear to me when I read his
writing on the subject as well as when I hear him talk about it on the podcast
that he's so far from my own thinking on this as to be almost
incomprehensible.

I've slowly been reading this:
<http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm>

But it seems to be light on data. Seems to me that theoretical arguments are
well established and fairly strong on both sides at this point. Does anyone
know of any empirical studies that have been done on the subject? Is that even
possible? Any strong natural experiments?

~~~
bediger
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it."

    
    
        --Upton Sinclair
    

My own observation is that "The Law" (that class of people in charge of
creating, extending and defending laws and legal systems) in the USA has
crawled inside itself. The legalists like your patent lawyer and others will
give very persuasive and logical arguments for laws and the current
implementaton of laws. Unfortunately, the non-logical axioms and symbols they
start with are all legal. The Law has come unstuck from reality. This un-
reality is a bit more subtle than trying to legislate the numerical value of
Pi, probably because they've dropped the axiom that The Law exists to serve
society.

~~~
joebadmo
Yeah, I've been thinking about how perverse legal systems are by fundamental
nature.

Laws are made (to some large degree), argued, and adjudicated by lawyers. The
more laws there are, and the more complex legal system as a whole gets, the
more we need lawyers and the more lawyers we need.

Seems to me like the definition of a vicious cycle. There are no controls. Are
controls even possible?

------
kenjackson
In response to Nillay I left this brief comment:

Nilay, I think your patent exchange misses a key point in software. No one
reads them. Nobody reads patents. In fact, go talk to a Microsoft and Apple
engineer about patents and they'll tell you that not only do they not read
them, their corporate policy does NOT allow engineers to read patents.
Apparently it drastically increases the likelihood of treble damages for the
company.

You give the PageRank example, missing though that there was work from IBM
that was very similar. See this classic paper, "Authorative Sources in a
HyperLinked Environment" from 1997(<http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home...>. The
genius/luck of Google was continuing to push this idea of search, when no one
else seemed all that interested (recall AltaVista, Yahoo, and Lycos had all
seen Google's results and were offered a chance to buy the company -- they all
passed. Their genius was in persisting and not giving up and getting their
PhD.)

The Apple patent you show is an example of what I call, "Being the first to
ask the question". I'm not sure how else you'd solve the problem besides how
they did it. It's the obvious way to do it. They probably lucked out because
they were the first company to be faced with the question. This has become
rampant in the mobile industry. Whenever you have a new form factor, there are
new problems. They aren't necessarily hard, but they're new. And the fact that
they're new problems means there's no prior art. You can suddenly file a bunch
of patents based on your solutions, 99% of whcih are the same solutions the
guy across the street would come up with in six months when he happens to hit
the same problem. That's not innovation -- that's blocking innovation as it
ensures your six month advantage becomes a 15 year advantage (or however long
patents expire).

Nobody in SW reads patents. Furthermore patents are actually very hard for
those in the field to follow. They use non-standard jargon. I'd much rather
read source code or a CS paper to get the ideas -- as those are usually
written just by the actual developer, and not translated by the lawyer.

And an unrelated, but important point, IMO. SW, unlike most other endeavors,
is something that people rapidly build on. People still take aspirin today, in
the exact same form as 50 years ago. No one uses a piece of software in the
exact same form as 50 years ago. The closest is probably vi, but even vi has
had significant code churn over the past 30 years -- it's quite possible that
it currently shares no lines of code from the original version. SW evolves
rapidly. Patents seem much better suited for fields where inventions can stand
on their own for significant periods of time.

~~~
GHFigs
_No one reads them. Nobody reads patents._

I do. I do with some regularity, and each time I come away more convinced that
the majority of the press and discussion on the subject is complete garbage
precisely because people don't bother to read them.

 _You give the PageRank example, missing though that there was work from IBM
that was very similar._

There was a lot of similar work. There is always similar work. You'll find
examples of it in the references section of the patent that nobody reads.
Including:

'Jon M. Kleinberg, "Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment," 1998,
Proc. Of the 9.sup.th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp.
668-677.'

~~~
kkowalczyk
And what do you do after you read a patent? Clearly, not building useful
products that use those ideas, because a patent expressly prohibits you from
doing that.

The part of the argument you're missing is that patent were intended to
"promote the progress of science and useful arts" and, as they're practiced
today, are doing the exact opposite: delay the progress and useful arts.

In software, if I can't use an idea for 20 years, it's useless. I would rather
take my chances, think about the problem and come up with my own solution.
Unfortunately, because of onslaught of patents, that solution is more and more
likely to have been patented by someone else.

As a practitioner of software arts and science, I not only don't have the time
to sift through thousands of patents, but I also risk potentially fatal
damages by independently coming up with ideas of my own.

That is the cost of patents and it's becoming unbearable.

~~~
hexagonc
I agree completely. One of the key problems with software patents is the very
idea that an algorithm is deemed worthy of patent protection simply because it
is not obvious to the "average practitioner" of the art. But what skills/level
of creativity constitute "average"? What if you have a company, like Google,
whose core hiring principle is to find people who have above average skill and
creativity? This seems to set up a perverse disincentive to hire smart people
because the smarter they are, the more likely they are to rediscover on their
own an idea that is already patented and thus violate it.

The fact is that if the idea patented truly is the best way of doing something
then a lot of smart and above average developers are likely to unknowingly
bump into that idea out of necessity. And this seems to be a problem that is
unique to software patents precisely because of the closeness of software to
mathematics itself. Some algorithms are provably optimal for a particular
problem which means that everybody smart enough that faces that problem will
solve it the same way. If you're smart enough to come up with the best way of
doing something on your own but can not use it because it was patented then
you're forced into a wasteful outlay of creativity just trying to work around
the patent. I don't see this as spurring innovation or at least not worthwhile
innovation.

------
aristidb
Declaring opposing opinions to be knee-jerk must be the oldest trick in the
world.

Phrases like these infuriate me: "lazy conventional wisdom that the patent
system is broken beyond repair". No, it's not lazy. Smart people have devoted
a lot of thought to this, and while some arrive at the conclusion that patents
are a net benefit, that is far from the only conclusion that thinking people
would be able to reach.

~~~
jessriedel
In addition, those phrases just make it difficult for the people who you are
trying to persuade to listen to you. I really struggled to read this article,
but it's hard to think clearly when the author is constantly calling you a
lazy moron.

In the end, the only people who finish the article are the people who already
agree with you, now even more confident that they are right and the opposition
are all idiots.

------
djackson
One of his supporting arguments cuts both ways.

Apple's patent on "hand scaling velocity" simply gives a mathematical formula
for the sentence: "scale at a speed proportional to how fast the fingers are
moving."

There is nothing groundbreaking or advanced about the math here, or the idea
behind it. Anyone implementing a multi-touch screen is likely to come to
discover that a fixed scaling speed sometimes feels sluggish or awkwardly
fast, and so that speed should adjust based on user input. And now, without
realizing it, they've infringed on Apple's IP and are open to being sued.

~~~
azakai
Yes, the math he shows there from Apple's patent looks very obvious. Anyone
looking to implement detection of multiple touches on a touchscreen would end
up with basically those equations, or others that are functionally equivalent
to them.

I want to give TFA's author more credit, but I worry that he is just copy-
pasting some math, in hopes that math will just look incomprehensible and
hence novel. But that a patent has some equations in it doesn't make it novel.
This math certainly isn't.

If you want an example of a patent that actually _does_ have nontrivial math,
then the MP3 patents for example qualify. (Whether you think even that should
be patentable is of course still an open question - but at least the math in
the MP3 patents isn't obvious.)

------
Jach
An interesting article, but I think its main point can be summed up as "Look
at all these dumbos holding signs saying to end slavery, when interviewed they
can't even give good reasons! Haha, here's a few reasons why slavery is
actually _good_!"

Nearly every big cause, right or wrong, has its supporters that may have just
happened to be on that side, or thought about it seriously once and have since
forgotten the details, or indeed have written many essays or books about the
subject. I'm sure there are pieces more elegant and detailed than this that
argue for abolishing the patent system; characterizing a position by the
existence of uninformed supporters seems useless to me since pretty much all
positions have those. The sentiment of educating the masses is nice, and I can
agree with it, but on the other hand this is why we have skill specialization
--I can give some money to someone who has spent lots and lots of time on the
issues to continue their fight, I don't have to spend the same amount of time
myself.

I know basic algebra looks brilliant to most ordinary people scared of math
but I thought "Patents publicly disclose some of the most advanced work ever
done by some of the most creative and resourceful people in history, and it’ll
all be free for the taking in several years" particularly amusing after the
Apple screenshot. For startups and other companies outside the Valley (where
there's a strong sense of sharing), how often do actual game-changing things
get patented instead of made into a trade secret?

------
hxa7241
> [disclosure is] an important way the patent system encourages innovation,
> actually: it forces inventors to build alternative ways to do things

Are you sure it is not just a way of forcing people to waste effort making
something different when there is a perfectly good solution ready to use? Is
it not better to be building _on_ things rather than _around_ them? and having
invention driven primarily by demand not by obstacles?

> Stop offering patent protection and there’s no more required disclosure --
> all this stuff stays locked up as trade secrets

Are you sure it is not the likeliness of keeping the secret that dominates
here? That is, if you think you _can_ keep an invention secret for longer than
a patent term, you will choose that instead of a patent -- since it will give
you a longer monopoly. And if you think you _cannot_ keep the secret, patent
disclosure does not help anyone else that much, since the secret was going to
leak anyway.

The supposed rational is one thing. Whether it actually works that way is
another -- and there is no clear proof that it _does_ work.

------
georgemcbay
"Because getting a patent means accepting a time-limited monopoly on your
invention, anyone will be able to use this specification to build their own
search engine when the patent expires in 2018."

This paragraph from the article points out one of the larger issues I have
with patents in high-tech, which is the length of the grant. Even ignoring the
fact that simply reading patent claims is a VERY long way away from working
code and related infrastructure, the lapse of the patent plus the knowledge
from the patent would only be good for helping you to implement Google's
algorithm as it existed in 1998(!). Forget about 2018, Google's algorithms
(while still built on similar concepts) are known to be very different today
or even 4 years ago than they were in 1998.

By granting such a long term to patents you are not just blocking competitors
from the core claim, but also any innovations you make while the patent is
active, assuming enough of the original invention remains that anything else
that uses your non-filed tweaks would still be in violation of the original
process.

Result? You could (assuming reading a patent magically allowed you to actually
recreate the system) recreate 1998 Google in 2018. Approximate value of that
'knowledge gift to society' IN 2018? $0! You're 2 decades behind where you
need to be if you're starting at the original core invention.

BTW, I don't mean for any of this to be a knock on Google, PageRank is simply
the example the original article decided to use. Google remains one of the
only big software-related corporations whose patent usage/enforcement hasn't
yet been destructive to the industry as a whole.

------
Symmetry
If Title 35 was a good description of what the US patent system was like in
practice then our patent system would still be working.

------
cek
I think this is a healthy perspective. Far better than the knee-jerk "patents
are evil" perspective we see so much of today.

------
petegrif
Thank god someone is actually thinking about it in an informed way and
fighting back against a dogmatic (and frequently extremely poorly informed)
abolitionist position.

------
URSpider94
This is an extremely well-thought-out defense of the value of patents, and it
presents the issues as nuanced problems that need to be resolved with careful
thought.

I have long thought, as the author does, that a ban on "software patents" is
extremely short-sighted, given that pretty much any physical object can be
represented by equations or software. I really love his example of a beer
bottle with a particular neck shape dictated by fluid mechanics equations.

His thoughts on patent trolls are also very welcome -- if we truly believe
that intellectual property has value, then we have to allow it to be bought,
sold and asserted. But, it does seem reasonable to tie damages to lost revenue
or other actual business costs, which non-practicing entities would not have.

------
arcdrag
I'm not sure what the title is supposed to mean. FTA "The solution is simple,
of course: we just have to add a real software patent section to Title 35. " I
guess he's trying to say the patent system isn't broken, but here's how I
would go about fixing it.

------
njharman
> most important and disruptive inventions in the history of the world

Hyperbole much? PageRank, really? The Internet, yes is one of the most
important and disruptive inventions. One companies algorithm for sorting
search results. A company that's only been around for a decade or so. Search
is huge, Google is huge, but they and esp their pagerank agol ain't close to
being one of the most important and disruptive inventions in the world.

------
xilun0
Summary by one sentence of the article: "Now, I’m not a software developer,
mathematician, or patent expert". That reads in other parts of the text... and
even in the poor choice of patent excerpts.

Some parts are naive at a rare level, e.g.: "Those rules might actually solve
the software patent dilemma for us if we just wait long enough: the gold rush
to patent all these fundamental software technologies means that they’ll all
be public domain prior art in a few years, and any obvious improvements won’t
be patentable. The pendulum swings both ways."

And the long rant about software patent not being explicitly defined in the
law and that fact being considered as an important advance in the discussion
-- well did anybody did not know that? And even if it was the case, does that
make the general discussion about the goodness or badness of patenting
software irrelevant in any way?

------
serichsen
If a system does not work for the population it is intended for, who is to
blame? The population, or the system?

It does not matter. In any case, to make it work, you need to change either
the system or the population. I am quite sure that changing the population is
not realistic at all.

Note that this leaves aside the concrete issue, in which I believe that the
blame rests mostly on the system, which failed to understand the motivation of
people. It does not matter, though (see above).

------
chromic
"is broken" equates to "allows or encourages something that wasn't originally
intended". That's an apt description of the patent system and the current
situation.

------
njharman
IP is the problem. Software patents are a mess cause we've convinced ourselves
that owning intangible thoughts and ideas is keen!

------
ay
Wow. the equation for computing of the hand scaling velocity is a gem. It
computes, when translated, how much the distance between the fingers changed
per the time interval... or... yes, hand scaling velocity!

I hesitate to call this an "advanced technology". It's a kind of calculation
we'd have done during what amounts to college years in the US.

I stopped reading there.

~~~
KVFinn
Yes, he seems to think Apple's got some magic system in there, not realizing
that it's just a basic calculation that anyone else solving that problem would
have come up with.

I bet if you put 10 decent programmers in a room, more than half come up with
the same thing. That's true of SO many software patents.

------
monochromatic
Out of all the articles about patents that get posted on HN, this is one of
the most knowledgeably written I've seen.

------
Astrohacker
I read most of the article, and I think it is as flawed as his title. Of
course, we aren't broken. If anything is broken, it is the system. If there is
a problem between us and the system that we have created, then it is the
system that we should change, not us.

------
neebz
can anyone tell me what are repercussions of simply disallowing selling of
patents?

I mean if they just allow only inventors themselves to license their patents
and don't allow IV/Lodsys kind of companies to own patents they didn't invent.

Won't that solve half of the problems?

~~~
jessriedel
This would prevent the economic separation of inventor from producer. That
separation is key for specialization and therefore economic efficiency.

There's no reason that a scientist/inventor in a laboratory is going to be any
good at running a business selling his invention, just like there's no reason
a farmer is (or should be) any good at running a grocery store. It's much more
efficient for the farmer to simply sell his produce wholesale to the
distributors so he can concentrate on _farming_.

Don't take offense at this, but I think this idea (that the problem with the
patent system is the separation of inventor and producer) is especially
prevalent within the start-up community. Such entrepreneurs are used to
thinking of the entire process as occurring in their figurative basement:
identification of the problem, invention, patenting, production, and sales.
When this is possible, it's _awesome_...but it's not usually possible. In many
industries/disciplies, _each_ one of these steps is done by a different person
(who are very good at it because they are specialized) so it is crucial that
they are able to capture their value-added at each step.

------
neilk
I could not follow all the ramble, but he seems to think that patents are just
fine, and all we have to do is implement the law better. But if the law isn't
implementable or understandable by mere mortals, the law is _wrong_.

------
brlewis
Tl;dr version: Look at all this useful math disclosed thanks to software
patents.

~~~
crxpandion
Thanks to Apple I will never have to re-derive first order finite difference
formulas!

~~~
ontoillogical
Is it me or is there a mistake in the cited part of that patent too:

"where d(FI[n],FO[n]) is the squared Euclidean distance between the fingers"

The formula that is then given is under a square root, i.e. it is the
Euclidean distance NOT the squared Euclidean distance.

------
NHQ
[http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/11/broken-patent-
system/#com...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/11/broken-patent-
system/#comment-283799490)

------
wtracy
Random idea: What if all software patents were required to include an
executable code example demonstrating the patented concept?

~~~
Coincoin
I don't think the problem with software patents is that the inventor didn't
necessarily made the code before.

Quite the contrary, some of the most controversial software patents are in
fact so simple that you learn that in CS 101 or by yourself. Some other are
just plain common sense.

But I agree it could help a tiny little bit with claims such as: "1) A mean of
broadcasting current mood and menial activities using text messages. 2) 1 over
the internet. 3) 1 over a portable device" (fictious, or maybe not?)

But still, my friend told me he could have made Twitter in two days.

------
ldar15
The ideas that Nilay puts forth as good examples of patents are held up here
to be bad examples.

Why is that?

Because Nilay doesn't understand why these patents are obvious.

Which is the whole fucking problem with the patent system Nilay:

People like _you_ saying "Well, these patents look reasonable to me, so why
are you people who do this for a living complaining?"

