I totally cannot bend my mind around this. It is irrelevant if patents on algorithms are useful and good for society in some cases. They are so much self-evidently wrong that the point is moot. The fact that "trivial" algorithms can be patented is a different question that I am not addressing. I am talking only about the non-trivial algorithms that require a stroke of genius.
Imagine that Euclid's algorithm was patented? Or Pythagoras theorem? Or the definition of exterior derivative? Or the expression of a function as Fourier series? All of these are valuable ideas that are non-trivial to come by. The same argument for software patents applies to each of these cases, and in all these cases it is evident (to me) that these mathematical constructions cannot be patented, and that society cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.
> Imagine that Euclid's algorithm was patented? Or Pythagoras theorem? Or the definition of exterior derivative? Or the expression of a function as Fourier series? All of these are valuable ideas that are non-trivial to come by. The same argument for software patents applies to each of these cases, and in all these cases it is evident (to me) that these mathematical constructions cannot be patented, and that society cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.
You are forgetting that patents are only granted for limited time. If we applied the current system, those things would be patented only for 20 years after their discovery. Would it still be unimaginable?
Maybe your opinion is still the same but the situation is not as clear-cut as it seems. For example, I would guess that if patents were cancelled the industrial budgets for research would somewhat decrease, because there would be smaller advantage in figuring things out first.
Patents should be understood as an alternative to trade secret.
The original reason for patents is enabling more information to become a public. When the patent system did not exist, the only way to protect inventions was to keep them secret. Patent is way to separate information from the economic use of the information. Without patents you must protect the information if you want exclusivity.
Imagine that some extremely important and new algorithm is not patented but kept a secret instead. Today it's possible use provide software as a service and keep the algorithm within protected servers.
> cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.
Current patent system is too restrictive and should be reformed. Instead of monopoly, it would be better to have mandatory licensing for algorithms for short period. For example 5 years with some fancy auctioning system to discover the correct price.
Patents on algorithms are bad because any sane person would feel revulsion at the though of them? Is that the content of your argument?
If Euclid's algorithm was patented in a system similar to our modern one, he would have... cornered the marked in ancient Greek cryptographic protocols for 20 years or so before other ancient mathematicians were allowed join in?
>Imagine that Euclid's algorithm was patented? Or Pythagoras theorem? Or the definition of exterior derivative? Or the expression of a function as Fourier series?
This is an interesting point and I'm not sure it cuts the way you want it to.
The world had to wait thousands of years for each of these algorithms to be developed. There are broad reasons for this, but one of them was probably the fact that nobody had any incentive to develop them. Mankind literally had to wait around for some random nerd to come up with these in his spare time.
Now imagine that they were patentable and exploitable for money (for 20 years). Perhaps they would have been developed centuries or millennia earlier. You would have teams of mathematicians from 1000BC onward, working to try to make money inventing theorems and machines and medicines.
20 years under patent seems like a small cost to pay to have something invented possibly thousands of years earlier (or, not kept under trade secret, as e.g. Damascus steel was).
While I understand your point of view (though I believe patents that last for a couple decades wouldn’t have ruined mathematics), the strongest point, at least to me, of the argument you’re responding to, was drugs.
Drugs, according to the comment, are like an algorithm, with a simple set of inputs— hard to discover these inputs, but then easy to replicate. Yet we seem to feel differently about patenting drugs?
As a mathematician with a patented algorithm / open source advocate... I'm extremely squeamish about this and not super comfortable with it. On the other hand... Cardano's formula was once a trade secret. He's dead and we know the trick now.
As others have pointed out, patents expire in 20 years or less. Nothing is stopping you from building on somebody else's patent (popular among trolls: a patent on applying your patent in a novel area, or a more optimized version, a dual version, etc, of your patent). In that situation you can't use your own patent without paying them... and neither can they use yours. Implementation might be a problem, but you can still prove your theorems.
Euclid and Pythagoras are not, and cannot, be patented. So it seems somewhat illogical to argue against patents with the hypothetical of those algorithms being patented.
Imagine that Euclid's algorithm was patented? Or Pythagoras theorem? Or the definition of exterior derivative? Or the expression of a function as Fourier series? All of these are valuable ideas that are non-trivial to come by. The same argument for software patents applies to each of these cases, and in all these cases it is evident (to me) that these mathematical constructions cannot be patented, and that society cannot grant monopoly of their usage to their discoverers.