Most of these are district court cases. The USA has a patent appeals court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [0], that takes all patent appeals nationally. The doctrine about "do it on a computer" patents will be formed by three judge panels chosen randomly from that appeals court, not by the districts.
But the very good sign from these cases is most were decided on the pleadings. That means there was no expensive discovery or claim construction procedure, much less a jury trial. A decision on the pleadings means that even in the best possible light, the patent holder doesn't have a case at all according to the judge. There is no cheaper way to dispose of an expensive and lengthy lawsuit. And a rule that can be disposed of on pleadings is exactly what reformers wanted from the Supreme Court.
The CAFC has seen a few of these and so far Taranto and Hughes, two of the newest Obama judges, have acquitted themselves superbly. We have well written and conclusive decisions from them calling the whole "do it on a computer" mess ineligible.
We'll have to wait and see how the more enthusiastic radicals for patenting everything influence the outcomes. Three judges that wanted to hand a monopoly on the centuries old, trillion dollar financial settlement industry to Alice even when no technological procedures were disclosed in their patent are still on the court: Moore, O'Malley, and Newman. Lourie was the swing vote in that decision and also says that Ultramercial [1] should have a monopoly on interstitial internet advertising because they wrote the century old idea up with 'on the internet' tacked onto the end. There are eleven judges and one empty slot on the CAFC so those four make up a large minority that will likely press for "on a computer" patents to come back.
Chief Judge Prost, Judge Dyk, and the three new Obama appointees seem much more rational and good for our industry. We should hope they are the ones who shape the interpretation of Alice in the future.
And remember that while "on a computer" patents -- the ones that describe a conventional business and add "on a computer" or "on the internet" without anything added to known technology -- are falling, lots of damaging software patents are still out there and apparently unharmed. The h.264 and mp3 patents that block open and free media players and browsers are still functioning. The ZFS and JFS patents that make BTRFS illegal are still out there. The compiler and VM patents from IBM, Sun, and others that hang over the head of anyone who writes either still exist. The long filename patents and others that Microsoft uses to tax Android are still taxing. The UI patents on smartphones that drive the smartphone wars are still driving them. New patents on computer vision, deep neural nets, machine learning, GPU computation, multithreading techniques, and more are being granted every tuesday.
Lucky for us, software patents that are on actual software are a lot less lucrative than the ones on business "on a computer." Even in smartphone litigation, most of the money verdicts depend on the shape of the box a smartphone comes in; don't steal the idea of a rounded rectangle and your lawsuit will be for tens of millions instead of billions. Still, every kind of software patent is bad, dishonest, and harmful to our industry and progress. They all need to go.
"The compiler and VM patents from IBM, Sun, and others that hang over the head of anyone who writes either still exist. "
I'm not sure IBM belongs on this list. When I worked at IBM, they were generally fine with pledging a ton of patents to open source, including any compiler patents that were interesting.
For example, we got the graph coloring register allocation patents pledged.
Algorithm patents do not patent math, they patent processes that are describable with math. It is the difference between patenting the concept of "sorting" and patenting a specific sorting algorithm; only the latter is allowed. The conceptual test for patentability of an algorithm in most countries is that it is directly reducible to practice as a novel electronic circuit design.
All patentable subject matters are directly describable with math in exactly the same way as proper algorithm patents, and chemical process patents have an identical abstract structure (just change "bits" to "atoms"), so any specific argument against algorithm patents would consistently apply to most or all patentable subject matters.
> Algorithm patents do not patent math, they patent processes that are describable with math. It is the difference between patenting the concept of "sorting" and patenting a specific sorting algorithm; only the latter is allowed.
The problem with this logic is that algorithms and math are the same thing.
F=ma describes what happens when you hit a golf ball with a club. You can't patent F=ma, you can patent a novel golf club. A golf club is not an equation.
An algorithm is not described by math, it is math.
Thought experiment: Suppose that you were allowed to patent math. Name some product that would infringe the math patent that would not infringe the corresponding algorithm patent.
> The conceptual test for patentability of an algorithm in most countries is that it is directly reducible to practice as a novel electronic circuit design.
That is no test. All novel algorithms (or, equivalently, mathematical formulas) are directly reducible to novel electronic circuit designs. Deterministically by a machine. It's like saying you can't patent math unless you write it down. You're attempting to distinguish two things using a test that identifies them as equivalent.
> All patentable subject matters are directly describable with math in exactly the same way as proper algorithm patents, and chemical process patents have an identical abstract structure (just change "bits" to "atoms"), so any specific argument against algorithm patents would consistently apply to most or all patentable subject matters.
The difference is that with "atoms" the description is distinct from the implementation. A computer simulation of the atoms in Tylenol wouldn't infringe a patent on Tylenol. The simulation is math. The simulation doesn't treat aches and pains.
One of the fundamental concepts in algorithmic information theory is that the physical design and construction of your "novel golf club" is completely and perfectly equivalent to a mathematical equation in exactly the same way the RSA algorithm is. The argument generalizes to all patentable subject matters. And as fabrication technology is becoming more sophisticated this fact is starting to become more obvious in practice.
No one patented modular exponentiation, they patented an encryption algorithm that employs modular exponentiation. That is a distinction with a real difference. All patents have this type of construction. The same argument could be used to assert that all chemical process patents are patenting common chemistry or facts of nature.
The deeper issue with both copyrights and patents is that they are based on legal distinctions that don't exist mathematically. The law must therefore necessarily be inconsistent and ambiguous in its treatment of such things. Piling yet another mathematically unsupportable fiction on top of the existing ones won't mitigate the problem.
I can live just fine without algorithm patents but as a matter of principle I also object to the obviously selective and inconsistent application of standards for what is and is not patentable.
> One of the fundamental concepts in algorithmic information theory is that the physical design and construction of your "novel golf club" is completely and perfectly equivalent to a mathematical equation in exactly the same way the RSA algorithm is.
Equations and algorithms can't generate force or protect metal from corrosion or convert chemical reagents into medicine. They have no corporeal existence. There is no computation you can do that will get the golf ball into the hole.
> And as fabrication technology is becoming more sophisticated this fact is starting to become more obvious in practice.
Using a 3D printer to make a patented golf club is clearly patent infringement. Widespread availability of fabrication technology is certainly going to make enforcing certain patents much more difficult in the same way that it has for copyright but what does that have to do with patentability?
> No one patented modular exponentiation, they patented an encryption algorithm that employs modular exponentiation. That is a distinction with a real difference.
It's the same piece of code. Math has no particular intent.
> All patents have this type of construction. The same argument could be used to assert that all chemical process patents are patenting common chemistry or facts of nature.
No one is disputing that anything can be described by math. The point is that the math is different from the thing it describes. A chemical process is not itself math. An algorithm is.
A good way to understand it is to realize that a physical thing can be used as a "computer" to execute the mathematical algorithm describing its behavior but the reverse is not the case. You can calculate 'E' in "E=mc^2" by setting up a nuclear reaction that will convert a mass 'm' into energy 'E' and measuring the energy that is produced. You can perform the same calculation using a general purpose computer. So the algorithm/formula "E=mc^2" can be executed on a nuclear reactor or on a smartphone. But doing the calculation without the nuclear reaction will not actually produce 'E' joules of energy that could be used to e.g. drive a steam turbine. That's the difference.
Your E=mc^2 example actually highlights one difference between patentable and non-patentable math. Calculating E does nothing useful by itself. But calculating the DCT of a series of numbers representing an image, arranging it in a matrix, traversing it in a zigzag pattern and applying run-length encoding does do something undeniably useful: it allows compression, which can conserve bandwidth and disk-space.
Yet you seem unwilling to accept the difference between mathematics and applications of mathematics, of which the latter is being patented.
Let me try a different analogy. Mathematics cannot be copyrighted. Yet software can be. If you can resolve this conflict, you may find a hint to explain how software can also be patented.
> Calculating E does nothing useful by itself. But calculating the DCT of a series of numbers representing an image, arranging it in a matrix, traversing it in a zigzag pattern and applying run-length encoding does do something undeniably useful: it allows compression, which can conserve bandwidth and disk-space.
All math is useful for something. How is calculating 'E' not useful? I need to know how many turbines to build.
> Mathematics cannot be copyrighted. Yet software can be. If you can resolve this conflict, you may find a hint to explain how software can also be patented.
There are multiple equivalent encodings to represent any mathematical operation. Since the encodings are equivalent, choosing one is a creative act having no mathematical consequences. Copyrighting that work of authorship provides no monopoly over the math because the same math remains available to anyone else using any of the infinitely many other possible equivalent encodings. Even in the unlikely event that someone else independently comes up with exactly the same encoding (more likely for extremely simple algorithms), independent creation means no copyright infringement. By contrast, a patent would cover all of the equivalents and make no exception for independent creation, which would make it a patent on the math itself rather than any particular encoding.
And that is a patent-eligible application* of the abstract equation :-) You could potentially get a patent on that application but that would not preempt the equation itself. Somebody else could potentially get a patent on the use of that exact same equation to calculate the number of atoms to feed into an anti-matter space drive.
> There are multiple equivalent encodings to represent any mathematical operation...
And similarly there are potentially infinite applications of a mathematical operation. Patenting one application does not provide a monopoly over the mathematical operation itself. Now you may again try to conflate "algorithm" and "abstract mathematics" and "computation" again, but you cannot change the fact that the algorithm without its practical application is meaningless.
But even algorithms are too specific a word for most software patents. Consider a patent on a mobile app (valued at, say, $10 billion) that claims sending photos over a network that are auto-erased at the receiver after a time period expires. What is the algorithmic complexity of that?
> And that is a patent-eligible application* of the abstract equation
I think we've come to the heart of it here. The heat output of a particular reaction is a law of nature. Its calculation is a mathematical operation. The discovery of that mathematical formula E=mc^2 is non-obvious. It took centuries of scientific minds before Einstein. But given that law of nature and its mathematical description, the decision of how many steam turbines to build for a given energy output is preposterously obvious.
So the problem is they're granting patents on obvious applications of computations just because the computation itself is non-obvious.
Which makes it a simple rule to clarify things: a) Computations are not patentable and b) obvious applications of unpatentable computations are not patentable.
> And similarly there are potentially infinite applications of a mathematical operation. Patenting one application does not provide a monopoly over the mathematical operation itself.
The problem is they aren't issuing patents on applications, they're issuing patents on algorithms. It doesn't matter what application you use the software for because the software itself infringes the patent. The so-called application devolves to "run this algorithm on a computer."
> But even algorithms are too specific a word for most software patents. Consider a patent on a mobile app (valued at, say, $10 billion) that claims sending photos over a network that are auto-erased at the receiver after a time period expires. What is the algorithmic complexity of that?
That's about it. Obviously each function has its own rabbit hole to go down, but so do all mathematical operations, even the seemingly fundamental ones that programmers treat as intrinsic. You can make any mathematical operation arbitrarily complex; it's turtles all the way down. And each of the individual functions above exists in the prior art.
Calculating the DCT of a series of numbers representing an image, arranging it in a matrix, traversing it in a zigzag pattern and applying run-length encoding does something undeniably mundane, in the eyes of a typical computer programmer. We call this transformation. It's useful, but it's MATH.
"Equations and algorithms can't generate force or protect metal from corrosion or convert chemical reagents into medicine. They have no corporeal existence. There is no computation you can do that will get the golf ball into the hole."
Algorithms can; they can create a decision to apply a paint or to move an actuator in a particular way, or to remove access to a file or to remove a file completely. This is the way that algorithms can be materialized in the same way that a chemical process described as a series of instructions for building machines and using them to process base materials can be materialized.
Only if the machine is doing something in excess of computation. Then you have a machine that applies paint in a particular way. The algorithm itself isn't the thing you're patenting anymore.
Whereas "removing access to a file" is still nothing but computation. The machine in that context is fully abstract. Any general purpose computer of any design can do it. So the algorithm itself should be unpatentable and the machine is a general purpose computer that exists in the prior art, which leaves nothing to patent.
Allowing patent on even 'math' should not be an issue as long as the math technique is sufficiently complex that the probablity of someone else independently arriving at that math within the patent term seems to be very low
> Allowing patent on even 'math' should not be an issue as long as the math technique is sufficiently complex that the probablity of someone else independently arriving at that math within the patent term seems to be very low
Your criteria would exclude in excess of 99% of issued software patents. Keep in mind that 20 years is the period of time between the introduction of DNS and the introduction of the iPhone. Twenty years ago Google did not exist and Windows 3.11 was the latest version. Twenty years before that the IBM PC did not exist, Microsoft did not exist, TCP/IP did not exist, AT&T would be The Phone Company (singular) for another decade, the Cold War was in full swing, people were wearing Disco Suits and many of the parents of this year's crop of college graduates had not yet been born.
Unless you meant that the term of a software patent should be on the order of six months to a year, which hardly seems worth the candle.
> No one patented modular exponentiation, they patented an encryption algorithm that employs modular exponentiation.
Then I must ask: What invention is needed to invent the algorithm, once you know the math?
Is this a novel invention (no prior art about the same algorithmic idea being applied elsewhere)?
Is it non-obvious (a professional computer programmer couldn't be expected to come up with the algorithm, when presented with the math)?
I'm no expert, but I suspect that if you teach me the math behind a particular encryption scheme, then I could program the algorithm without too much difficulty.
>What invention is needed to invent the algorithm, once you know the math?
Math and algorithm are overloaded terms that often mean the same thing, so it's not possible to answer that question. However, to clarify what jandrewrogers meant: at the time modular exponentiation was a known mathematical construct; what was invented and patented was a new, previously unknown algorithm that used that mathematical construct as part of an encryption technique.
Now both can be seen as "math" or "algorithm", but the key difference is that the encryption algorithm has practical utility (i.e. providing security) whereas modular exponentiation by itself has none.
The problem with patenting a specific algorithm is that a human sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil can perform pretty much any algorithm. It might be hard for a human to do, or a group of humans to do, but it's still conceivable. A great many algorithms we use and enjoy today were developed with nothing more than a blackboard and a piece of chalk after all...well before being committed to code or circuit.
Doing it "on a computer" just means it's faster and less error prone, but in theory, just about any algorithm can be done without a specific software or hardware implementation.
But algorithms, can be described as math, but nonobvious and useful processes can also be patented. So can improvements to existing processes.
A simple example, the Fast Inverse Square Root is nonobvious and useful, even if it's simple in execution.
Novel algorithm design can also be the result of years of work. And in theory patents would have allowed the inventor of the algorithm to recoup that development cost through a short term monopoly. And I think that's fine. But that short term is turning into long term and I think that's a problem.
The irony is that attempts to lengthen the term of monopoly granted by a patent might in the end undo the whole system.
It's happening in pharma and medicine right now. [1] To justify the cost of R&D, there's a significant lobbying effort to increase patent term to longer periods.
What if I write a compiler which is able to produce automatically the mp3 compression scheme through a more generic description of lossy stream processing, along with the ad-hoc math notions (fourrier transform, etc)?
Does it mean every person using that compiler will potentially have to pay? We already have software framework able to automatically (dis)prove theorems and generate code, so we're not very far practically from the above hypothesis, what will happen then?
Senior (semi-retired) Judge Bryson was taking district level cases by designation in East Texas ... because that's where abusive patent cases get filed. Bryson doesn't have as much impact as a full time CAFC judge, and can't vote in essential en banc cases.
And two of the CAFC cases were rump panels with Taranto and Hughes. Rader's retirement left the panels short.
"Still, every kind of software patent is bad, dishonest, and harmful to our industry and progress. They all need to go."
I don't agree.
If a genuine invention is made which contributes to the state of the art and is significant then there are two options for monetizing it. It can be patented, or it can be kept secret.
DanBC just gave one example, but independent invention tend to be the norm. Strike out patents, and inventions will likely flow anyway —if one keeps it secret, others will publish it. It doesn't really matter that inventors "deserve" a reward: the cost monopoly is just too high for society at large.
Besides, you forgot a third option: "first to market".
1. Independent invention may be common, but simultaneous independent invention is very rare. Look at the few dozen examples on wikipedia and compare that to the millions of inventions throughout history. In fact the USPTO moved to a first-to-file regime precisely for that reason -- less than a fraction of a percent of patents were involved in interferences. (An interference is a case of simultaneous independent invention at the PTO.) Reinventing something years after somebody already has is no great feat.
2. There is no empirical evidence that the "cost of monopoly to society is too large". In fact there are tons of economic and historical studies that clearly show the benefits of patents by comparing metrics before and after patent systems were introduced. There are also studies that show the costs these systems impose. It is, however, impossible to say if the costs outweigh the benefits because the metrics used are largely orthogonal.
1. Okay, then, let's do a study about how much time does independent invention need. Then patent durations must be tuned to that. For instance, if most independent re-inventions takes 2 years, then we shouldn't grant patents for more than 3 of 4 years. I suspect that according to this criterion, current durations are much, much too high.
2. I just take for granted that all other things being equal, having a monopoly is much worse than not having it: the (diffuse) cost to society at large is much higher than the (concentrated, visible) benefit to the monopolist.
I take it for granted that it is not defensible to have the society pay a significant cost just to reward a lone entity, no matter how much he "deserves a reward". Global costs must be balanced by global benefits. The very existence of an invention is such a global benefit. But unless the patent helped get the invention out sooner, that benefit is void, and the patent, unjustified.
Also, apparently, we haven't read the same "tons of studies". The arguments againts patents I have read so far (Against Intellectual Monopoly was a good read), sounded very compelling —not to mention grounded in evidence. Could you give me some pointers to the studies you speak of?
The term of a patent has nothing to do with independent invention, it is meant to allow an inventor an opportunity to capture the rewards of their invention. Both licensing and product development (even for software) can take many years to happen, and 4 or 5 years is laughably inadequate. Not to mention, of course, that patent offices take a few years for a patent to grant in the first place. What advantage is a patent if it expires just in time for others to start ripping you off?
In any case, I am not aware of any quantitative study of independent invention. But using patents as a sample, considering only 0.1% being involved in interferences and that only 0.1% of issued patents ever being asserted, one rough guess could be that most patentable ideas are never independently re-invented. On the other hand, given how narrow patents usually are, this is not surprising. Then again, most patents are licensed without litigation, and these deals are confidential, so this is a really rough guess.
> … Against Intellectual Monopoly …
Heh, I guessed that would come up. Unfortunately, that book contains many fabrications and mischaracterizations of other work, which calls into question anything they say. I've already pointed it out once:
It's unfortunate that many people believe their work without critical thought because it confirms their biases. The second comment linked above links a few studies showing the beneficial effects of patents and ends with a reference to a more balanced and honest overview of the current state of patent economics. I'd encourage you to read those instead.
> The term of a patent […] is meant to allow an inventor an opportunity to capture the rewards of their invention.
This is not a valid justification. Granting the inventor a monopoly costs more to society than it benefits the inventor himself. As such , the inventor doesn't matter. His invention does.
What would be a good enough justification, is if granting the patent hastened the creation of the invention. To me, it is not clear this is generally the case. First, there is this "independent invention" thing. Second, there are other ways besides monopoly. Being first to market can be a pretty good incentive for innovation. Third, patents can slow down incremental inventions —improvements to patented ideas. Fourth, granting a monopoly to the inventor could encourage him to get lazy, and stop or slow down his output. Fifth, inventors could seek out monopoly-friendly innovations, instead of more useful ones —rent-seeking behaviour. Sixth, in practice, many patents are filled after the invention has been completed for other reasons.
Finally, there's the sheer bookkeeping costs of the whole patent system. 0.1% of patents only are being asserted? Does that include licensing deals as well as litigations? Anyway, there's the patent office, the effort of writing the patent in the first place, patent lawyers, the judges and juries that take time to rule litigations, and of course any effort directed at patent circumvention (compression algorithms have several good examples). Such overhead is not trivial.
Innovation fostering has to be significant enough to compensate for the various costs (monopolies and overheads). This sets the bar rather high in my opinion.
> Granting the inventor a monopoly costs more to society than it benefits the inventor himself.
You cannot make that assertion without empirical evidence. You bring up good points about the costs of patents, but note that your language ("can", "could") is all in terms of potential.
The studies I've read consider all those points and then try to quantify them, even going as far as seeing how they play out in different industries. Other studies raise points which show the benefits of patent systems (increased R&D spending, increased diversity in the areas of innovation, increased probability of securing VC funding) and quantify those too. Other studies actually find counter-intuitive results about monopolies in general (e.g. monopolies can be more innovative than startups by some metrics -- think Bell Labs, Xerox, MS Research -- which casts doubt on the "monopolist gets lazy" argument). There are tons of studies presenting interesting results, and of course, there are studies that point out flaws in these.
The problem is, it is impossible to compare these results quantitatively because the data, methods, assumptions, interpretations, shortcomings and metrics are wide, varied and often orthogonal. How can you meaningfully compare a lower rate of stitch / minute improvements (that was used as a proxy for the cost of sewing machine patents) with the increased diversity of industries participating in a technical convention (which was used as a proxy to measure the beneficial effects of introducing a patent system)? And to top it off, both studies were by the same author (Petra Moser)! This is just one example -- there are as many metrics as there are academics researching this area.
If someone makes such an invention, there is no incentive to keep it perfectly secret (i.e. hide it in a filing cabinet and make no use of it that might hint towards its existence) -- other than sheer paranoia or vanity.
Instead they will either sell it like any other trade secret or make use of it. If they make use of it and it gives them a notable advantage over competitors, the competitors will seek to either reverse engineer the invention or invest in finding something that works equally well or even better. If the competitors succeed, the original invention becomes obsolete (rendering knowledge of it less valuable) or common knowledge.
What's more, a competitor or a non-commercial organization might decide to publish their findings for various reasons ranging from harming the original inventor by eliminating their advantage to benevolence / publicity / "fostering innovation".
In the current situation a lot of patents are flat-out useless to anyone but the holder. They either describe something that is blindingly obvious ("X on a computer"), something that is already common knowledge (but nobody bothered patenting before) or that is so vague the description itself is worthless to anyone seeking to copy the idea when the patent has expired.
Patents are supposed to be a fair deal between the public and the applicant: the applicant is offered legal protection to maintain a monopoly in a technology they created for a limited amount of time but in return they have to disclose their technology so anyone can copy it once the protection expires.
If you take away that benefit to the public, it's just a blessed monopoly that can be used to extort anyone who independently comes up with the same idea (or shares the same common knowledge on which it is based). Even with that benefit to the public most software patents would still be harmful because of their insane longevity -- the software industry is disrupted on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, but patents can be maintained for more than a decade.
What's so bad if software patents were abolished? Copyright would still exist. Trade secrets would still exist. Trademarks and trade dress would still exist. NDAs and other legally binding agreements would still exist. At this point the benefits of software patents are theoretical at best -- every single tech company out there could potentially be sued into oblivion if they were to pop up on the radar of a patent troll. Patent infringement has become SOP for software companies -- not because they don't care about other people's IP but because it's simply impossible to license every single "invention" your company uses (and let's not get started on what the situation looks like for contractors).
1. It's not vanity or paranoia, ideas do get stolen, bringing down startups and setting back careers. I personally know of startups get ripped off by the big guys as well as entire research papers being ripped off from professors.
2. Reverse engineer Google's or Facebook's infrastructure, if it's that easy. Conversely, I've seen people reverse engineer a product from its wireless signals. It probably took years to build that product, but was reversed inside a week. Similarly, it took Apple years to create and refine the iPhone UI, and it took Android only a year to copy it. How is that fair? Secrecy works only if your advantage is never exposed to the outside world, like when it's hidden away in datacenters. And when it does work, how is that good for advancing the industry?
3. Your view assumes that every inventor can bring the invention to market. Look around you - you are surrounded by technology that requires thousands of different components and suppliers to make (of which of software is just one) and one could invent an improvement to any of them. Example: you thought of a more efficient way to transmit AC over power lines. How do you make, use or sell it? Do not assume you work for a power company.
The original (written, at least) intent of the patent laws was "to advance the state of the art". Fairness to the inventor never enters into it, except to the degree that such a thing is necessary to motivate inventions; if you agree with that, then the patent laws should probably be mostly dismantled.
"Advancing the state of the art" like all things in patent law, was deliberately broadly written because there are thousands of ways to do so and infinite multitudes of nuances to consider. Fairness absolutely was, and always has been, one of the main points. In fact, all property rights concern fairness, and intellectual property rights are no different.
It's debatable that H.264 and MP3 patents are bad. These were non-trivial to invent and are worlds apart from slide to unlock or hold-the-shutter-button-to-record-video. They don't patent the general process of compressing video and audio.
The question is not whether they are non trivial, and useful. The question is whether they (or something like they), would have existed at all.
Once granted, a patent give a benefit to the inventor, as well as a cost to society at large: monopoly. I think it is fair to say that the costs of monopoly always exceeds the benefits: you can't justify having the society as a whole pay such a cost for the benefit of a lone entity.
The only way to justify such a cost to society, is an equivalent benefit to society. If it turns out an invention would not have existed without the patent then the patent may not be that bad. But if would have existed anyway, then the patent is a net cost —bad.
Reading my sibling comments, it seems H.264 and MP3 patents were not instrumental in the coming of those technologies (efficient audio and video compression). Those technologies would have been invented anyway. Which means these patents didn't serve any real purpose, and their costs (monopolies) are therefore unjustified.
That's a pretty myopic view of how h.264, etc, were developed. A lot of work goes into developing standards like h264, LTE, etc. It doesn't just happen by magic. Its expensive to pay experts to research each new iteration of the technology. At the same time, the fact that they must be released as a standard undermines most of the other monetization opportunities, such as trade secrets. Patent licensing creates a unique and very effective regime allowing many companies to work together to develop these open standards, while ensuring that freeloaders can't just use the final specs without contributing either monetarily or in terms of research investment. Without patents I think you'd see a lot more proprietary technologies, with companies keeping new developments secret to try and monetize R&D investment.
They don't patent the general process of compressing video and audio.
I get the impression from reading about Daala, VP8/VP9, and x264 that there are fundamental building blocks that are patented and used in threats. We have open source researchers who are just as willing to make high quality codecs as the MPEGLA members, but their time is wasted by fear of lawsuits and working around obvious patents.
I'd suggest that anything that becomes an international standard should have FRAND licensing for all patents, enforced by treaty.
But the very good sign from these cases is most were decided on the pleadings. That means there was no expensive discovery or claim construction procedure, much less a jury trial. A decision on the pleadings means that even in the best possible light, the patent holder doesn't have a case at all according to the judge. There is no cheaper way to dispose of an expensive and lengthy lawsuit. And a rule that can be disposed of on pleadings is exactly what reformers wanted from the Supreme Court.
The CAFC has seen a few of these and so far Taranto and Hughes, two of the newest Obama judges, have acquitted themselves superbly. We have well written and conclusive decisions from them calling the whole "do it on a computer" mess ineligible.
We'll have to wait and see how the more enthusiastic radicals for patenting everything influence the outcomes. Three judges that wanted to hand a monopoly on the centuries old, trillion dollar financial settlement industry to Alice even when no technological procedures were disclosed in their patent are still on the court: Moore, O'Malley, and Newman. Lourie was the swing vote in that decision and also says that Ultramercial [1] should have a monopoly on interstitial internet advertising because they wrote the century old idea up with 'on the internet' tacked onto the end. There are eleven judges and one empty slot on the CAFC so those four make up a large minority that will likely press for "on a computer" patents to come back.
Chief Judge Prost, Judge Dyk, and the three new Obama appointees seem much more rational and good for our industry. We should hope they are the ones who shape the interpretation of Alice in the future.
And remember that while "on a computer" patents -- the ones that describe a conventional business and add "on a computer" or "on the internet" without anything added to known technology -- are falling, lots of damaging software patents are still out there and apparently unharmed. The h.264 and mp3 patents that block open and free media players and browsers are still functioning. The ZFS and JFS patents that make BTRFS illegal are still out there. The compiler and VM patents from IBM, Sun, and others that hang over the head of anyone who writes either still exist. The long filename patents and others that Microsoft uses to tax Android are still taxing. The UI patents on smartphones that drive the smartphone wars are still driving them. New patents on computer vision, deep neural nets, machine learning, GPU computation, multithreading techniques, and more are being granted every tuesday.
Lucky for us, software patents that are on actual software are a lot less lucrative than the ones on business "on a computer." Even in smartphone litigation, most of the money verdicts depend on the shape of the box a smartphone comes in; don't steal the idea of a rounded rectangle and your lawsuit will be for tens of millions instead of billions. Still, every kind of software patent is bad, dishonest, and harmful to our industry and progress. They all need to go.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_...
[1] http://www.patentdocs.org/2013/06/ultramercial-inc-v-hulu-ll...