"software patents"
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In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe. It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? If you think that it's ridiculous (like I do), go to: http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html[^] and tell the European Parliament about this. And BTW, am I right in thinking that there are already laws like this in the US? "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman
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In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe. It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? If you think that it's ridiculous (like I do), go to: http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html[^] and tell the European Parliament about this. And BTW, am I right in thinking that there are already laws like this in the US? "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman
chopeen wrote: It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) How are they without legal foundation? If they don't have 'legal foundation' now, how are they being enforced? chopeen wrote: can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? It's rather silly (and economically detrimental) to grant patents for mundane, obvious-to-everyone code. However, setting up strawmen isn't going to help things along at all. What'll get rid of lots of the current BS patents is a patent office that is much more skilled in software design & development - at least enough to be able to accurately pick out what's obvious and what's groundbreaking. The idea of a 'software patent' is, I think, as legitimate as a non-software patent. It's an attempt to goad companies into spending tons of cash on a risky idea by guaranteeing them that they'll be the only ones to cash in (for a little while) if they come up with a workable solution. However, due to the high rate of change and adoption of new technology in the software industry, patents should not last for more than a few years, and should not be renewable. In addition, you should not be able to patent specific algorithms at all - not any more than you should be able to patent useage of physical laws or mathematical formulas. That being said, the bar needs to be raised much, much higher for software patents. Granting a drug company a patent on a drug that cost them $750,000,000 to develop and test is one thing, granting a patent for some code that a couple developers cooked up over a week or two is just ridiculous. -- Russell Morris "So, broccoli, mother says you're good for me... but I'm afraid I'm no good for you!" - Stewy
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chopeen wrote: It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) How are they without legal foundation? If they don't have 'legal foundation' now, how are they being enforced? chopeen wrote: can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? It's rather silly (and economically detrimental) to grant patents for mundane, obvious-to-everyone code. However, setting up strawmen isn't going to help things along at all. What'll get rid of lots of the current BS patents is a patent office that is much more skilled in software design & development - at least enough to be able to accurately pick out what's obvious and what's groundbreaking. The idea of a 'software patent' is, I think, as legitimate as a non-software patent. It's an attempt to goad companies into spending tons of cash on a risky idea by guaranteeing them that they'll be the only ones to cash in (for a little while) if they come up with a workable solution. However, due to the high rate of change and adoption of new technology in the software industry, patents should not last for more than a few years, and should not be renewable. In addition, you should not be able to patent specific algorithms at all - not any more than you should be able to patent useage of physical laws or mathematical formulas. That being said, the bar needs to be raised much, much higher for software patents. Granting a drug company a patent on a drug that cost them $750,000,000 to develop and test is one thing, granting a patent for some code that a couple developers cooked up over a week or two is just ridiculous. -- Russell Morris "So, broccoli, mother says you're good for me... but I'm afraid I'm no good for you!" - Stewy
A lot of good ideas. I think for all patents, another requirement is that the patent holder needs to be actively selling or somehow making use of the software they are patenting, otherwise they should lose their patent. This would throw out cases where companies pile up patents, wait for somebody else to discover those ideas on their own and make good use of them, and then sue. If patents were actually used and granted in this way, I'd probably support the whole concept. As it is now, the system does more harm than good. No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the flood.
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A lot of good ideas. I think for all patents, another requirement is that the patent holder needs to be actively selling or somehow making use of the software they are patenting, otherwise they should lose their patent. This would throw out cases where companies pile up patents, wait for somebody else to discover those ideas on their own and make good use of them, and then sue. If patents were actually used and granted in this way, I'd probably support the whole concept. As it is now, the system does more harm than good. No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the flood.
A drug company might create a drug in their labs, and then have a patent on it, and make the community spend money on enforcing the patent; even though the majority of the medical research community have no way to build on the break-through achievements. I think that patent on processes should be granted ONLY if the patent holder is willing to license the patent at similar fee structures to other people, and that the technology for which the patent is given is made open, so that the rest of the community can build on it. It also ensures return on investment on research as royalties, and at the same time ensuring that the technology is not used to charge excessive premiums due to exclusive manufacturing arrangements. The researcher can choose to keep it secret, with no legal protection, if it does not want to share the knowledge with the rest of the world. IMO, the community should benefit far more than it does now, if it has to even bother about creating a framework for protecting innovation. Thomas My article on a reference-counted smart pointer that supports polymorphic objects and raw pointers
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In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe. It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? If you think that it's ridiculous (like I do), go to: http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html[^] and tell the European Parliament about this. And BTW, am I right in thinking that there are already laws like this in the US? "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman
chopeen wrote: It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. I would hope that those extreme examples of techniques already in the public domain were not actual examples of patents the EU is ready to grant. But any non-obvious software technique or algorithm that is created should be patentable. THe problems come from having people at the patent office not qualified to make sound decisions about prior-art, obviousness, etc. as it applies to software engineering. chopeen wrote: And BTW, am I right in thinking that there are already laws like this in the US? The US does issue software patents.
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In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe. It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? If you think that it's ridiculous (like I do), go to: http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html[^] and tell the European Parliament about this. And BTW, am I right in thinking that there are already laws like this in the US? "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Well the largest problem is that many software patents are extremely trivial. Here are a couple patents that show this quite well: asdf - the use of these 4 letters in a row are patented :-) - this is patented as well Now the people who patented these things are not going to ask for royalties, they just wanted to see how stupid the patent system is ... so they tried to patent them and guess what ... they got the patents. Also, beyond trivial patents, there are also cloaked patents (there is an official name for this but I cannot remember). This is where a patent is issued, but is not listed publicly. So, what happens is a company comes out with an idea, does a patent search (which comes back clean), becomes successful ... then one day this other company appears with the cloaked patent and sues them and takes all their money. The only real reason for such a type of patent is to try and rip off other people. There are now even law firms that only buy up generic trivial patents, then sit on them and wait until an unsuspecting company comes along ... then sues them. So, to sum it up .... this is just a bunch of bull S#!t 'Why can we all just get along' Troy
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chopeen wrote: It is possible that the holders of the over 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal foundation) How are they without legal foundation? If they don't have 'legal foundation' now, how are they being enforced? chopeen wrote: can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms", "scrolling within a window" and similar. What do you guys think about this? It's rather silly (and economically detrimental) to grant patents for mundane, obvious-to-everyone code. However, setting up strawmen isn't going to help things along at all. What'll get rid of lots of the current BS patents is a patent office that is much more skilled in software design & development - at least enough to be able to accurately pick out what's obvious and what's groundbreaking. The idea of a 'software patent' is, I think, as legitimate as a non-software patent. It's an attempt to goad companies into spending tons of cash on a risky idea by guaranteeing them that they'll be the only ones to cash in (for a little while) if they come up with a workable solution. However, due to the high rate of change and adoption of new technology in the software industry, patents should not last for more than a few years, and should not be renewable. In addition, you should not be able to patent specific algorithms at all - not any more than you should be able to patent useage of physical laws or mathematical formulas. That being said, the bar needs to be raised much, much higher for software patents. Granting a drug company a patent on a drug that cost them $750,000,000 to develop and test is one thing, granting a patent for some code that a couple developers cooked up over a week or two is just ridiculous. -- Russell Morris "So, broccoli, mother says you're good for me... but I'm afraid I'm no good for you!" - Stewy
Russell Morris wrote: How are they without legal foundation? If they don't have 'legal foundation' now, how are they being enforced? Current European patentability rules say that "mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions". However, there is an organisation called European Patent Office (EPO) that grants patents (also for software related stuff). As I understand it, now they only mean that somebody has invented something and they do not allow to charge others. But EPO is making efforts to change the European law. [That's how I understand it, but I am not a lawyer. :)] Russell Morris wrote: The idea of a 'software patent' is, I think, as legitimate as a non-software patent Yeah, it is, As long as the patents are not granted for "Internet browsers' plugins", "instant messengers" or "One-Click shopping". "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman
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Well the largest problem is that many software patents are extremely trivial. Here are a couple patents that show this quite well: asdf - the use of these 4 letters in a row are patented :-) - this is patented as well Now the people who patented these things are not going to ask for royalties, they just wanted to see how stupid the patent system is ... so they tried to patent them and guess what ... they got the patents. Also, beyond trivial patents, there are also cloaked patents (there is an official name for this but I cannot remember). This is where a patent is issued, but is not listed publicly. So, what happens is a company comes out with an idea, does a patent search (which comes back clean), becomes successful ... then one day this other company appears with the cloaked patent and sues them and takes all their money. The only real reason for such a type of patent is to try and rip off other people. There are now even law firms that only buy up generic trivial patents, then sit on them and wait until an unsuspecting company comes along ... then sues them. So, to sum it up .... this is just a bunch of bull S#!t 'Why can we all just get along' Troy
Troy Marchand wrote: Also, beyond trivial patents, there are also cloaked patents (there is an official name for this but I cannot remember). This is where a patent is issued, but is not listed publicly. I didn't know that. That's really too much!!! If you remember the official name for this, let me know. And if you know any webpages where I can read about it, put the links in the Lounge, too. Thanks. "Gods die, when their believers are gone." --from Sandman by Neil Gaiman