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Fluffeh writes:
"In June, President Barack Obama called for action against patent trolls. Today the White House held a short conference updating what has happened in the arena of patent policy since then and announced new initiatives going forward — including one to 'crowdsource' the review of patents.
Currently, getting a patent is a one-on-one proceeding between the applicant and the examiner. Two pilot programs that allowed the public to submit prior art were only applied to a tiny number of patents, and in the first program, all the patents were voluntarily submitted by the applicants. Applying such scrutiny to a few hundred patents, out of the hundreds of thousands issued each year, isn't any kind of long-term solution.
Unless the crowd-sourcing initiatives were to put major new burdens on applicants — which would be resisted — the fundamentals of patent examination aren't going to change. Patent examiners get an average of eighteen hours to review a patent. Most importantly, examiners effectively can't say 'no' to applicants. They can reject a particular application, but there's no limit to the number of amendments and re-drafts an applicant can submit."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by akinliat on Sunday February 23 2014, @12:09AM
And don't forget:
5. Software should only be eligible for patent, not copyright. The patent should only apply to working code.
I've never understood why software is eligible for copyright. It's a set of instructions for a machine -- almost exactly what the industrial process patent category was designed for. At least it seems that way to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday February 23 2014, @12:32AM
You have that backward.
COPYRIGHT applies to MY CODE, stuff I wrote. You can't steal and Publish My Code, unless I release it under the GPL or similar license. Its a work of art. (mostly anyway, see my sig).
I can copyright my code for my accounting system without hindering you from writing your own accounting system, even copying some or all of the functionality of mine, because the accounting system is nothing but mathematical algorithms and logic. But you have to write your own programs.
You can even read my code, (unless I keep it a trade secret), but you can't re-publish it.
If I write a book on Math, its all math, and not patentable. My book, never the less is copyrightable.
On the other hand, had I managed to get a PATENT on computerized accounting systems, that is far far worse, even if it only lasts for 17 years. Because then I can prevent you from writing your own.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jcd on Sunday February 23 2014, @03:24AM
This is a good explanation of the differences. Wouldn't copyright protection alone still create the potential for abusive, extensive, expensive lawsuits?
Though I suppose that a court could just diff all of the source code to see if there's a straight copying issue.
Haha, I made a funny. As if courts have any technical capabilities.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 1) by akinliat on Sunday February 23 2014, @05:22PM
But that's the problem. Your code is not a work of art. This is not a comment on its quality, BTW, simply a statement of fact. Art communicates ideas between people. Code is a set of machine instructions that make it easier for someone to manipulate hardware for a specific task. It happens to use words (sort of, not really), so the techno-illiterate USTPO decided it ought to be copyrighted. Ultimately, though, code is almost the very definition of an industrial process, which is one of the broad categories of patents.
This is probably one reason the current application of software patents is so flawed and vague. Because copyright already covers specific instances of code, the USTPO uses patents far more vaguely than warranted. At most, a patent should cover an algorithm as expressed in working code. Not only would this abate the absurd longevity of current code copyright (seriously, how useful is 75-year-old code likely to be?), but it would also mitigate many of the problems with the software patent process as it now stands.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:29PM
Your code is not a work of art.
True, although it could be made to be art. One could make a poem in a computer language that would be recognizable as poetry by a human reading the source code, yet still run. It would be a hell of a hack if someone did it.
Code is not art in exactly the same way that blueprints are not art and the instruction manual to your stereo is not literature.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by akinliat on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:41PM
It could be made art, at which point you could certainly apply for copyright. Heck, even if you couldn't run it, using programming languages to write poetry would certainly make for an interesting means to comment on the Information Age.
Not exactly. There is one crucial difference. Blueprints and instruction manuals are made to read by humans (some instruction manuals, anyway). Although code can be read by humans, that's not why you write it. You write it so that it will be read by machines. The only real reason to make it human-legible is so that you or someone else can fix it if the machine has problems.
If I make it sound that we are merely servants to our wee silicon overlords, so be it. I've felt that way often enough when coding.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 24 2014, @12:27AM
WHY you right it never enters into the discussion of what is and what is not art.
The idea that code is not meant to be read by humans if just not true. If it wasn't meant to be read (and maintained) by humans, we would all write it in binary 1s and 0s. Instead we use languages, invented by and for humans, which some machines have the ability to carry out the instructions there in.
By work of art I meant Art in the sense that literature is art. Music is art. Sculpture is art.
Music is the closest equivalent to Code. Sheet music is the closest thing to instructions for some other entity (human or synthesizer) to perform a task (make sounds) in a specific order.
In short, I don't believe you get to preempt the definition of a work of art SIMPLY because it can be read and action-ed by a computer. I believe that has already been done:
I'm sure you would agree that code is "Writings".
So I don't understand your current nit-picking here. The Constitution was meant to be a
. It was never intended to be omniscient, or predict future methods.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Sunday February 23 2014, @06:24PM
On the other hand, had I managed to get a PATENT on computerized accounting systems, that is far far worse, even if it only lasts for 17 years. Because then I can prevent you from writing your own.
That's not how patents work. My ex-brother in law worked at a factory, and often a manager would bring a competitor's gizmo and ask "can we make these with what we have here?" Porky asked about patents the first time ge got that question, and was answered "that's why we have lawyers. Sometimes you can get around a patent simply by making it out of a different material; say, brass instead of aluminum."
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org