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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: 5, Insightful) by keplr on Sunday February 23 2014, @01:04AM
Your argument seems to hinge on the conflation of patent and copyright law. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are three very different branches of the law. Some of the differences are subtle and nuanced but throwing them all together, usually with the umbrella term "intellectual property", makes you an unwitting accomplice to the MPAA et al whose interest it is for the worst parts (from the individual consumer's point of view) of all three systems to become common to the others.
They would love for you to treat patents like copyrights, both in your mind and in the law, because it primarily benefits them. It benefits society to keep these ideas distinct.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dmc on Sunday February 23 2014, @01:16AM
I disagree. I did mix patents and copyright, because you had already gone ahead and used the term "proprietary" which applies to both, and the digital film as represented by a long number was I think the easiest way to illustrate my point. If you look at the world as something of a 'Matrix', or close enough to it, any traditionally patentable process, e.g. how to make velcro, can also for the sake of how we are discussing it, be represented as a very long number (e.g. describe it in detail in ascii, or make a program that generates an atomic/voxel rendering the process etc). I do believe that the general idea of proprietaryness that is shared between copyright, software patents, and traditional patents, is basically all about the same thing "intellectual property". I think we probably agree more than your response suggests. I think IP rights should be limited much more than they are, fair-use and public domain valued highly. I very much liked another posters idea about the limits on the monopoly granted degrading with each resale. But yes, patents and copyright are distinct, but they are not as entirely distinct as your argument suggests. It almost sounds like you are getting on my case because any sympathy with 'the other side', which I agree, that we both agree, is doing heinous things... I remember the $222,000 judgement against the soccer mom. I see all the patents, the vast majority software being used to throttle innovation more than encourage it. I see all that. But I think you are entrenching as opposition too much. I think by denying the foundational value of them *completely* does a disservice to the progress I think we would both like to see. (seriously, reread your "absurd to any thinking person" sentence until you realize you were 100% guilty of an ad hominem argument...)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dmc on Sunday February 23 2014, @01:40AM
To critique your argument against SW patents as "patenting long numbers" in another way-
Some might talk about the absurdity of "patenting math". I would respond that SW patents are patenting "applied math" in the same way that traditional patents (e.g. combustion engine) are patenting "applied physics".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by keplr on Sunday February 23 2014, @01:57AM
Applied physics is engineering. You don't get to patent or copyright engineering formulae and procedures, but you might be able to patent the fruits of your labour which used those tools. Software is like the formulae in this case. So you can restrict access to the fruits of your labour (with copyright), like MS Windows, but the software shouldn't be patentable. But this is getting into car analogy territory. It's best to just speak of things in their own terms.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 2) by dmc on Sunday February 23 2014, @02:09AM
No, you don't get to patent the fruits of your labor, you get to sell them (e.g. combustion engines). The original design for a combustion engine or velcro, is applied physics and chemistry. If you figure out the physics and engineering formulae for a new fusion reactor, you get to patent the _applied use of those physics chemical and engineering formulae_. You don't get to prevent other college professors from teaching how it was done (though you can try as a trade secret alternate to the patent process), but you do get to prevent those professors and their students and friends from recreating the saleable output. From that logic, I view a software patent as valid in the sense that two computers, one with the software and one without, are distinct physical objects, just like two differently designed car engines are. And that is why software should be patentable. Now, continuing that logic, I may also agree that we can just throw out all laws that talk about 'software patents' and just interpret tradtitional patents as covering the case where a computer running different software is a new, novel and different invention than the computer before it's internal atoms and electrons were rearranged in a new and novel and valuable way.
(Score: 1) by bucc5062 on Sunday February 23 2014, @01:04PM
I don';t agree with the original premise that SW is just a long number and how can we patent that? IT does fall into your point about Toy Story (the movie) as a digital work being just a long number. However, I still agree that SW patents need not to be given out.
A program is not so much a big long number as it is a connection of ingredients, taken from a general pool of syntax, semantics, and algorithms. Key words (even at the assembler level) and actions rung together to form a final product. Can one patent a cake? a pastry? You make one from apples, I make one from berries, but they are from the same pool of but knowledge and foundations.
We do not patent stories. Why? Some author writes a book that seems "completely" new, yet it is not for stories are built from the same building blocks, the same story lines laid out centuries ago. A story, article, poem; these are just a collection of letters, words, sentences, formed differently to make something "new", yet still not new.
Thus why I feel patenting SW is wrong (does not make sense). If I write a handy program that seemingly know one else knows about and someone else write a program that does almost the same thing, both came from the same pool of ingredients and were created just by different minds. Patenting an object, this I can understand for the original intent, to protect a small inventor from being shut out by larger competition. In the digital age, that scenario is less likely when it comes to SW. Copyright, this I understand and to copyright a program, just as we copyright a book or movie does protect the originator from losing their creative effort. I cannot copy a Monet, but if I paint like him, and I paint a lady in a field with a little boy that looks similar, I should not have to worry about copyright (I created it myself) nor patent, I used my own ingredients to bring it to life.
One day society will understand that programming is Art, not engineering.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by dmc on Sunday February 23 2014, @07:36PM
I don't disagree with your description, but I think the answers to your questions both are (and IMO should be - in a sense to be elaborated on) *YES*. Yes, you can patent a new and novel way to make cakes or specific cakes (or pastries). The reason you don't see these things patented meaningfully today is because they are so old, that the original inventors are long dead, and the processes that you are thinking about have now properly graduated to the public domain. That said, I'm sure Hostess probably still has some patents out for how they make twinkies and their other unique cakes.
To further discuss your point- yes, these patents are absolutely all conceptualizable as "recipes". They are "recipes" for how to build things. I.e. the patents for combustion engines, or velcro, are simply recipes for using existing widely known and common manufacturing processes to develop a new sellable object that is novel and a valuable addition to society. Likewise Software is just a "recipe" of how to arrange electrons and whatnot inside a common computer, to do something new and novel and valuable. In fact, as we enter the new revolutionary age of 3D printing, it will become more and more obvious how patents (for traditional physical objects) really should be thought of as "recipes". And in fact, that will absolutely blur the line between "software patents" and "traditional patents". Because now it will simply be a matter of a new novel software program that generates a new sellable innovative physical device.
I'm not going to bother doing the research, but I think you are likely wrong here as well. I suspect that some innovative types of stories have been patented. Certain "formulaic" stories have probably been attempted, and I'd even somewhat sadly suspect successfully, as either a class of story, or of a *cough* business method.
Now don't misinterpret me, I'm giving a defense of the foundational value of why such Intellectual Property rules and laws make sense. But I beyond wholeheartedly agree that in the actual practice of our society, these rules and laws have utterly failed beyond measure to achieve their intended benefit. When I look at the problems of the world, like corruption, past and modern slavery, oppression, human right violating surveillance, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the US history of interfering and bringing down legitimate democracy in favor of puppet dictators, then yes, it becomes ludicrous to defend how the rich profiteering scumbags have used Intellectual Property to keep themselves entrenched in power, at the cost of the hunger of the victimized masses.
But all that said, it is important to remember that the idealistic *foundations* of Intellectual Property are not bad. And when the opposition to the forces I mentioned above, become so entrenched, that they start ignoring *reason* it does their camp no good in the long run.
The issue here is that copyright and patent laws need to be *reasonable and effective*. First, Monet is long dead, so protecting his ability to profit from a specific work clearly doesn't make sense. But if a painter today, made a profoundly interesting painting, and profited from copyright to it, then there are limits of how closely you could copy that piece. Now, if a reasonable person believes that you just happened to paint a similar thing, or even were fairly using the fact you had seen the prior work and it affected your artistic expression, well, then society certainly shouldn't punish you, or if they do, punish you in a way commensurate with the actual damage to society you did (e.g. less than speeding 5mph with a car).
Bottom line- I think Intellectual Property has a valuable idealistic foundation, but in practice has been utterly perverted away from something *reasonable and valuable* to society, when looking at the bigger picture of actors that bring harm to society in various ways. So if we threw out all patent and copyright law today, I'd shed not many tears. But if everyone gave up on the belief that there were good intentions of wanting to encourage and help idea-generating-individuals make a living as valuable members of society, then I'd be pretty sad.