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posted by martyb on Sunday November 25 2018, @03:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the copyrights-patents-and-trademarks-oh-my dept.

Cisco VP/CTO Jonathan Rosenberg has written a blog post about how harmful software patents are to industry. On top of being vague but also transferrable, they can be used offensively by grantees which are not involved in any aspect of making or using the technologies to which the patents apply, an aspect which has caused ongoing, grievous harm to computer-using companies for a long time now. Something needs to change and, so, after outlining the nature of the problem, he closes with two brief solutions.

Friends and relatives who are not in the technology industry always ask me if I've ever gotten a patent. For them, a patent has this sheen of accomplishment. They believe it means you invented something, that you are an innovator, that you've done something no one has done before. I give a little chuckle, tell them that yes, I have a few patents (I actually have 90 issued U.S. patents), but that it's not really a big deal, and thank you for asking. In reality, I'm being polite. I don't want to burst their bubble, nor do I want to launch into a long tirade. Because, the reality is, that patents — and in particular — software patents — are a plague upon the industry. They hamper innovation. They cost companies millions and millions of dollars in frivolous law suits. They waste time and energy from people who just want to build products. They are anathema to the Internet. Software patents are harmful.

Software patents have three key characteristics which have resulted in their harmfulness. They are vague in terms of what is actually invented. They can be passed along as property. You can sue for infringement without making the product to which the patent applies. Lets cover each in turn.

Software remains covered by copyright, as a form of creative expression. Again, while software patents is a problem mostly contained to the US, they are becoming a threat for the EU. Even as the European Patent Convention specifically exempts software from patentability, there remain prolonged efforts to circumvent the law and establish software patents in effect. After all, what do laws matter if companies can be convinced to universally ignore them?


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:33AM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday November 25 2018, @09:33AM (#766120) Journal

    - patents are good
    - o rly
    - ya rly
    - how much did you spend for your telescreen, i mean smartphone
    - 200$
    - you'd spend 170$ without patents
    - but patents make sure inventions are not lost
    - most patents cannot be replicated at all, working prototypes are not required
    - but inventors need to make a living
    - ask meucci or tesla how they made a living with patents
    - but patents advance the state of the art
    - ask Sun how they received legal threats from IBM about their servers without IBM needing to know the details of the architecture because their patents were broad enough, ask around about SCO

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Sunday November 25 2018, @11:56PM (1 child)

    by Mykl (1112) on Sunday November 25 2018, @11:56PM (#766316)

    Ask about the early days of Apple and Microsoft. Both of those guys were anti-software patents in the early days while the businesses were growing.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 26 2018, @03:42PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 26 2018, @03:42PM (#766463) Journal

      I know this to be true of Apple. Back in the day. When I was an Apple fanboy and also Mac developer, before them intarweb tubes.

      Apple delivered a monthly deluge of paper to developers. Yes, really. It was heavy. A brick like slab of paper, later including a CD ROM, shrink wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped.

      This includes updates to manuals. New manuals. Tech notes. And many other interesting and/or important things. Sometimes also big 3-ring binders.

      One time there was an article outlining the proposed software patents and Apple's opposition to it. The individual author of the software said he shouldn't need to have a lawyer in order to write his software. And here we are now today. You can't write software without a lawyer.

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      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.