Call For Patent Reform
I wanted to open up a discussion about the call for patent reform, which I made in an editorial:
http://blue-gnu.biz/content/when_bullies_rule_call_patent_reform_america
We should develop some talking points for people to use when discussing or writing about patent reform locally. Our current focus is on so-called "software patents".
At least one point is the impractical nature of software patents. Software patents are unfair to everyone, but especially small businesses and independent developers, as these people do not have the resources to adequately research patents. Additionally, software patents are not usually disclosed as normal patents are, making it all too easy to accidentally infringe someone else's patent.
There are surely a number of points that need to be addressed, and I hope others will contribute to the discussion.
Abolish software patents
OK, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. Here is an article on the End Software Patents (ESP) coalition:
http://www.linux.com/feature/120628
At the very least, everyone who opposes software patents should do everything they can to advertise this group.
Altho' FSF is a member, ESP is a separate organization with other members and initial funding of $250,000 (US). While I am not extremely optimistic that they will be successful, hopefully they will raise awareness in the mainstream and sway some opinions that matter.
Later . . . Jim
RenaissanceCore IDS, check it out at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/renaissancecore
I did manage to read some of
I did manage to read some of the material in the previous links you sent. Good stuff! This one looks to be pretty good as well, and demonstrates there are more people engaged in the anti-patent school of thought than one might realize.
D.C. Parris
Publisher, Blue Gnu
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris
https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris
Comment and Another Link
These guys are economists so they have a better understanding of how the markets work. Their claim is bolstered by their expertise, not to mention their persuasive arguments.
I am in no position to evaluate their work as I am not an economist. However if they're right, it will turn the entire debate about "IP" upside down as their ideas spread.
There are more economists that also agree with this guy and they blog together at:
http://againstmonopoly.org/
They're documenting the ridiculous actions of patent troll, copyright maximalist, as well RIAA and your usual rent-seekers and would be monopolists.
Some new info
Found new information on why the patent system is not needed at all.
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm
Which teammate will get the entire team prize?
From the link http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm provided earlier,
>> As many psychologists and historians of technology have shown, innovation does not proceed through major breakthroughs by specific individuals, but rather through the collaboration of different people who, through small and cumulative improvements, yield novel and useful artifacts over time (Basalla, 1988). All of patent law, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that an invention is a discrete and novel entity that can be assigned to the individual who is determined by the courts to be its legitimate creator. The associations of an invention with other existing or past artifacts are therefore obscured.
... What the incremental view of technological change implies is that the contribution of an individual to a new device is likely to be small. Thus an inventor that comes up with a better mousetrap is building on the previous work of metallurgists, machinists and wood-workers, but also on the contribution of other individuals who previously worked on similar devices (if only by learning what did not work). Granting him a 20-year monopoly from the initial filing date seems somewhat outrageous in this light.
... The fact that people solve problems by combining existing things in a new configuration goes a long way toward explaining the persisting recurrence of « simultaneous inventions » throughout history. The patent system, however, will unduly penalize inventors who come up independently with a solution to a problem that might be similar to something that has already been patented.
You can't go a mile without covering the intermediate steps. There is no such thing as a breakthrough except to an apparent bystander that had not covered 99.9% of the mile and somehow thought that the inventor was in a similar position and made a huge leap.
The main problem with *software* patents is simply that there are so many inventors working simultaneously so that many are inventing the same things at roughly the same time. When a colleague/competitor runs out in front, numerous others usually realize they were probably days or weeks away from coming up with something similar or had already but hadn't formalized it. Yes, you still get surprises, but this number goes down as the number of inventors goes up. To give two decades of monopoly protection to any patent should require it pass a very high standard if any. To give 20 as the default is like the joke of the millenia.
Two analogies: The patent system is like rewarding the winner of a tight race among many through a perilous jungle AS IF that winner was the only one that had run the race while everyone else was sitting and resting by the starting line miles back. In actuality, a mass of people was running and many spent lots of energy paving the paths that the ultimate winner eventually took. It's like giving one teammate in a team of many the entire team price because that individual put the final period on what became the last official posting on the topic. Shame on supporters of the patent system.
As a practical matter, perhaps we should give no patents at all (ie, software patents) and simply resort to some other form of award for the really great inventions. In fact, wouldn't the lead time on the invention and the occasional industry recognition not be enough of a reward for those rare cases of "breakthrough" inventions? Note, too, that inventor status (unique to the "inventor" of record and to no one else) improves the brand associated with that individual inventor or company.
While I don't have time to
While I don't have time to read the document at the moment, it's definitely an interesting link. I think that will be quite helpful to all of us.
D.C. Parris
Publisher, Blue Gnu
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris
https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris
For right now, I'd like for
For right now, I'd like for us to focus on the software patents, and deal with the larger patent system later. Meanwhile, I appreciate Jose_X' links. Outstanding!
Cheers!
D.C. Parris
Publisher, Blue Gnu
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris
https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris
Patents are much more
Patents are much more unreasonable than copyrights. I would like to use the opportunity presented by patents attacks and threats to help spread the word about Linux. When enough people have Linux (freedomware) and freedom from most lock-ins, it will become much easier to get companies to behave if nothing else.
I think Microsoft was going to be targetted by this company. I think Microsoft has offered this company something. In particular, they probably offered to help the company through MS expertise to maximize the value of patents. It is more difficult today to win a patent claim and software was probably always a little bit tougher than other areas. One area where this company's investors may look to profit might be in the stock market. SCOX movement didn't go unnoticed. Of course, the market may not behave as "expected" but that won't keep Microsoft from potentially using that as an incentive. There are many ways Microsoft can help any company or at least it would appear so on the surface. Companies decide to join Microsoft all the time. This is particularly true when they feel they lack real value.
I wonder to how many patent companies has Microsoft been reaching out?
FWIW, I wrote some things about patents (see links below if care). It may help someone looking for arguments.
I think one of the better arguments against software patents is that patents were intended to fix a situation that doesn't really exist in the FOSS world or scientific communities: closeness.
Another good argument is more practical. Whether or not patents are good, they become an inconvenience when it starts affecting Joe/Jane User. Developing software is fairly easy. In the future many will be able to do it in some way (business patents will also become a problem). There are more software "inventors" because of the low barrier to entry. These large numbers and low costs means that patents aim to close off a cheap source of quality goods. This is why I think it will ultimately have to get reworked or become impotent in practice. But I do worry that we will close our eyes when companies like Red Hat get shaken down just because they are large.
Our best weapon in a fight against patents is to make sure that the average user can feel pain or feel threatened by patents. This may never happen if the commercial entities can manage to find the right balance of give and take, carrot and stick (eg, maybe patent injunctions for noncommercial use will not be allowed or done in practice). In any case, we will be in a much stronger position when Linux/FOSS is widespread. We fight patents indirectly by helping to grow Linux.
In this vein, of moving to grow Linux, anyone with ideas related to marketing Linux using the platform patents provides should feel free to post here: http://thetuxproject.com/node/254 . Microsoft should have a response for most things we can throw at them, as long as they don't get too sloppy. Then again, I think they ultimately are making it very difficult for quality freebies to exist through this patent attack. We should be able to capitalize on this, especially since we are talking about patents which, if it weren't for the actual wording in the US Constitution, might otherwise be considered Unconstitutional. Patents are basically much more restrictive than copyrights. People that grudgingly buy the copyrights piracy arguments about what is fair and just (but still hate DRM.. just in case.. because no one likes to be pushed against a wall and shacken of all their loose change) may not buy any patent arguments about what is claimed to be fair and just.
Some views on patents (with focus on software patents) [I posted twice near the bottom and *do* check out the actual article]:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/06/intellectual_d...
More ideas:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-06-20-029-26-OP-LL-0...
Why I don't think we should help "improve" current pending patents:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20070904192707124&ti...
Well, more links!
I know of an economist that pretty much condemn the copyright(Except something like free software of course) and the patent system.
In my eyes, he virtually destroy practically every argument for patents that the proponents could make.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
His work is published in an academic journal I think.
We could mine his stuff for powerful arguments against software patents.
Pragmatic solutions
I apologize in advance for a rather long post, but you have pushed one of my buttons. I would like to see software patents abolished, but the reality is that genie is out of the bottle and we will never get it back in. Therefore, we have to do the next best thing, which is to limit the damage.
I once responded to one of those ads for getting an invention patented. It was just a test, so I used an idea for anchors that I had rigged up on my daughter's 1st swingset. The company wanted me to pay between $6,000 and $18,000 for varying percentages of ownership, which I passed on. However, I learned quite a bit about the patent process.
Normal patents require a description of the problem being solved and a fairly detailed description of the invention, including a schematic. The schematic provides specificity, which allows people to patent better mousetrap inventions. Once this is prepared, a patent lawyer does a search for prior patents, not prior art. So the PTO examiners basically verify that search and then decide if the application deserves to be patented. From what I can tell, the bar for that decision is ridiculously low (check out some of the 4,000+ mousetrap patents http://inventors.about.com/od/weirdmuseums/ig/History-of-Mousetraps/).
Software patents do not require the equivalent of a schematic, they are just a functional description of the so-called invention, and any developer knows that turning a functional description into an actual product requires that a huge amount of detail to fill in the blanks. This is like patenting the concept of mousetraps. Because of this difference, software patent holders are being given a much greater advantage than holders of other patents. And because there were no software patents before the 90s, the earliest ones had no prior patents to deal with. The USPTO has completely dropped the ball on this one.
I agree with Don's suggestions (Note: you should include them in this discussion forum), and add this one, which should be retroactive, considering the USPTO's abject failure to set appropriate standards for the software patents it has issued:
- Require adequate specificity, or the equivalent of a schematic, for software patents. This would be a working prototype which would only apply to the platforms on which it could be successfully executed.
Next, there are at least three organizations that are trying to fight back, and need our support:
1) The Public Patent Foundation: http://www.pubpat.org/index.htm
2) The Electronic Frontier Foundation Patent Busting Project:
http://www.eff.org/patent/
3) WikiPatents: http://www.wikipatents.com/
Later . . . Jim
RenaissanceCore IDS, check it out at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/renaissancecore
It has been done before
I apologize for lots of typos as I am replying by my phone.
Apparently abolishing entire classes of patents has been done before (and making all such patents that fall into those classes invalid). I just read about certain types of patents that were abolished in the late 1800's in the US. I can't paste the link in now, but you can find a reference to the article on http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com .
abolishing software patents really is the only way to go. Leaving any wiggle room will simply star the process over again. As I said in the other threa RMS had a useful way to delineate valid patentable subject matter: if the sobjects in a patents are not subject to physical laws then patents cannot be filed againt them.d
We can still destory software patent
When the free software market is expected to reach about 5 billion dollars in 2011, I think you're going to have pretty powerful vendors. If not, combine the forces of the free software community, I think you have a pretty mighty adversity against the patent proponents.
The genie in the bottle can be put back.
We just need time to gather our strength.
Pragmatism again
If you are counting power in dollars, just IBM and Microsoft made well over $100 billion last year. I don't know how many software patents have been issued, but I believe it is on the order of at least 100,000. Assuming it costs $25,000 per patent (and that's probably on the low end), then various companies have at least an investment of $2.5 billion dollars in software patents. They are not going to give up that investment without a huge fight, and they have the lobbyists to win.
Therefore, I believe that the best strategy for the FOSS community is to ally itself with companies, such as RedHat and IBM, that are not depending on patent licensing for revenue. These companies are the most likely to be interested in serious patent reform, and if the FOSS community establishes a list of reforms that allow it to co-exist with software patents, then we may get their support.
That said, it is usually a good bargaining strategy to ask for more than you expect to get. So I would say that the list of reforms should include a statement in favor of abolishing software patents. But for the most part, it should contain achievable goals.
Later . . . Jim
RenaissanceCore IDS, check it out at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/renaissancecore
Abolishing patents is the most pragamatic solution
This is not pragmatic.
This is a defeatist attitude.
Abolishing the patent system is the most pragmatic solution to bring about great economic growth and prosperity.
We shouldn't say it is impossible or we can never put back the genie in the bottom.
We should aim for the highest desirable state we can possibly can within our own power. This is not about what we can seem to achieve, this is about changing the world as best as we can.
Because when we aim for the best, we will achieve more.
Leaving the patent system alone with the rent-seekers and would be monopolists is the worst of all plan.
The more we can undermine the patent system, the more wealth the results will bring to our society.
The patent system is fundamentally unjust. We should make effort to fight it, weaken it, and then bring it down, not "ok, we can stop now, it's ok".
The patent system is not a necessary evil, it is unnecessary one. Like all unnecessary evil things, we should bring it down with all of our might.
Why aim for "higher prosperity" when we can aim for "the golden age of the software industry and the free software movement"?
Many Points to Adreess Indeed
One of the most persuasive point usually goes something like this:
If Inventor A take an idea to company B. However company B decided to take the idea and screw out the inventor. Thus this is why we need patents.
Or...
The bigger competitors will copy the small guys, then he goes out of business. Thus he need patent.
I feel that I didn't capture the persuasive of this argument but I hope others will get the gist.
There is a point to address too:
Is the patent system really needed?
People will respond to this differently.
I am rare breed, so my argument and reasoning will be slightly differentiate from the norm(as I completely reject the system of patent altogether). It is important as a community to debate whether or not we need to dismantle the entire patent system altogether.
Otherwise our arguments will be different and contradicting, thus make our campaign at destroying software patent from the system more difficult than it should be.
If we can't reconsolidates the differences in our opinion, then we need to find a way to help minimize the schism weakness in our campaign. Reconsolidation in my opinion occurs when there are general agreement, not absolutely everybody agree.
As for dcp's point..this is my critique.
dcp: Normal patents are impractical too as there are million of them. You would be easily infringing on one.