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Thanks for catching that. I've made the correction.

Whilst Mr Graham presumably has experience in advising businesses operating within the ridiculous US patent regime, and whilst his essay gives a reasonable insight into the forces at work around patents and patenting, his experience apparently only compels him to verbosely and patronisingly sit on the fence (he knows so much on the subject, apparently, but can't be bothered to do the additional "several weeks of research" to tell the other "99.9% of the people who express opinions on the subject" why we're so ignorant), absurdly claiming that software development would be a secret society without patents. Clearly, Mr Graham chooses to ignore the growth of large parts of the software industry without everyone licensing everyone else's patents, the "ideas density" that you get in software, mathematics and business processes where it's inevitable that people frequently discover the same concepts independently and where new works almost always build on old ones, and the scientific tradition for the free exchange of ideas.

His remark that people who are against software patents must also be against patents in general, presumably formulated to make opponents of software patents seem like anti-capitalist idealogues in light of his "pragmatic" "can we fix the system?" ruminations, accidentally stumbles across a point worth considering: as large corporations such as those in the pharmaceutical industry slap patents on everything, including publicly-funded research, and as patents cause scarcity, price inflation and (especially in the case of "big pharma") hurt people in the developing world, can we live with such an archaic monopoly-granting system and have a clear conscience?

Yes, Mr Graham, the matter is somewhat more important than whether your "1998-style with Web 2.0 gloss" start-up goes public or gets bought out, presumably with champagne and cabriolets all round.

It is long, but as with many good articles/essays, Paul Graham's words are best when taken as a whole rather than just a few good points here and there. It certainly puts the term "pirated software" in a different light when you think of the historical and current relationship between merchants and pirates.

eSoft seems to be one of the patent trolls that was mentioned. Are they suing because they truly have something to protect, or are they suing simply because they would like to extort money from real products?

Paul Graham also makes a good point that the patent system was originally established to foster innovation through the sharing of ideas while protecting the creator's interests. Software patents don't have to be inherently bad. The rub lies in their implementation.

The USPTO has granted far too many bogus patents, and with software the difference between obvious and non-obvious can be quite difficult to define making the situation worse. Computer-related technology also moves at a much more rapid pace than the technologies that the patent system was originally designed to protect.

I don't think that the patent system should be abolished (it seems to have served the purpose for which it was created and should be allowed to continue). I think the patent system is in serious need of reform though. The issue of patent trolls should be solved as well as making it possible for computer-related technologies to progress at a natural pace instead of being locked into a pace that seemed appropriate for the first combustion engines.

"eSoft seems to be one of the patent trolls that was mentioned. Are they suing because they truly have something to protect, or are they suing simply because they would like to extort money from real products?"

The latter, no doubt. I work in the networking and security field and I havent ever heard of eSoft as a provider of anything. Actually, until today I hadn't heard of them at all.
They're just another worthless company without a sustainable business model that tries to cash in on the flaws of the U.S patent office.

Problem is, the "exercise your cat" patent was done specifically to prove how silly the patent system has become. This one is serious. I can't blame this company for wanting to get this patent though. They could end up putting their competitors out of business and extracting a bunch of money from a lot of big commercial software vendors for licenses.

"I can't blame this company for wanting to get this patent though"
Of course you can blame them. It's total unethical bullshit.

"They could end up putting their competitors out of business and extracting a bunch of money from a lot of big commercial software vendors for licenses."

So? That's like saying that anything is ok as long as you can make money.

"Of course you can blame them. It's total unethical bullshit. "

You deserve to be modded up just for that.

Patents in general are total bullshit, only the rich can get anything out of the patent system because of the cost of legal battles, and it's a biased system with retards passing almost any patent without putting any mental effort behind it. I mean come on people, Microsoft got a patent for tabbed browsing long after Mozilla Firefox and Opera had implemented it, RIM got screwed over a patent on something as simple as wireless e-mail which the prosecuting company hadn't even implemented. Hey, there's even patents on stiff envelopes that stick out so CD's and small books can be put in them, just look up "bevelope". We're sabotaging our own industries and future here people!

> "I can't blame this company for wanting to get this patent though"
> Of course you can blame them. It's total unethical bullshit.

So you blame them for not waiting until their competitors get that patent and sue them out of business?

It's the patent system which is to blame, not this company.

Correct: and you need only *one* prior art example to invalidate a patent.

"Apt" in particular definitely existed before 2000: I can remember Debian having it in '97, actually.

And cvsup, that is even older…

Well, if it's non-obvious and innovative...

Nope, probably they'll just expect the manufacturer of that OS to pay them money for the right to update it.

...it's always funny to see how broken the US patent system is.

There *should* be a lot of bright minds checking over submitted patents. Lately it appears there is just a few people that rubber stamp everying that comes across their desk. Not exactly surprising to see a government run operation be mismanaged in this way though.

"There *should* be a lot of bright minds checking over submitted patents."

Shouldn't it be a big, obvious sign that something is wrong when you need to end up employing more people to police submitted "inventions" than to actually produce them, and where those doing the reviewing need to be smarter than those doing the "inventing"? (Although a lot of the patent applicants don't exactly seem to be rocket scientists, judging by the quality of the more high-profile claims.)

Perhaps you don't remember how close the EU came to allowing "software patents". It was only a year or so ago. I think that we can all agree that we haven't seen the last of them either.

430 votes against to 14 votes for does not come close in my book.

I understand that you meant that it got as far as a vote in the first place... but it had to, in order to be defeated..

Since the vote last year, the US patent system has shown on numberous occasions how stupid it is.

This has been the last we have seen of it.

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61487

It was not against software patents, it was against the directive in general. You would be naive to think it's all over.

The European Parliament voted against software patents with a margin of 648 votes to 14. However, this means nothing, since the EU Commission can totally ignore the European Parliament's vote. The EU Commission is still aiming for Software Patents to be introduced this year: http://wiki.ffii.de/ComPat060118En

So, an unelected body can overrule the European Parliament and introduce software patents anyway. Welcome to European "democracy".

From Marlor:

So, an unelected body can overrule the European Parliament and introduce software patents anyway. Welcome to European "democracy".
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Ok, I'm no expert on the EU system, but I think unless the individual countries do something to enforce the law, the commission is just blowing in the wind. And if the parliment voted against so strongly against it, it's hardly likely the individual countries will do anything about it. But it's definitely something to keep an eye on. And thank goodness for the protests against them. Btw, the EU had a lot of trouble just deciding on how to write out the laws in different languages - so it's really not the most empowered organization in the world.

Sure, but if the member countries do not implement the commission's directives in some way they get fined for hundreds of millions of EUR.

You can always just unplug the computer.

Oh wait... That's patented too!

Thanks. Fixed.

possibly.... but why should they ?

microsoft cannot buy EVERY company with a patent.

No matter how close to godlyness you think they are

I agree with you, we live in a world full of greedy and nasty people. I'm sick of it too.

The problem is that it isn't a matter of software patents vs. non-software patents. Perhaps that's the matter for people outside of the U.S., but really I agree with Paul Graham that it's a trivial extension to consider machines configured with an initial state by "software" to perform tasks as following naturally from a patent framework. The problem is in the very nature of excluding others from being able to independently discover and profit from ideas. Marconi and Tesla were prominently demonstrating the wonders of patents before software patents were anyone's problem.

Look at what this company is doing... They sell network appliances. Also, look who they are suing... their competitors. This is typical Microsoft-ish predatory business practices.

I hope this company burns.

There's not much to go on, but from what I gather their patented "process" involves updates/automatic installation combined with a license/subscription validation mechanism. If that's the case, yum and apt are definitely off the hook.

The companies mentioned are all security product vendors that incorporate an online "service" update mechanism that can be used to add/renew services like anti-virus etc. I assume they're also competitors to esoft. Though I had never heard of eSoft before this, I am familiar with the defendants. FWIW Fortinet has been sued so many times over patent/GPL violations that they're lawyers will probably cover this one as a freebie.

The other interesting thing here is that the suit overlooks dominant security companies like Juniper and Check Point, both of whom use similar online subscription/update mechanisms for add-on services.

If I had to venture a guess, this is simply a case of a little known Tier-3 security vendor trying to generate some publicity by going after some Tier-2's and hoping they stay off the radar of the Tier-1's legal eagles.

I doubt this will have implications for general purpose OSes etc., in fact I'd be surprised if it even holds water against the present victims.

Still, just my 2c based on much speculation and little else to go on.