Submitted by “The United States patent and legal system has turned into a battlefield where companies and technology developers can be attacked. Open source and free software developers have historically ignored this secondary battlefield, focusing instead on the primary battlefield of development and proliferation of their project. This omission leaves open source projects and individual developers vulnerable to patent infringement lawsuits. By creating its own defensive patent portfolio as commercial companies do, the open source community can arm itself for this battle.”
Here is where software patent laws belong :
http://www.dumblaws.com/
In New York, a fine of $25 can be levied for flirting.
The more you take them seriously, the more they are serious.
Edited 2007-11-07 11:25
The more you ignore them, the more chance you have of having them derail you.
It takes two sides to ignore a dumb law, and unfortunately there are still going to be sides pushing patent lawsuits even if you ‘ignore’ them.
Something like the OIN has a much better chance of helping than sticking your head in the sand.
Good point, I modded you up.
I’m not from the US, but what about you launch a campaign of frivolous software patent law suits?
I don’t know how much it costs to who in the US to file a law suit, but if it costs to the government or to the companies you attack, serely something would be done quickly to address the problem? (like removing the dumb law?)
Edited 2007-11-07 12:51
History teaches us that one side is enough to debunk certain laws. Only that one side needs to have enough supporters and it may take some trail and errors before you succeed. Enough people and countries have done this in order to get access to food, water, salt and medicine.
People are afraid for what may happen and both companies and government know this. But when people get to getter and they fight things in groups it becomes more easier and people are less afraid for what may happen. Small towns who said no the more fast food companies in there town now know that there world didn’t collapse.
And when people figure out that (software) patents are mostly to get extra money out of there pockets, but also limits there possibility to write things down or to speak about certain things. It may soon change and now people slowly start to discover what open source does for them and there world. It may also come to there attention what open content means for them. And keep in mind we haven’t seen the true power behind projects like Wikipedia for example, but it already shapes the world of our children on school all around the world.
This will also change how we see patent law in some countries and to be honest. I live in a country without patent law for software and it may be the best thing for both companies and the people. And living in a country where some drugs are “regulated” in some way it also shows that people can force there government to change some things. Also patent law and DNA manipulation are both things a normal person can change in this world as long as they get organized.
And I’m not saying it may be easy, but not giving money to companies who are play patent bully is a first step. A step most companies won’t recognize until it may be to late for them since they are ordered by the government to make money and losing customer money isn’t good. Patents are mostly used for that so do the math. But then again it may not be cool and popular, but you keep your money in the pocket and can choose what you want.
Certainly. I never said otherwise. But the person I replied to didn’t have a “lets fight this” attitude, but a “you can ignore this” attitude, which IMO is not the way to patent laws fixed. My post was most certainly not an attempt to say that patent laws don’t need to be fixed.
Agreed. This is one area where I really have to pat redhat on the back for. Not only are for giving MS the finger, but for the work on the OIN as well. They’re good first steps.
Patents was created to protect the small inventor from being bullied by big companies. What do we have now?
Big companies with huge patent portfolios bullying small inventors. There should be no need for a defensive portfolio. The system is so flawed that the only right thing to do is to remove it completely.
Agreed!
A concerted effort needs to be made to do more lobbying and make the public aware of this problem.
As the saying goes:
Fight your enemy long enough and you’ll be just like him.
The idea of seeing our friendly FOSS-community turn into a bunch of blood sucking patent weirdos gives me the creeps!
“What do we have now?
Big companies with huge patent portfolios bullying small inventors.”
And certain companies are not interested to let an invention become popular and used to create a product if they feel their own markets threatened. And if lawyers get in control of innovation processes… Business as usual. 🙁
Actually, you have that wrong. Most of the time, it’s the small fish suing the big whale. For example, Stac Electronics and Eolas Technologies suing Microsoft. IP Innovation against Red Hat. Rates Technology against Google. OPTi against AMD, Apple, Via, etc. Network Engineering Software against eBay. The list goes on and on. Patents really do protect the little guy.
Yes, patents can protect the little guy. And they are vital to innovation. However, they were designed to apply to physical inventions. Not software. When it comes to the physical, they work well. However, they get abused when it comes to software. At least in IP Innovations case, we have a patent that has set idle for years while what it covers was being actively used and developed. That is a problem. Not only that, but there is some evidence that the suit is merely a business tactic on MS’s behalf. There is at least one paper in the ACM which talks about multiple workspaces published a year before the patent was issued. I will be highly surprised if it doesnt get invalidated.
EDIT:[To finish my thought] Yet the above suit could be interpreted as MS using an IP stick to whack Red Hat, who wont play ball with them. Not what patents were meant for.
Edited 2007-11-07 22:23
Uh, that’s specious reasoning. The Founders didn’t envision aircraft or computers or software or artificial hearts, either, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve protection.
Aircraft, computers, and artificial hearts are all physical inventions, though.
Software patents wouldn’t be such a problem if they were held up to the same standards as physical patents, i.e., you actually show how it works instead of having overly broad descriptions.
“Patents really do protect the little guy.”
How? By giving both the little guy and the big guy in software business more guns and means to threaten, sue and hurt each other? How have software patents helped Linux developers, for example? All we hear are empty threats from the biggest software monopoly of the world that claim that Linux would be infringing their patents. A big monopoly is protecting its monopoly. That’s what patents are for. They give the patent holder a monopoly over some technology.
Patents protect monopolists and monopolies.
Nobody doing real development and innovation in the IT world would get much hurt if there were no software patents at all – like there haven’t been in most of the world. Some greedy companies might get a bit less money but that would probably be only good for the economy as a whole, and the lack of software monopolies would improve both competition, innovation and software development in general.
Science is where true innovation happens. In true science knowledge is not usually secret and not owned by some monopolists only. Other scientists can and do use the the knowledge and studies of others when improving science – for the common good of everyone. Software development is quite much like science actually. Fortunately scientific knowledge is not yet usually considered intellectual property of some companies only…
However, because of software patents lots of people in IT business get hurt all the time, both “little guys and big guys”. And time that could be used much better in innovation and development is nowadays spent all too much worrying about potential software patent threats.
Software patents do not help innovation at all, and are not designed to do that – at all. They are just means for a few IT business people to get more money and to prevent competition.
Copyright would be enough to protect developers’ interests in software business.
Edited 2007-11-07 22:40
You’re asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is: “Why aren’t Linux developers filing patents?”
What you should be asking is: “Why aren’t Linux developers filing patents?”
Most probably because they likely don’t even believe is such an odd and very controversial concept as a software patent. They have better things to do, like innovating and developing software.
“What you should be asking is: “Why aren’t Linux developers filing patents?”
Actually the whole free software / open source philosophy of openness and cooperation is completely contrary to the idea of software patents and intellectual property in general. Free software is free in the sense that no single person or company is allowed to own it.
We have been taught to believe in the old good values of freedom of speech and freedom of science, both emphasize freedom of ideas, freedom of thinking, freedom of studying and learning. Why do some people want to turn everything, including very basic ideas, into property and money? Because “In Money We Trust” is the only true ideal and value in their life?
Edited 2007-11-08 00:34
Those are quaint and admirable virtues. But they won’t serve as a defense in a patent infringment case.
Perhaps because ideas such as Communism have taught us that, ultimately, so-called common “freedoms” only extend as far as the oligarchs (ie. Stallman, Torvalds, Moglen, Lessig) will allow. All other voices are shouted down as heretical. Watch: Even here, on this forum, this post will be modded down because ignorant people are afraid of its contents and don’t want others to read it. Orthodoxy is your currency. Censorship is your weapon.
Edited 2007-11-08 18:31 UTC
That doesn’t change their liability in patent infringment cases. They can you either adapt or stick their heads in the sand. Personally, I’m more of a realistic pragmatist, so I’ll go with adaptation. Which is why I hold a number of patents.
“That doesn’t change their liability in patent infringment cases.”
The fact is that the whole concept of software patents is still very, very contradictory and disputed even in the USA. Everybody from big corporations to individuals seems to be calling for a software patent reform of some sorts in the USA nowadays because the software patent situation has simply run out of hands.
In most civilized world software patents do not exist, and parliaments and governments have clearly decided that they don’t accept the overblown US system of often all too trivial software patents.
Just because a few US politicians – under the strong pressures of corporate lobbying – have made a difficult decision about a very disputed and complicated matter that many of them probably have not even understood too well doesn’t yet mean that their still very disputed decision would and should be the final and best decision for future too. Bad laws are made to be criticized and improved. Otherwise – if status quo could never be questioned – the USA would still have slavery too.
Edited 2007-11-08 22:13
> That doesn’t change their liability in patent infringment cases. They can you either adapt or stick their heads in the sand. Personally, I’m more of a realistic pragmatist, so I’ll go with adaptation. Which is why I hold a number of patents.
‘Realistic pragmatist’ you may be but a ‘clear thinker’ is less certain. Just because you hold some patents doesn’t mean you are any more immune to a patent infringment case than anyone who doesn’t hold patents. The fact you hold patents is irrelevant in this case.
Why not just say you hold (non-trivial hopefully) patents (in something other than software) because you hope to recoup your investment in R&D. I, and probably most others, wouldn’t disagree with your reasoning there. However, it doesn’t change your potential liability to the trivial patents out there. Therefore you might want to re-examine whether your own support of the current patent system is actually very ‘realistic’ or ‘pragmatic’.
‘Realistic pragmatist’ you may be but a ‘clear thinker’ is less certain. Just because you hold some patents doesn’t mean you are any more immune to a patent infringment case than anyone who doesn’t hold patents. The fact you hold patents is irrelevant in this case.
Dude, go easy on the non-sequitors and straw-men. I never said that holding patents protects me from unrelated patent infringement suits. You pulled that one out of your rear. What it DOES do is prevent others from capitalizing on my ideas. People may not like having to license my ideas, but that’s how the system works, and I’m going to use the system to my advantage. Which brings us back to my original point. You can either use the system — or work to change it. Since the patent system isn’t going to go away (despite what many here put forward as pipe dreams), the only credible solution is to work within the system: In other words, patent as many inventions as possible. But that exposes the real problem here: People that develop OSS software are cheap. They’re willing to put out software with a lame GPL copyright intended to thwart commercialization — but then they won’t go the extra mile to protect the inventions represented in the software. And then they have the stones to criticize people that *do* use the patent system. How incredibly short-sighted and stupid.
> What it DOES do is prevent others from capitalizing on my ideas
I doubt you could afford to conduct a contracted patent defense against a big company, so no, that is an illusion you have. Plus, with software it is quite likely that any patents you do have can’t actually be defended (check the recent overturning of a raft of Amazon’s patents). Perhaps you do have patents on some amazing non-trivial implementations, in that case, good on you, but most software patents aren’t like that.
> People that develop OSS software are cheap.
Ok, this shows you know vastly less about OSS than you think you do. OSS is about all about ‘control’. End of story. The fact there is an underlying ‘gift culture’ as well has nothing to do with the GPL license terms.
Your assertion that GPL’s purpose is to discourage commercialization is so way off base that I hope you eventually do some actual reading of the GPL creators ideas – they’re actually far more reasonable than the semi-ignorant you get on these discussion sites (who confuse ‘free as in libre’ with ‘free as in gratis’). In fact, Richard Stallman (found of GNU) survived for a while *selling* GPL copies of Emacs. Yes you read that correctly, the founder of GNU believes in ‘selling’. Since you are mistaken about the GPL I’ll point out its intent:
1) protecting the consumer of the software (from the cases if the vendor goes out of business or won’t fix a bug in a piece of software that is critical to your business). When you’re a consumer anyone else’s software it is *you* that is covered by this protection.
2) Protecting the vendor (that’s you again), nobody can take the code you have written, extend it, and re-sell that code without contributing modifications back – which Microsoft has done many times (with both Kerberos and BSD network software for example). Copyright (when enforced) is enough to protect you in this way – you don’t need patents to do this.
Patents however, can be used to stop anyone from doing their own *separate* implementation, no matter how trivial the idea was. When used this way they are actually anti-free market. Big companies *will* use their patents to crush you, even if your software is developed independently of theirs (in fact, they don’t even need a product, just an idea, to put a stop to all your hard work)
OSS has nothing to do with *developers* being freeloaders as you seem to think. Iin fact, they work harder than most business, but want to get the two protections I mentioned before, and some also want to share their work with others. Greed doesn’t drive everyone you know. Maybe many OSS *users* are cheap (same goes for proprietary stuff) but the OSS license terms are set by the *developers*.
As a final point, you seem to be confused that OSS prevents commericalization. There’s no nicer way of saying it, but you are completely wrong here. You can actually comercialise the OSS written by someone else (IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Canonical etc. are smart enough to do it), but you can’t ‘close’ their code to anyone else. There are software products under GPL that cost money to acquire. It’s just that plenty of OSS developers choose to give it away for free, and companies that want to charge for bits of software that are easily implemented by college kids in their spare time are just gonna have to adapt to the new reality.
Please do a bit of research rather than relying on hearsay if you want to meaningfully discuss complex topics such as this.
I would strongly reject any attempt to replace a 20-year token monopoly (patents) on a technology with a (75 to 105, depending)-year monopoly with the option for infinite renewals.
> I would strongly reject any attempt to replace a 20-year token monopoly (patents) on a technology with a (75 to 105, depending)-year monopoly with the option for infinite renewals.
Who cares how long copyright exists for software? I think that most people agree that software produced by a company is protected reasonably fairly with copyright.
What patents prohibit is other people re-implementing an *idea*, even if it is obvious (to a developer). That’s what really gets talented people worked up.
I don’t think the solution is to abolish patents. The problem is that the bar for patent approval isn’t set appropriately. Patents should only be issued for inventions whose development costs require an extended period to recoup, and this period should correspond to the patent lifetime. In other words, patents provide a limited monopoly to the extent required to justify the initial investment.
A great idea that cost very little to develop is not worthy of patent protection. The market provides sufficient incentives for cost-effective R&D. It’s only when the initial investment becomes prohibitive that artificial incentives serve the public interest in technological development. The vastly different cost structure is what makes the typical pharmaceutical patent a necessary evil and the typical software patent just plain evil.
In the software industry, developing ideas is dirt cheap compared to bringing them to market, while it’s the complete opposite for drug companies. There’s no shortage of software startups with great ideas and mockups that they can’t successfully productize. Patents don’t solve this problem. Software visionaries don’t need monopolies, they need funding and responsible management.
Large, established software vendors certainly don’t need monopolies. A common gauge built the railroad industry in America, providing competition and expansion without unduly punishing the dominant players. Similarly, the future of the software industry demands royalty-free open specifications for interacting with proprietary software and their data.
As we’ve seen, dominant vendors stagnate unless smaller vendors can interoperate. Free software has recently pushed Microsoft to bring back its A game (or at least its B game), but it shouldn’t have been such a long and bitter fight to generate the practical competition that the industry needs in order to progress.
So not only is it rare to find a software patent that actually deserved to be issued, but it’s ridiculous that software patents can prevent competitors from interoperating. There should be absolutely no basis for patent threats against projects like Mono, Samba, and Wine. The fact that some of these projects have largely resorted to reverse engineering is outrageous enough.
… but wouldn’t it just be easier for open-source developers to not steal other people’s work and just pay the licensing fee for whatever they use?
Like I said, crazy.
First, stop implying that open source developers actively steal IP. Yours just being a troll. Second, it kind of makes free software impossible if the project is loaded down with patents. Licensing for patents never gives the end user the same rights as the license holder. Thats how monopolies are protected.
You don’t have the right to charge for my idea (or claim ownership of my thinking), so why should I bother paying a thief like you?
Besides that, violating a patent isn’t theft, though ——– like you want to make it look like that.
Patents are Government granted ownership of other persons private thoughts and as such violates all principles of democracy. But hey, that doesn’t bother you at all, does it?
A succinct description of the reason we have patent law.
Corrected your typo.
We have to fight this broken patent system instead of embracing it ourselves.
I agree, but I see a lack of orgaization to fight it.
All I see are people complaining in public forums, but as organization, is time to protest in a real way, using the mediums of the law.
Edited 2007-11-07 15:09
What do you mean by “fight”? Do you even know what you’re fighting? In order to change the system, you need to get Congress on board and, I have to tell you, you have better odds of winning the lottery.
I’ve never heard of them…
Can we please keep the “Americanisms” to a minimum?
Thank you.
Edited 2007-11-07 15:18
Hear hear!
Besides that, why not just move FLOSS-projects to servers outside USA?
*insert offensive comment here*
Sadly this is not only an American problem.
I agree that the best thing for everyone would quite probably be if software patents were forbidden everywhere, or at the very least very strongly restricted. And I don’t know if it was the best solution for the free software / open source community to just accept the situation and then try to have its own patent portfolios? However, the software patent problem cannot be just forgotten and ridiculed, how ever ridiculous most software patents might look like.
There is strong lobbying for software patents also in places where software patents are not yet legal. For example, the EU may now be mostly free from software patents, but not completely and politics are an ever changing matter: https://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/…
If the politicians were always wise, just and righteous people who always knew what they were doing, believed in democracy, and who weren’t too easy prey to, say, corporate lobbying and bribes, maybe we could just forget the problem and think that it is not a serious threat at least outside the USA. But like we all should know all too well, that is not the case in this world. Often politicians seem to understand only the language of big money. People with better understanding about things may need to explain matters to the politicians again and again so that they may finally get the message. There are lots of examples of this in politics, in human rights and environmental matters etc.
Anyway, nobody should ever be able to patent very basic and general software code pieces and technologies that many others could and would reinvent very easily. In that kind of cases (most software patents?) you couldn’t really talk about stealing anyone’s innovations if someone other developed something similar and probably all by themselves. So basic software ideas like web shopping carts are, as new innovations and technology, practically comparable to hammers, screwdrivers, nails and screws in the building industry. I could understand if some completely new high-tech products that have truly demanded lots of time and effort from their developers could be patentable (although – actually also in those kind of cases patents may often not be that useful for the economy as whole in the end). But certainly not something so trivial like double clicks, web shop shopping carts etc. Patents like those are as stupid as if someone could have a patent for a real shopping cart (patent: “innovative” rectangular object that is hollow inside and used for carrying groceries and other shoppings at a mall?) or for a nail (a sharp long metal piece used in fixing wooden things together).
Edited 2007-11-07 18:48
Often politicians seem to understand only the language of big money.
Who pays their campaigns?
Election presentations should be standardised budget wise and thus in theory immune against unwanted influences.
If a comet strike would decimate 3 quarters of the earth population the politicians are most likely ranked at the bottom of the food chain.
“If a comet strike would decimate 3 quarters of the earth population the politicians are most likely ranked at the bottom of the food chain.”
Heh.. This goes a bit out of topic, but I don’t think that cynicism is a good solution to any problems in politics.
Politics are at least meant to be something where politicians try to improve society and get rid of its problems. Of course, to some politics might be mostly just another tool to get more power and money for themselves only… But not everyone is a greedy selfish nihilistic bastard who thinks only himself. If the current politicians don’t seem good enough, do not vote for them, vote for others, try to publicly support good values and oppose false and bad things.
When enough people don’t just sit on their fat asses watching tv but at least try to take active part in improving things, that is often the only way how many things gradually start to change for the better in a society. In a truly democratic society that should work.
Edited 2007-11-08 23:12
Acquiring a defensive patent portfolio is buying into (and reinforcing) the existing system.
Check out Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture
http://www.free-culture.cc/
to see why “IP” is a complete misnomer.
Between the work Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen (and Lawrence Rosen, among others) there is a decent chance things will change – provided the debate isn’t framed in terms of “property”. If you read up about it, it’ll open your mind.
Lessig is an academic who doesn’t have to pay the freight. If the tables were turned and somebody ripped off one of his inventions, costing him his livelihood and honorariums and grants — meaning that he could no longer make his mortgage payments — he’d think differently.
> meaning that he could no longer make his mortgage payments — he’d think differently.
So are you suggest we are uncritical about patents, that is “the end justifies the means”?
I personally think copyright is good, and is actually sufficient for most purposes (you can protect enough software with that). Most of the people who critically examine law (the ‘academics’ you seem to think aren’t worth listening to) also believe that copyright is a sufficient correct form of protection, not the current patent fiasco.
As far as patents in the US go, as earlier posters have said, they aren’t fulfilling their intent since the bar for granting a patent is set far too low, leading to abuse by companies big and small. Sure, patents themselves are good for granting limited monopoly in order to recoup investment (such as for pharmaceuticals or industrial chemicals), but for software the’re bunk (yes, we all pay mortgages too, doesn’t mean the current patent system is flawless).
There is a solution to software patents, and come companies even practice this solution. It’s called “innovation”. These companies produce something and then keep ‘running’ so damn hard their competitors struggle to keep up. For example Apple do this (although they also have the inclination to unfairly crush competition [and even fans] too). It’s a far better model than dreaming an idea (you don’t even have to produce anything) and taxing everybody else who is actually able to execute on the idea. That’s not what (software) patents were intended for.
ps. your reply to my earlier comment had been voted down to -1, even though I disagree with your point, I have voted you up so others can see – fair’s fair, eh?.
My solution to all this: switch from programming to pure mathematics. Until the day comes that you can patent equations, I’ll laugh at this debacle. Of course, jobs will be more scarce.
YMMV.
No – this should never happen. Software patents must be abolished, no ifs, buts or maybes. They are bad for innovation, bad for competition, and bad for the end user. You don’t fight fire with fire as the old saying goes.
Dave
I can never figure out why people think software should be patentable. Even the founding fathers understood the differences between copyright and patent and nothing that has happened in the last 200 years changes their ideas. Patents are meant for inventions. Hence the requirement to divulge the workings of the invention when you patent it. Copyright is meant for text. Code is text. Unless you invented the language, how can you expect to patent anything your write. We dont let authors patent books or words. Why is code different? Anything you write is using words and symbols that already existing. Hence you arent inventing anything.