I came across this blog post which supports software patents. I wanted to add a comment, but comments are restricted to 1000 characters on that blog and so it’ll have to be a trackback.
Patents – as envisioned by our founding fathers – was and is about rewarding and fostering innovation.
Absolutely. Whether software patents should be allowed or not depends entirely on this test.
First, why should software be different from other subject matter that is patentable? For example, pharmaceuticals and tangible items such as computers, appliances, etc? Is software, by its nature, not entitled to the same benefits of patent law?
You ask this as a rhetorical question, anticipating the answer No, but this is in fact the core of the anti-software-patent case. There are two things which make software different from tangible items.
The first is that if I give you a copy of my software, I still have it for myself. This is not true of anything tangible, and this fact alone makes the economics of software vastly different from the economics of cars or pharmaceutical pills. Therefore, I don’t think it’s valid to say “we have patents for appliances, so we must have them for software”. Fresh analysis, and going back to the reasons for the existence of patents, is necessary.
The second is that software is vastly more complex than almost anything else man makes. A car may have 10,000 parts. A software project may have 10,000,000 lines of code. This means that it contains vastly more ideas and components, and is therefore far more likely to hit patents. It’s therefore much easier for one company with a patent on a core software idea to put an innovation toll-booth up.
With software patents in place, over the past decade, I have seen great advances made in technology.
It may interest you to know that Bill Gates, owner of the company which makes the “example of innovation” that you cite, has a different view. In an internal memo, he said:
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. … The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.
Lastly, not everything is a liberal/conservative issue, as you imply with your dig at “liberal Europe”. I am politically conservative (with a small c, for UK readers), but I believe that patents on software damage, rather than promote innovation and so, by the test that you yourself give, should not be permitted.
People keep looking to the United States saying “See! Software patents *and* a vibrant software industry! There must be positive correlation!” This suggests it would be ultimately beneficial to start some more “pure parasite” companies to launch an all-out patent assault on the US software industry, so everyone can clearly see where this road leads.
Note that the backers wouldn’t even have to be in the US. It would be an excellent form of economic warfare for anyone with a grudge.
I think both sides of this argument are rediculus (no joke).
1. People often confuse computer *science* with computer *industry*. Industry is the use to make a profit. *science* is the discovery purely for the geeky goodness of it. True open source blurs it a little, but it’s still crystal clear. Microsoft isn’t a research firm, it’s a for profit corporation. UC Berkeley is a research institution/university. Big difference.
2. Software patents are what makes computing a profitable industry. Without them, your accomplishments really have no monitary value. Remove the ability to make solid profit… and you remove the motivation for industry to continue funding computer science…. most important inovations in CS were either the colaboration of science and industry, or pure industry.
On the flip side: some patents are distructive, such as the infamous eolas case.
IMHO the only *real* way to solve the obvious problem is to have a special board for technological inovations applying for patents. Those on the board must be respected by their peers. Their job is simple: is this applicant’s patent beneficial or harmful. Justify your opinion.
When patents become silly, harmful, and interfere (as quite a few do)… they need to be turned down. AFAIK nobody has successfully patented the breathing technique used by mammals.
But without patents, the industry is worthless to those who invest in it. We live in an information age, not a service age. Providing services isn’t stable business in the eyes of a modern business practice, because any day a competitor can destroy you… you can’t rely on services to exist. Patents have some strength. Hence the reason businesses rely on them to survive. They are profitable. They are an asset. They are sustainable.
“2. Software patents are what makes computing a profitable industry. Without them, your accomplishments really have no monitary value. Remove the ability to make solid profit… and you remove the motivation for industry to continue funding computer science…. most important inovations in CS were either the colaboration of science and industry, or pure industry.”
No, you have Copyright/Droit d’auteurs for making profit.
As Gervase said: Software Patents fail the test whether they are beneficial to society as a whole. Patents should foster innovation and as the inventor you get a limited monopoly on your idea. But it has been shown in studies that those companies who start seeking software patents lower their R&D expenses over time more than those who don’t. Software patents help a few groups of people: Patent attorneys, lawyers, already established monopolies and a few companies that specialize on patenting everything under the sun without *ever* actually producing anything (that would open them to countersuits). On the otherhand everyone else suffers.
Software already has the inherent property of forming monopolies. Just think about file formats or IE and standards. Copyright adds another monopolizing factor, trademarks a third, design patents a forth. No one has ever shown that it’s beneficial for the software industry or more importantly for the society to add yet another possibility.
Arthur
May want to look at the value patents hold… just look at those who don’t like them.
Why don’t they like them? Because they allow others to make money, and they can’t leech off of them.
“Why don’t they like them? Because they allow others to make money, and they can’t leech off of them.”
Not at all. A lot of people don’t like them because software patent holders (I’m not talking about other patents here, that’s a more difficult story) get a monopoly without having to give back *anything* at all. It’s not an incentive for them to invent more things, it’s an incentive for them to extort those who actually innovate and deliver some great products. Nowadays software patents almost always disclose only *what* the software is supposed to do but almost never *how* that can actually be achieved. The whole disclosure part that makes patents to a certain degree valuable for society is missing.
So no, it’s not about whining “I can’t leech off their invention” it’s about “I’ve gone the whole length of actually implementing a working programm that does something useful and now this software patent holder comes along and says ‘Iv’e patented all systems and methods for providing instructional feedback to a user'”. That’s one reason why software patents are bad. They hinder innovation.
Patent
Yes I know that this is “only” a patent application and not yet granted, but there are more than enough examples out there.
> Software patents are what makes computing a
> profitable industry. Without them, your
> accomplishments really have no monitary value.
> Remove the ability to make solid profit… and
> you remove the motivation for industry to
> continue funding computer science….
Sorry, but THIS is ridiculous. The computer industry was doing just fine before software patents became popular (late 80s/early 90s). Copyright was working perfectly well as the means to protect software, and it still is.
> Why don’t they like them? Because they allow
> others to make money, and they can’t leech off
> of them.
This is insulting. You’re saying you know the thoughts of everyone who’s opposed to software patents (which is actually *most* computer scientists and programmers, I’ve found).
Think about it: what value do computer programmers and scientists get from patents? Have you ever found anything useful by searching the patent database, then obtained a license to use it? I’m sure you haven’t. I don’t know anyone who has.
Your Bill Gates’ quote is incorrect. You are quoting Lessig who is removed from the court as an expert because he called Microsoft evil empire. If you are free to make up such quotations, I don’t think why we should support your view. Not only you are lying with regard to the quote, but also your quote’s whole purpose is to show Bill Gates as evil which has nothing to do with the issue at hand which is patents should be supported or not.
In my opinion, people who don’t support patents are much less credible as well as less knowledagable on the issue. Microsoft bashing is synonymous with lack of credibility in fact. As in your incorrect quote, you rely on false information to advance your cause. Of course what you really worry about is you want to be able to steal from others because traditionally open source is all about imitating and implementing others’ work. If there wasn’t Netscape there wouldn’t be Mozilla. Once you are on your own, you know that you have to fear from patents because you don’t have the innovation commercial companies have. That worries you so you want to be able to steal from those innovators. Instead of telling the truth, you make up quotes and try to show Microsoft as evil and expect pity from others.
In my experience the people who support software-patents aren’t those who want to support innovation in the industry. They are the types of people who have produced a few products and want to sit on their innovation and make money from it. That is, they don’t want to do any more innovation.
Hardly encouraging innovation is it?
I have yet to see a good argument for software patents. They usually say “everything else can be patented”, but they neglect the fact that software has done very well without wide-spread patenting. Plenty of people are willing to innovate in this industry without patents. Just let us get on with it will you? I don’t want to be held back by your silly patents.
Why can’t we just learn from each other rather than be greedy and selfish?
Jin –
The quote was written by Bill Gates and merely reported by Lessig on his blog:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002291.shtml
Adam
“In my opinion, people who don’t support patents are much less credible as well as less knowledagable on the issue.”
It’s interesting that someone isn’t credible just because one is against patents (again, you talk about patents, this thread is about software patents). But I must admit that there are a lot of uninformed people on both sides. Software patent supporterts often don’t question anything about the patent system just because they once in the past have learned that “patents foster innovation”. They never ever would even look at studies that suggest that this isn’t always the case. On the side of the software patents critics there are a lot of people who somewhere heard that software patents are bad for free software and are against them without profoundly looking at the questions at hand. That’s a problem you have with all kinds of discussions.
That’s roughly what the patent office is. Except that no-one who is a computer scientist “respected by their peers” wants to spend time as a patent examiner – they’d much rather be inventing things. The problem with this idea is the sheer number of patent applications – they can’t all be given the consideration they deserve.
My intention was not to bash Microsoft or show that Bill Gates is evil – and I don’t think that quoting a memo he wrote does either of these things. And I think his thoughts on software patents are very relevant to a discussion on software patents.
Please don’t pigeonhole me into the “Microsoft-hater” box to give yourself an excuse to ignore my viewpoint.
Software patents are great! Why, if Dan Bricklin had been allowed to patent VisiCalc, think where spreadsheets would be today. Imagine how amazing they’d be without any competition from Lotus and Microsoft!
And what about SSL? Netscape had some sort of patent on that but never bothered enforcing it. Why on earth not? Can you imagine what the browser space would look like if only one browser could conduct secure transactions? No doubt the browser wars would have seen even more vigorous innovation, what with only one browser being safe to use to get your books from Amazon.
And Amazon! With the one-click purchasing patent! The gains from this have been monumental. Without the one-click patent, there would have been no reason for other companies to develop original purchasing methods that aren’t quite one-click. We’d be in the ecommerce stone age without that!
Software patents are the best thing ever!
About it the only proprety software I use on my computer is Windows, and a couple games. The reason I use Windows is for the games and in case someone else wants to use my computer or something. There’s also a few exeptions like Java and my antivirus.
On the web almost my entire time is spend using open source stuff, or at least stuff that is not patented. I have never used Amazon and buying from one of the current open source e-commerce system wouldn’t bother me at all.
Come to think of it, I really have little use for proprietary software.