Now you are just bitter...

Now you are just bitter...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 5:30 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Straw man attack - here we come! by bojan
Parent article: Ogg codecs dropped from HTML5

And Oracle. And Autodesk. And Adobe. And Borland. And Lotus. All innovators at the time.

All? You mean Apple or AT&T were against software patents too? Industry was divided back then like it was now. World is not white and black - there are other colors.

Have it your way. Software patents are just peachy and everybody loves them. Let's have more of them. Then we'll have to have even more stupid workarounds like the recent VFAT kernel stuff. Awesome.

Again: don't oversiplify things. I never said software patents "are just peachy" - on the contrary I think they must be abolished. Not because they are pure evil, but because benefits are not big enough and fallout is way too big. But when you are starting the whole "software patents have no good sides to them at all" you just show yourself as someone totally detached from reality - and so make all your other argument suspicious too.

And we have digital video today because we had software patents. Otherwise, we'd still be stuck with the old analogue gear.

Today? Nope. Not even close. We had diginal video 20 years ago because of the patents and now we have huge mess in this area related to said patents. Was the advantage of getting digital video sooner rather then later worth it? Hard to say, but probably not. But it's no coincidence that this area is so heavily patented - and to ignore the fact is to throw out the baby with the bath water...

BTW, any idiot working at USPTO or any other patent office that sees fit to approve moronic things like Microsoft's "computer bolted to the car that has wireless" should be immediately fired and words "patently stupid" tattooed on his/her forehead.

Nope. The system is designed in such a way as to punish honest worker (lost royalties! waaah!) and reward hustlers (Ok - this patent was thrown out by court... let's try the other 100 patents we have available).

If the problem was moved to courts - it should be fixed there. Right now the patent litigation process is designed in such a way as to make it great for patent trolls and disaster for honest guys. Even if you win patent litigation and prove that patent was frivolous - you get nothing in return! May be pat on the head... If we know that a lot of patents are bogus - why not introduce something like "reverse treble damages" for litigator? I mean: Microsoft is free to claim it lost $100'000'000 because TomTom refused to buy license patents in question - but then it should be ready to pay $300'000'000 if the patents are reexamined and invalidated. This will make 99% patents useless - but the rock-solid ones will be kept around.

I'm not the sure it's the best way to fix the patent mess. May be, may be not. But we should think in this direction and not in direction of deus ex machine which can remove all frivolous patents from existence after the fact...

---

(Log in to post comments)