Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend [LWN.net]

Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend

Posted Nov 3, 2009 14:49 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

>Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time.
Wouldn't that be an answer as well? I can't say that I'm a fan of patents in general (software or otherwise), but at least it would be a more honest test of whether it fits within the current rules.

Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend

Posted Nov 4, 2009 11:47 UTC (Wed) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]

My reaction when I read about Courgette the first time was interesting someone got around to implementing that.

The usage in Courgette also seems to be an independent reinvention.

Perhaps I have missed some detail but this seems like a battle over
the obvious from where I stand.

Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend

Posted Nov 5, 2009 6:51 UTC (Thu) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129) [Link]

Maybe true, but a better question is if only 3-4 people came up with the idea (out of your "random" 100) ... does that qualify it for being patentable? Is the bar of "obvious" really so low that you could realistically expect 1000s of people to be able to independently invent it at google/MS/IBM/etc.

Yes.

Posted Nov 5, 2009 13:16 UTC (Thu) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]

Obvious to me would be at least 30% - 50% of those polled skilled in the art would come up
with the idea and method in a reasonable amount of time. Everything is Obvious in hind-sight.
Think about even simple things like the derivation of the quadratic equation. Once you know it,
it is obvious. For *most* people though, it is not obvious until shown. Now, admittedly, this is not
the kind of thing that is patentable (mathematical algorithms being specifically excluded from
patent protection) but, it does demonstrate the point I'm trying to make.

Frankly, I think the only problem with patents is that they are awarded for too long (at least in
the case of software patents). The time should be much shorter for many industries because
those industries move so fast.

Patent Law, like all other laws, is nothing but an agreement between all the members of the
society. If you don't like the law, work to change it. In fact, if you don't like my definition of
obvious, then feel free to lobby and work for a more codified definition that fits what you think
would be fair. All you have to do is get enough people to agree with you (not an easy task for
even the simplest things).

Honestly, we all must learn to take more control over the laws of our society instead of just
bitching about them. If you can convince enough people you are right, you can win.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling at the top of your lungs, "NA NA NA NA" won't
really accomplish much (don't take that as an accusation against you or anyone else
personally - just a statement against the general attitude displayed by many people).

I know that I often find myself frustrate, angry, and even bordering on wanting to lash out
violently against some of the nonsensical crap that goes on legally that is FAR FAR more
onerous than Patent Law. That being said, I have to remind myself that all I need to do is
attempt to persuade more like-minded (and not so like-minded people) to see things my way
and the law can be changed. Easier said than done.

Besides, in 5 or 10 years we're going to run out of oil and then the whole world-wide economy
will collapse and we will be back to chucking spears at each other in no time flat. So, all of this
kind of stuff is just a distraction anyway.

Re: Yes.

Posted Nov 6, 2009 5:15 UTC (Fri) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129) [Link]

Obvious to me would be at least 30% - 50% of those polled skilled in the art would come up with the idea and method in a reasonable amount of time.

Well, personally, I would disagree ... if 3-4% of a random sample in an "art" would come up with the idea, when asked to solve a problem, then I fail to see why 1 person/entity should be able to stop upto 9 million people from using it (assuming every .us person could be taught said "art", that'd be 9 million).

Patents aren't supposed to be a lottery, they are supposed to solve the problem of sharing when only a very small number of people would ever be able to solve a problem. Thus it's worth giving you a monopoly as an incentive to share. When you are anywhere close to 1%, you are saying at least 1 person in any public company could find the solution ... that's just not rare, IMO.

Of course atm. patents seem more like if less than 99% of a random sample would come up with it, then it's patentable. So it's all academic.

Honestly, we all must learn to take more control over the laws of our society instead of just bitching about them. If you can convince enough people you are right, you can win.

Do you have any examples of that working?

Re: Yes.

Posted Nov 6, 2009 13:59 UTC (Fri) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]

The Civil Rights movement.

Re: Yes.

Posted Nov 6, 2009 14:01 UTC (Fri) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]

The Civil Rights movement.

Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend

Posted Nov 12, 2009 17:54 UTC (Thu) by tbrownaw (guest, #45457) [Link]

Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time. No, it is not OBVIOUS.

Would the solution to FizzBuzz be obvious under this test? Or how to expand (from=1/1/2000; to=1/3/2000) into [(when=1/1/2000), (when=1/2/2000), (when=1/3/2000)] with SQL? This second one is actually an interview question here, I'd guess the candidates we get (with degrees and mostly 5+ (some supposedly 15+) years experience) have a (probably low) single-digit percent hit rate. Does this mean that a solution should be patentable?