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LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscapeLinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscapePosted Aug 31, 2011 19:09 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093)Parent article: LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape
What we need is some kind of anti-patent foundation, designed to completely de-fang all patents. Something like OIN, but with more teeth, and more viral. Here's how it could work:
1. All Foundation members commit to never assert a patent against anyone (not just other members); excepting as a defensive counter-attack.
2. Foundation members agree to loan their patents to be used, defensively (and as a counter-attack), by any other member who is being sued for patent infringement.
3. On winning a counter-attack, the terms of settlement must bring the former aggressor into the foundation.
The idea is that the Foundation would, virally, aim to acquire the right to use a huge pool of patents as a big stick to prevent anyone litigating a patent suit; effectively it would de-fang the entire mis-conceived notion of the patent.
The idea is to protect inventors *from* IP, not to protect the IP of an inventor.
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LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 1, 2011 0:43 UTC (Thu) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]
Unfortunately your plan would do nothing to protect anyone from patent trolls (non-practicing entities). In fact it would encourage patent holders to sell their patents to patent trolls and then license them back, just in case the patent holder was forced into your cabal.
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 1, 2011 11:12 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
If you mistakenly make the target 'patents as a whole', not just software patents, then you make it hard to solve the problem. For example Intel could not join such a foundation to defend Meego, because it would then have to commit not to assert the patents it holds on hardware designs or chip manufacturing processes.
The patent system has its faults but it has worked reasonably well over the past hundred years when applied to real inventions. It's the misconceived application of it to computer programs (which are best covered by copyright, not patents) and to mathematics or business methods (which should not be legally encumbered at all) which causes so much grief.
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 1, 2011 15:20 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The patent system worked well when applied to real inventions? Really? Its effect on the aviation industry, the light bulb and even the steam train was pretty much 100% negative: the nations with the strongest patent protection lost out and everyone else raced forward. The people with the patents got a large slice of a much smaller cake than would otherwise have existed.
But of course now we have a global patent system via bilateral agreements so of course that problem can't exist anymore: now *everyone* is crippled. Go us!
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 7, 2011 16:14 UTC (Wed) by hpro (subscriber, #74751) [Link]
Essentially I think it boils down to;
1. Patents existing
2. Lack of patents
So the sum of "betterness" is much higher in case no. 2 since you somewhat reduce the improvement that the patent holder has, but that is far outweighted by 6 billion other people having a slight improvement. So society as a whole wins.
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 7, 2011 18:10 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you are correct if you assume that all inventions will be made and become part of general knowledge in either case.
back when patents were invented there was a real problem with inventions being protected by 'trade secrets' and inventions being lost as the owner of the secret died. Patents 'solved' this problem by getting the person to reveal the details of the invention. This is why one of the requirements of a patent be that it give enough details that someone 'ordinarily skilled in the field' can implement the invention.
unfortunately many patents nowdays (especially in software) do not provide such details, they are written to be so broad that nobody really knows what they cover.
The fact that the patent offices don't enforce this aspect of the patent goes hand in hand with the fact that they can't seem to evaluate if the patent would be obvious to someone 'ordinarily skilled in the field'
if these restrictions were in force, then there would be far fewer problems with patents.
the issue of revealing the secret can apply even with software. If you look at things like encryption, it would be possible to have someone invent a super algorithm and patent it, ship a module to implement it, and even though people could reverse engineer the module and see _what_ it does, they would not be able to tell _why_ it does it (are the numbers the module uses ones that are special in some way? or are they just random numbers that were picked? how would you find another value that's special in the same way?....)
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 8, 2011 11:04 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] You're citing a common justification for patents, but I think it's wrong to say that this is how patents were "invented". In medieval Europe we had the system of guilds: you had to be a member of a guild to trade articles in some area. Say you were a shoemaker, only those who were members of the one and only shoemaker guild in town, were allowed to sell shoes. I believe in Southern Europe it was also common that the king (or other ruler) would just hand out a monopoly to a businessman (such as as a favor to a friend or so).The patent system is just a modern continuation of those monopolies. The explanation that it encourages innovation is retrofitted justification. On the other hand, the same justification was also used in medieval times: Businessman commits to invest in a ship that brings spices from India, and in return the king gives businessman monopoly on selling spices. This helps protect the businessman's huge investment into the ship and therefore encourages trade of new merchandise.
LinuxCon: The mobile Linux patent landscape Posted Sep 24, 2011 9:55 UTC (Sat) by Jan_Zerebecki (guest, #70319) [Link]
The http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Defensive_Patent_License idea is something similar. Sadly quite some of the information about this idea doesn't seem to be available on the public internet.
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