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Patently stupidPatently stupidPosted Oct 9, 2012 6:13 UTC (Tue) by amtota (guest, #4012)In reply to: Patently stupid by man_ls Parent article: The Patent, Used as a Sword (New York Times)
I went to a consultation/workshop by the UK government on patents.
At the end of the session, they asked who was in favour or software patents and who was not. The split was about 50/50. Then, on my demand, we separated the responses by trade: the lawyer-types vs IT people.. Then it was more like 90/10 and 10/90. I don't understand why the government was seeing them as being part of the "creative IT industry", when in the vast majority of cases they are just leeching.
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Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 8:39 UTC (Tue) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]
Government is the lawmaker. Since most of the elected members of government have no clue on law, they consult lawyers as experts in subject to form an opinion.
So when a congressperson wonders about IP law, they call an IP lawyer to discuss. Who inevitably will explain how IP law is great, apart for being too lax, and should be extended to cover even more.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 9:31 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] That is like asking a fireman about wildfires. I cannot believe the lawmakers are so clueless as to ask a group with such obvious vested interests. Actually I can believe it but it is an amazingly bad idea.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 9:40 UTC (Tue) by kugel (subscriber, #70540) [Link]
Who else would you ask? They are clearly biased, but still have the knowledge about law and you have not.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 12:32 UTC (Tue) by KSteffensen (subscriber, #68295) [Link]
How about asking the people whom the law actually affects on a day to day basis? They must have some knowledge about the law and how to improve it-
Who you know makes a difference. Posted Oct 9, 2012 17:45 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Timothy B. Lee: Social Distance and the Patent System.One has to imagine that if people close to [Judge] Michel—say, a son who was trying to start a software company—were regularly getting hit by frivolous patent lawsuits, he would suddenly take the issue more seriously. But successful software entrepreneurs are a small fraction of the population, and most likely no judges of the Federal Circuit have close relationships with one. In contrast, every judge on the Federal Circuit knows numerous patent attorneys, so they’re well-attuned to the concerns and strongly pro-patent worldview of the patent bar.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 13:11 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] This argument would work for all kinds of laws, since lawyers have the knowledge of the law. However if you are drafting a law to regulate, I don't know, librarians, you don't ask the lawyers; you ask the librarians. Why is "IP" law different? Ask inventors, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the law (at least for patents).In practice, there is no need to ask inventors because of my original argument: the law works well enough for many people, and they are powerful.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 15:28 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]
> Ask inventors, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the law (at least for patents).
While this is a common misconception, inventors are not the intended beneficiaries of patent law. Patent law is supposed to benefit the public, by incentivising invention and encouraging inventors to publicize the workings of their inventions. Benefiting inventors is only a side-effect, not the goal.
(How well it accomplishes that goal, and whether the cost in liberty was justifiable in the first place, are debatable; however, that is an argument for another time.)
While inventors may have some input to offer on the effectiveness of any given incentive structure, it is the public which pays the cost of these patent monopolies, ostensibly implemented for their benefit, and which should have the ultimate say regarding both their existence and their form.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 18:36 UTC (Tue) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] The problem is that almost any group that knows enough to have a well thought-out opinion will be deeply enough involved to be biased. Disinterested experts do sometimes exist, but they're rare on any topic, not just patents. People tend not to form deep, well informed ideas about any topic until they have a strong reason to have them, and the reason is almost always the kind of direct interest in the topic that also introduces bias. The problem that's more specific to patents is that the groups with the loudest voices- the patent office, patent lawyers, and inventors- are almost all on the same side of the issue. Even the big targets of patent trolls, like Google, have something to gain from software patents, because they can be used to shut down potential competitors while they're still small. The people who have the most to lose from software patents are those small players- open source projects, startups, and the like- who don't have their own portfolio that can be used defensively and can be shut out of the market by larger players. Those small players have a hard time making themselves heard, almost by definition.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 20:53 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Change in the patent system will come through empirical, indisputable evidence. E.g. compellingly thorough academic studies (though, exactly why the ones made so far havn't been compelling enough I don't know) of the internal market within a given patent regime, or alternatively by comparison between markets under strong and weak patent regimes. Indeed, the latter might not need a study - competitors from the weak patent regimes might grow to destroy those in the strong patent regimes…
Patently stupid Posted Oct 10, 2012 5:44 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Indeed, the latter might not need a study - competitors from the weak patent regimes might grow to destroy those in the strong patent regimes… By which time it's too late to fix patents. You can read about chemical industry's involvement with patents in the Against Intellectual Monopoly book. The example is in chapter 9 and the story goes like this:
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 20:58 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] That is like asking a fireman about wildfires. What are you implying here? That firefighters promote wildfires -- which destroy property and often lives -- to retain their jobs? Because although I have re-read your words a number of times I can't see that they can be read any other way. Wrong and offensive conspiracy theory lunacy. LWN used to be better than this.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 22:21 UTC (Tue) by price (subscriber, #59790) [Link]
Rather than reading the comment as suggesting a conspiracy theory (which would indeed be an insane one), I recommend reading it as a confusingly expressed reference to some unknown other thought. As you suggest, that's more like the LWN we know (though a clearly expressed thought would be even more so.)
Perhaps the commenter was thinking of the debate and in-recent-decades shift in practices (in the US and possibly other places) from routinely suppressing all fires in large parks to letting small wildfires burn. Or perhaps something else.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 10, 2012 5:28 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yes, you are exactly right: it was a confused analogy, but at the moment (and with a rampaging viral infection) I could not come up with anything better. Instead of fireman I should have said "asking an arsonist about fires" -- firemen have a clear duty to control wildfires, while arsonists profit from fire.But there is a better fire-related analogy in History: Crassus (of the first triumvirate with Cesar and Pompey). Whenever there was a fire in Rome he went with his firemen and offered to buy the burning property for a small amount; then they quickly put out the fire. As the fire progressed he lowered the price and he even let the fire consume the building if there was no agreement. That (and the condemnation of at least one innocent man) was the source of his vast fortune. Asking Crassus about firefighting laws would not have been a very good idea.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 10, 2012 5:48 UTC (Wed) by price (subscriber, #59790) [Link]
> Asking Crassus about firefighting laws would not have been a
> very good idea.
Indeed not. And, as with patents today, one suspects that anyone considering a change in firefighting laws would have heard from him very loudly and clearly.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 11, 2012 10:01 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] most of the elected members of government have no clue on lawWhat? By far the most common profession in both the US and UK legislatures is the law.
Government consultation Posted Oct 9, 2012 15:04 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] With regard to the patent/legal profession leeching from the people who actually create the wealth, I pointed this out to one of my MEPs very recently, noting that the patent/legal profession has nothing to lose through advocating the expansion of patents. Are any of these people out of pocket if the patents aren't upheld or are bad? Of course, not: it's all "win" and money in the bank. When someone has nothing to lose and can only profit from policy, the sensible thing is to stop asking them for advice about policy and to start asking the groups who actually stand to lose. Otherwise, the result is blatant profiteering, bordering on the corruption of the legislature. Interestingly, when lawmakers were pushing for software patents in the EU back in 2004 or so, the MEP I contacted previously gave a vague example of how patents on software helped an unnamed company license their "intellectual property" on the very topic of voice recognition. Maybe I should draw their attention to this article. Either way, I recommend that European voters contact their MEPs soon: once again, potentially damaging patent legislation masquerading as "reform" is being drafted, and the risk is that catastrophic self-regulation will be imposed in Europe without even the level of judicial and political scrutiny it has in the USA.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 9, 2012 22:03 UTC (Tue) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
Why would they be in favour of software patents? UK law forbids patents on math; and software is math, provable. Why do they think math should be patentable?
Patently stupid Posted Oct 10, 2012 10:22 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Pure software isn't patentable in any country signed up to the European Patent Convention. However, many European countries still issue patents on software, apparently because software running on a machine is *not* pure software anymore. Certainly, the UK issues software patents - just have a read through any random issue of the UKIPO journal.
Patently stupid Posted Oct 10, 2012 18:48 UTC (Wed) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613) [Link]
The patent offices in the entire European union *issues* software patents, but so far only courts in Germany, and to a limited extent the United Kingdom, *upholds* them.
In the rest of the Union, the courts summarily find the patents invalid, as software patents don't meet the legal definition of a patent. Of course the patent trolls know this, and only sues corporations that do business in either Germany or the United Kingdoms...
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