Film: "Patent absurdity"
Film: "Patent absurdity"
Posted Apr 19, 2010 0:42 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)In reply to: Film: "Patent absurdity" by dlang
Parent article: Film: "Patent absurdity"
A noble idea, no doubt. However, in practice, and particularly when it comes to software patents, most times counter productive.
As I mentioned in other posts, the problems are many. First, all patents get the same length of protection, no matter now easy/hard are they to reverse engineer or "invent" independently. Also, nobody in the software business ever looked at patents for ideas, because they could be held liable for triple damages if they inadvertently infringe on a patent they read about.
In the end, this renders the idea of disclosure next to worthless.
No doubt, being talented and skilled in mathematics and being able to apply it to various areas of computing is something to be admired. People coming up with that stuff should be celebrated and highly paid, IMHO. However, giving people monopoly over that sort of thing is counter productive for the society and should not be done.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 1:15 UTC (Mon)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (2 responses)
the problem with patents in software is that there is so much independent invention that is not documented in any way that the patent office could check, and the patent office is not qualified to determine if something is 'obvious to someone ordinarily skilled in the art'
add to this the contoured legalese that the patent discousures are written in and you end up with a situation where even the inventor can have trouble understanding what the patent is describing.
I agree that software patents are a disaster and need to be killed off, but when talking about the problems with software patents you need to be careful to say you are talking about software patents, not patents as a whole (unless you really are intending to talk about patents as a whole)
patents work in many fields, and have worked for centuries, the fact that they don't work in a new field (software) doesn't change this.
Posted Apr 19, 2010 6:54 UTC (Mon)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
Bogus patents are norm, not an exception and they often protect obvious and simple things. System break-down started long ago - it's just with software patents it's more obvious. Sadly they start to work poorly even in places where they worked for centuries. Where before we got patents for the process of making colored glass (thing which eluded people for centuries) today we are getting patents about how to arrange flowers in a vase!Film: "Patent absurdity"
No, they don't
I am not saying that patents work well for software (in fact I think they don't work for software), but I do think that they work well in other fields.
patents work in many fields, and have worked for centuries, the fact that they don't work in a new field (software) doesn't change this.