Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

Posted Nov 7, 2012 5:14 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired) by cyanit
Parent article: Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

the problem is that you can have a copyrighted piece of hardware that incorporates a patented invention, with nobody (other than those advocating complete patent elimination) seeing this as wrong.

you need to justify why software should be different.

The fact that the _exact_ same code can be used to achieve very different results depending on how it's used is proof that software is abstract and should not be covered by patents.

Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

Posted Nov 7, 2012 5:35 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Hardware in itself is not really copyrighted. You can produce, say, a car by disassembling Toyota car and re-creating it from scratch - that'd be completely legal. There's some protection of external design, but it's easy to work around.

That actually might be a nice compromise - you can opt for copyright protection OR for patent protection. And in the spirit of patents you'd have to put everything it protects into the public domain.

Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

Posted Nov 7, 2012 12:25 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

So, I'm a patent troll. I have no actual implementations, but lots of patents. So I opt for patent protection, and who cares about copyright. How has this scheme harmed me at all?

If you want to be able to opt for one or the other on a case-by-case basis, you'd need something like, if I opt for copyright protection on my code, then it automatically does not violate anyone else's patents. That seems like a hard sell.