I used to believe that this whole patent system was just a cold war. Everyone was patenting everything they thought of, mainly in case they got sued for infringement on something else, in order to counter sue. Then they'd go meet in a bar somewhere, have a few pints and work things out.
Well, unlike the real cold war, where everyone got smart and realized there would be no winner and just gave up, (and, yeah, there was much more to it than that, but humor me :). The software industry seems to be about to implode on itself.
Yes, I'm talking about Apple suing HTC. I am not a lawyer. I am only a humble software designer, but if I was afraid before of getting sued for accidentally borrowing someone's idea in my own design, now I'm terrified. Today I was working on a wizard to import existing code into the CDT. I bet someone patented that already and I'm freakin' scared.
O.K. I'm being over dramatic about this. And I'm sure peace will reign. But something's got to be done about this system. There are way too many common sense ideas getting patented. And it's killing the drive to produce great products. The iPhone was really cool when it first came out. But as we got our hands on it and used it for a while, we realized that is wasn't really anything special, and the user interface ideas they had are easy to implement. So was it worth a patent? Was it really an invention?
The telephone, electricity, the car, those were great inventions worthy of patenting. But patenting to what end. If whoever owns the patent to the automobile sued everyone who figured out how to make one, where would we be today? And isn't that a monopoly? Where's the fine line between protecting the rights of the inventor, and protecting the rights of the consumer?
At any rate, I'm just a humble software designer who's getting very frustrated about having to be a part time legal clerk to do my job. I just want to innovate. And you know what. If someone comes up with the same idea and doesn't use my implementation. Good on them. There are lots of smart people in the world. Does the patent system help them, or does it make them so frustrated they decide to go server hamburgers instead. (Melodrama hat off ;)
I totally agree with you. Thankfully we've managed to fend off that regime in Europe so far. At least for products sold only in Europe. Funnily your Google ads picked up on the post topic and offers me three different services for patent search and brokering. Hmm...
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ReplyDeleteI've been told a history some years ago. That history told the patent system is just about monopoly. The idea was: someone invented something, so let's give him/her a monopoly over that idea for some time. So, we hope those inventive people will innovate again.
ReplyDeleteThe idea worked well in XIX century, even in early XX century.
Nowadays, the system is being abused so that, instead of bringing benefit to consumers (more innovation is good), is a hammer against consumer (I'm afraid of innovate because of patent trolls). So sad.
We could talk about how copyright also was distorted from "bring more books to readers" to "those who copy something are thieves", but it's another long thread...
@Torkild: I hope the commercial agreements don't push that fishy US legislation over EU. I know they hope to push it here in Brazil that way...
Developers have little to gain but much to fear from Patents! This is slowly creeping into the digital freedom!
ReplyDeleteLong Live FOSS!
In academia (and especially the US) it is only important to know who "invented" something. Everybody is encouraged to use the idea as long as one "pays" by citing as citations/ reputation is the only currency.
ReplyDeleteIf enough people applied the idea and it eventually becomes "Flintestone's method" Fred has the best career options.
There are indeed "patent wars" if someone claims the idea is his own - but this is resolved in papers and on conferences. No "lawyer" can earn "real" money.
It is the job of the anonymous peer reviewers to ensure that the method is well enough described that everybody can adopt/ verify/ extend the method before it becomes published.
+1 for your points...this is (yet another) broken system that's hurting lots of people as well as innovation itself...in order to benefit a few (not including the actual inventor, incidently). See The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig (or nearly anything by him) for more detail on both patent system (and copyrights).
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