   What, exactly, is so awful about software patents?
  I mean, they could work out very well.  If it were inexpensive to get and defend them, they'd not favor big corporations like people claim they do now.  After all, people say piracy is suck because people spend time/money making stuff only to get it "stolen" from them (I say "stolen" because they aren't necessarily losing anything), while people say software patents are against "freedom" and all this stuff.  I think we're forgetting that people spend time/money developing algorithms and such too.  Of course, no one should be allowed to patent anything too general, and you shouldn't be able to charge obscene royalties for something like a square root formula, and it should be made easy to patent an algorithm and then allow everyone to use it with no penalty.  Altogether I think that if done correctly software patents aren't so bad.   EDIT: It should be noted that it's 2:30 AM right now, if any part of this post is nonsense.[edited by - cOWsaReNotEVil on February 8, 2004 2:34:25 AM][edited by - cOWsaReNotEVil on February 8, 2004 2:34:38 AM]
quote:Original post by cowsarenotevil  Of course, no one should be allowed to patent anything too general, and you shouldn''t be able to charge obscene royalties for something like a square root formula, and it should be made easy to patent an algorithm and then allow everyone to use it with no penalty.  Altogether I think that if done correctly software patents aren''t so bad.this is the problem, software technology advances so fast that a very specific idea now could be very general in the very near future. that, and the people approving them are fuckchops that don''t know enough about what is being patented. ;  You don''t invent software, you compose it. Copyrights protect abstract ideas, original or not so original. Patents exist specifically to help the newcomer recoup the cost of manufacure. There is virtually no cost of entry in software. ;  IMO, the biggest complaint people have with them currently is that they are too broad and sweeping, and that (as evidenced by so many cases, such as the patented Solitaire fiasco) they are too easily abused. Patents are intended to protect the implemented ideas of inventors from idea-thieves, but are supposed to be non-obvious. So many of the patents being passed basically amount to "I patent teh idea of typing teh words into teh computar to make it do something!"Also, I believe it is the responsibility of the patent office to perform investigations into prior art (someone correct me if I am wrong, here), which they so obviously do not do in so many cases. Patents by themselves are not evil; inappropriate patents granted by a broken and exploitable system, however, are.   GolemBlender--The Gimp--Python--Lua--SDLNethack--Crawl--ADOM--Angband--Dungeondweller;quote:Original post by VertexNormal  IMO, the biggest complaint people have with them currently is that they are too broad and sweeping, and that (as evidenced by so many cases, such as the patented Solitaire fiasco) they are too easily abused. Patents are intended to protect the implemented ideas of inventors from idea-thieves, but are supposed to be non-obvious. So many of the patents being passed basically amount to "I patent teh idea of typing teh words into teh computar to make it do something!"Also, I believe it is the responsibility of the patent office to perform investigations into prior art (someone correct me if I am wrong, here), which they so obviously do not do in so many cases. Patents by themselves are not evil; inappropriate patents granted by a broken and exploitable system, however, are  .   GolemBlender--The Gimp--Python--Lua--SDLNethack--Crawl--ADOM--Angband--Dungeondweller prior art is not researched because the USPTO is already heaavily overworked, understaffed, and underpaid. The nature of the current system, thanks to some stupid laws, have made it difficult to challenge patents without a trial (costly). ;  Software patents are bad because according to social contract theory, the people give up their rights to produce competing products in exchange for the knowledge of how that product works.Large companies sometimes have people with legal and engineering experience (rare and very expensive) read physical patents, but this really only happens when the company has an extraordinarily large patent portfolio (so they can cross-license with any other patent holder).  So almost no one uses this knowledge.  Furthermore, the constitution was written in a time when an inventor was often the first person to discover a new physical principle, and so the progress of science was linked with invention.  This has never been the case with computer science.On the other side, with software in particular, people can make use of their rights to produce a competing product.  One only needs to see the vitality of open source software, shareware, and freeware to know that people are making good use of these rights.If software patents were more inexpensive than they already are, there would be an incentive to spam the patent office with every half-baked idea you have, and then sue the people using the patents they approve.  If you''re a large company, you can have more people spam with more ideas, and then sue wantonly or use the threat of a suit to strongarm other patent holders into licensing their patents to you.  Considering all these are already problems, the solution is either to make them *more* expensive to apply for (thereby making it useless to a small developer) or abolish the system.Other reasons software patents are bad:They subvert the rule of law.  The rule of law suggests that standards be consistent, written down, and uniformly enforced.  A patent holder does not lose standing if he does not enforce his patent.  So it''s entirely within his power to allow anyone who is (pardon me for using this inflammatory example) white to use his patented invention, and sue everyone who is of another race.  A more likely scenario is to sue anyone who becomes successful or who makes a product that directly competes with one of the patent holder''s products or anyone who participates in a market over which the patent holder hopes to gain monopoly power.  And so patents can be subverted and used as an auxilliary form of power (can''t call it a second legal system because it''s not based on law) that is not consistent, not written, and not uniformly enforced.There is often no distinction between code and data.  Code is patentable.  Data is not.  How then, does one deal with Lisp?  Is Lisp code patentable?  Or is it merely data for an auxiliary algorithm that interprets it?  Since we have both the concepts of interpretation and compilation, it would seem that source code is better treated as data, as it can be used by these two very different algorithms.  "Honestly, your honor, I wasn''t executing patented code, I was processing list data!"Software patents are not naturally narrow in scope.  Let''s say you''ve got an algorithm that solves a two-variable system of linear equations.  Then you take this an generalize it by creating an algorithm that solves all two-variable systems of linear equations.  Then generalize that to solve all n-variable systems of linear equations.  Which of these do you want to patent?  The last one, of course.  They all solve the problem, but you can extort more money out of people with the last one. ;Because they''re private property, and this is communist gamedev..bas   [sPiKie] mmorpg isnt hard in vb;  "Because they're private property, and this is communist gamedev"@bastardos,Beware that this kind of algorithm is already patented. I hope you are a friend of the consortium else ... I fear you maight pay. It's called the Murdoch - G.W nullification of moral arguments.   and it's a logical worm that aims at human brains, in priority the weakenede Fox News addict brains.Given highly subjective propositions A, B so that :A : contains good for Murdoch or G.W.B : contains is bad for Murdoch or G.W.The machine infers code <=>(A,B), defined by a new correlation rule A <=> B.For instance :A : Oil is good for environment and where the fuck is Kyoto on this iraqi map ? Oil is very good.B : Saddam is responsible for the 9/11 and has WMDs because we hate him and because it's healthy to hate someone and feel like a heroic fighter. Saddam is very bad.That's another brilliant patent but it's only a revisited subset of the more general logical principles developped in Greece 2000 years ago. They already knew (A false) <=> (B false). Example : (Pi=0) <=> (Jesus=G.W.). Will americans be forced to pay a new tax if they exploit <=>(A,B) where :A : Oil is good for the consortium that occupies the white house.B : Falsifying informations in front of the congress and the UN in order to wage war in retaliation against the wrong target is high treason in front of the american constitution.Answer : no. Because A is true and B is true.As one can see the patent system is not always f**d up. It's just battling through lawyers, feeding economical inutility, which really s*cks big time $$$$.A : Because they're private property  False. No they are sometimes (often) theft to the scientific or whole community. And that's partially what is discussed here. Are you a lawyer ? Ready to defend this guy with a jewish name that patented solitaire. (*) Disclaimer : many jews are crooks, but not much more than in any other community, simply in the most ridiculous or cynical affairs jews are over-represented, probably because many of them have this weird sense of humour and cynism and can run back to Israel when they have pbs with justice.B : this is communist gamedev  False. Proof, one counter example (amongst thousands). I am a GD member, and I am not communist since, for instance, like Voltaire, I am for the free expression of any opinion mine included (**).If it was true then the occupied GOP would be a stalinist party.(**) Which I for instance willingly expressed digressing in (*) I am not anti-semit, not even totally anti-sionist if Palestinians are at least allowed to get a part of their land back. I don't make any amalgam as in every sentence worded in Fox news shows. I only make a point based on things I have directly witnessed and I never generalize abusively. To be clearer exceptionnally good and bright jews exceed jewish crooks in numbers.  [edited by - Charles B on February 8, 2004 7:10:30 AM];  Not to mention, a patent lasts obscenly long in such a fast moving industry.Even if the idea is good in concept, it is obvious that it isn''t working in practice, and shold be removed (for software).Consider: (famous one) Amazon''s one-clickerson ordering - an obvious and intended and frequently suggested use for a cookie.(recent one) The patent on "plugins". I can''t even remember if this is just internet-related plugins, or plugins in general.Someone has patented the concept of a 3D engine.That''s just off the top of my head - there are definatly more.The plugin one is particularly bad, because this guy waits till everyone is using the patent (because, I mean - who checks), and then: "bu-ya!". ;quote:Because they''re private property, and this is communist gamedev.Software patents are actually similar to communism: Sounds good in theory, but haven''t had a working implementation. 