I wonder what would happen if government became a result oriented organization. If the point of patents is to increase innovation, shouldn't you be able to measure innovation? And if you can't measure the impact of patents on innovation, what evidence is their to justify monopolizing ideas? If you can't measure and observe, then what's the evidence? I would say there is none, it's entirely subjective. Unconditional support for actions regardless of consequence is a bit religious to me, and there used to be separation of church and state.. but I guess that can't really be measured, can it?
It seems companies (large or small) are all afraid that someone may take their once 'decent' idea, perfect it and make a better product. Can you imagine the anarchy that would ensue if companies were forced to be innovative? They'd run the risk of losing customers who are frustrated with their stale solutions/products. We just can't have that. Ludicrous, this idea you suggest!
My understanding is that Microsoft hates software patents (at least when BillG was CEO), has only registered them out of necessity, has historically only sued relatively few other companies, and only done so with either real patents (non-obvious, read beyond the patent title) or as a retaliation of being sued itself.
I’m sure there are a few exceptions here as there are always.
The act of writing software can be summarized as generating ideas and writing down these ideas in a language computers can understand and execute. Software programmers are in the business of writing ideas all day. This combined with the fact that the bar for ideas being patentable is very low means that programmers probably generate and write down multiple patentable ideas per day. From the get go they are inevitably setting up a huge patent minefield.
I don’t know if anyone has ever calculated the average density of patentable ideas in code, but if you consider, for example, that performing an online transaction with the last entered customer data (the infamous 1-Click patent) is patentable, I would very roughly estimate that there is a patentable idea every 20 to 50 lines of code.
As an example, the Linux kernel (just the very core of Linux) contains more that 10 millions lines of code. If you consider a complete Linux distribution (by adding the graphical user interface and a bunch of utilities) you get at least ten times that amount, that is more than 100 millions lines of code. Using the rough estimate above, we can calculate that there are more than 2 millions patentable ideas in a consumer operating system. That is an incredible amount of complexity. In fact, it is a testament to human ingenuity that we can (sometimes) get all this code to work together.
Now code is not used side by side like an infantry of little computer processes working in parallel to make computers or phones go. It is rather organised and packaged in a huge network of building blocks, a pyramid of hundreds of thousands of libraries, APIs or functions heavily inter-dependent on each other. What’s more, the building blocks are usually not all written by the same people or organisations and their consistent and stable behavior is critical for enabling compatibility (remember, often between millions of parts made by thousands of developers).
This hierarchical and networked architecture is inevitable and the best way to organise complex information, however the stability it requires at the bottom of the pyramid means that some building blocks cannot be changed once the pyramid is built. Someone claiming ownership of the shape of a bottom block after the pyramid is built, someone having the power to force a bottom block to be removed and replaced with a different shaped one, no matter how simple and obvious this bloc is, does not have power over just this block but over the whole structure above it and all the components that depend on it. This means patent holders have a disproportionately large amount of power when they target such a bloc. They know that changing it would require tearing down, redesigning and replacing often thousands of dependent projects and probably break compatibility for millions of users of these projects. It is usually simply not an option.
This annoys me because it is scaring off people from developing for smart phones. This patent is so vague that even if I did know every patent ever made then I would not even associate it with what patent he is claiming he has violated.
Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had a patent for people communicating over the internet and we are all about to be sued.
> Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents.
They'd have to actually attack the patent office, wouldn't they? Not to mention, I imagine that both the PO and Lodsys probably keep multiple redundant backups, digital and dead-tree.
> Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents.
Well, we just need to abolish patents in general. They just create reason for these patent trolls to do what they do (scam us developers) and they are extremely flawed in nature.
How is something this vague "directed to systems and methods for providers of products and/or services to interact with users of those products and services to gather information from those users and transmit that information to the provider" patentable?!
So if a service provider (a restaurant) uses their service (waiters) to gather information from users of that service (waiters get food orders from customers) and transmit that information to the provider (waiter brings orders back to the kitchen) then wow ... they patented waiting on a customer!!! What a novel concept!!
It involves a computer -- and the examiners employed by the PTO just don't have the time or training to properly understand computer patents. That's the only explanation.
If examiners can't figure out whether something is patentable, they err on the side of good faith on the part of the applicant, and leave the question to the courts.
I was in DC yesterday, walking by the patent office and saw this quote from Lincoln over the door: "The Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity"
The things what Lodsys is doing right now is actually very good. There are more copy-cat trolls coming to the market based on the same idea "buy some patents and let sue many private proprietors and ask them $1000 to drop suite".
Eventually, it will be obvious even to our representatives in Washington that something is broken and they will be forced to fix it.
As they say, our representatives will try doing the right thing but only after they try all the wrong things first.
So then, there is an important free market niche for "douchebags who are smart enough to exploit X, but too stupid and greedy to avoid outraging the wrong people."
It seems Lodsys was able to successfully patent the hyperlink, U.S. patent system has some serious problems.
Patent trolling is not the only problem, the patent office granting patents, where the is no merit, is another big problem.
My question is, if you just provide an external "Buy Me" or "More Apps" link to the App Store you would have no idea who or how many people actually use that link, and of those who use the link you would have no idea what they did once they got to the store. They could buy someone else's app, they could browse some more, they could leave a comment.
So how does that qualify as a "survey" in Lodsys's eyes?
I have a feeling that Lodsys will continue to iterate on this theme until they get shut down. Given they have signed a licensing agreement, I'm not sure what Apple can do, but they should take as active as a role as they can from here on out. It certainly raises doubts in my mind as to what kind of "buy this app" link I can put, if anything, in any apps for myself or my clients.
I was planning on developing a few paid apps to test the market over the next few months, but this combined with the other mobile patent lawsuits has made me seriously reconsider it.
It's a pity the app store servers reside in the US. Otherwise i wouldn't have to worry about these things!
You're not really any safer building any other kind of software, although you may be subject to less patent troll scrutiny with a web app or something.
Won't work. One of the fundamental principles is that A patent is a sword, not a shield. Owning a patent doesn't shield you from litigation, it simply allows you to litigate against others.
The "patent arsenal" idea is that if you have a trove of patents, you can respond to competitors by cross-licensing. The competitor won't sue you if they don't want to be sued in turn, a kind of mutual non-agression pact.
This doesn't work against a patent troll, who is not in business and cannot be sued on the basis of any patent. I apologize in advance if this simile is offensive, but I think patents are a little like nuclear weapons. They are very effective as a deterrent against other fully functioning countries attacking you, because they know that even if they "win" the war, they will lose.
But what is their value against terrorists? Nothing, because the terrorists do not have anything you can attack with a nuclear weapon. Worse, if you put a nuclear weapon in the hands of a criminal mastermind, you face extortion on a massive scale (see the movie "Thunderball").
A collection of your own patents is no defense against a non-practicing entity like Lodsys. They don't make any products, so there's nothing in any portfolio that can threaten their business and force them to deal.
A bunch of smaller businesses could definitely create a spin-off entity that bought patent rights and 'exploited' them. But it could never use those patents to target a troll. It could target other tech companies, but then you wouldn't be beating anyone, you'd be joining them.
Short of that, small developers could create some sort of shared legal fund to make fighting these entities less individually-burdensome. But for any individual developer, it's probably going to be cheaper to just hope you don't fall into a net and pay when you do, than to pay every year toward a very expensive patent litigation fund.
These cases can easily cost millions to tens of millions of dollars. A consortium of a thousand companies could each contribute a thousand dollars a year for a decade and wind up broke after a single lawsuit. Where's the up-side for the developer, compared to just keeping their head down and hoping for the best, paying out a few thousand dollars when they get ensnared?
Not to mention that having a large consortium out there would draw the Trolls like a beacon, ensuring that any net they cast hooked the funds of every developer in the consortium.
And, ultimately, any good patent lawyer working for such a consortium would still just advise paying the troll most times. So the practical effect would likely just be to streamline the settlement process.
Small developers would, quite frankly, get far better bang for their buck directing any such consortium moneys into a patent-reform lobby.
[+] [-] dstein|14 years ago|reply
I'm beyond convinced that the entire software patent systems needs to be abolished.
[+] [-] cube13|14 years ago|reply
And the fact that MS and Oracle actually make products.
[+] [-] smokeyj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambersley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powertower|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|14 years ago|reply
I don’t know if anyone has ever calculated the average density of patentable ideas in code, but if you consider, for example, that performing an online transaction with the last entered customer data (the infamous 1-Click patent) is patentable, I would very roughly estimate that there is a patentable idea every 20 to 50 lines of code. As an example, the Linux kernel (just the very core of Linux) contains more that 10 millions lines of code. If you consider a complete Linux distribution (by adding the graphical user interface and a bunch of utilities) you get at least ten times that amount, that is more than 100 millions lines of code. Using the rough estimate above, we can calculate that there are more than 2 millions patentable ideas in a consumer operating system. That is an incredible amount of complexity. In fact, it is a testament to human ingenuity that we can (sometimes) get all this code to work together.
Now code is not used side by side like an infantry of little computer processes working in parallel to make computers or phones go. It is rather organised and packaged in a huge network of building blocks, a pyramid of hundreds of thousands of libraries, APIs or functions heavily inter-dependent on each other. What’s more, the building blocks are usually not all written by the same people or organisations and their consistent and stable behavior is critical for enabling compatibility (remember, often between millions of parts made by thousands of developers).
This hierarchical and networked architecture is inevitable and the best way to organise complex information, however the stability it requires at the bottom of the pyramid means that some building blocks cannot be changed once the pyramid is built. Someone claiming ownership of the shape of a bottom block after the pyramid is built, someone having the power to force a bottom block to be removed and replaced with a different shaped one, no matter how simple and obvious this bloc is, does not have power over just this block but over the whole structure above it and all the components that depend on it. This means patent holders have a disproportionately large amount of power when they target such a bloc. They know that changing it would require tearing down, redesigning and replacing often thousands of dependent projects and probably break compatibility for millions of users of these projects. It is usually simply not an option.
[+] [-] chrislomax|14 years ago|reply
Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had a patent for people communicating over the internet and we are all about to be sued.
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
They'd have to actually attack the patent office, wouldn't they? Not to mention, I imagine that both the PO and Lodsys probably keep multiple redundant backups, digital and dead-tree.
[+] [-] ltamake|14 years ago|reply
Well, we just need to abolish patents in general. They just create reason for these patent trolls to do what they do (scam us developers) and they are extremely flawed in nature.
[+] [-] modmax|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modmax|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snorkel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hemospectrum|14 years ago|reply
If examiners can't figure out whether something is patentable, they err on the side of good faith on the part of the applicant, and leave the question to the courts.
[+] [-] monochromatic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davesims|14 years ago|reply
I wonder what Lincoln would think of Lodsys.
[+] [-] sdizdar|14 years ago|reply
Eventually, it will be obvious even to our representatives in Washington that something is broken and they will be forced to fix it.
As they say, our representatives will try doing the right thing but only after they try all the wrong things first.
[+] [-] stcredzero|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rockarage|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cubicle67|14 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuestar_Technologies
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/patent-troll...
[+] [-] dave1619|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zentechen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thought_alarm|14 years ago|reply
So how does that qualify as a "survey" in Lodsys's eyes?
[+] [-] mattmcmanus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shaggyfrog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dralison|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oneplusone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] samyzee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesu|14 years ago|reply
It's a pity the app store servers reside in the US. Otherwise i wouldn't have to worry about these things!
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] raganwald|14 years ago|reply
The "patent arsenal" idea is that if you have a trove of patents, you can respond to competitors by cross-licensing. The competitor won't sue you if they don't want to be sued in turn, a kind of mutual non-agression pact.
This doesn't work against a patent troll, who is not in business and cannot be sued on the basis of any patent. I apologize in advance if this simile is offensive, but I think patents are a little like nuclear weapons. They are very effective as a deterrent against other fully functioning countries attacking you, because they know that even if they "win" the war, they will lose.
But what is their value against terrorists? Nothing, because the terrorists do not have anything you can attack with a nuclear weapon. Worse, if you put a nuclear weapon in the hands of a criminal mastermind, you face extortion on a massive scale (see the movie "Thunderball").
[+] [-] roc|14 years ago|reply
A bunch of smaller businesses could definitely create a spin-off entity that bought patent rights and 'exploited' them. But it could never use those patents to target a troll. It could target other tech companies, but then you wouldn't be beating anyone, you'd be joining them.
Short of that, small developers could create some sort of shared legal fund to make fighting these entities less individually-burdensome. But for any individual developer, it's probably going to be cheaper to just hope you don't fall into a net and pay when you do, than to pay every year toward a very expensive patent litigation fund.
These cases can easily cost millions to tens of millions of dollars. A consortium of a thousand companies could each contribute a thousand dollars a year for a decade and wind up broke after a single lawsuit. Where's the up-side for the developer, compared to just keeping their head down and hoping for the best, paying out a few thousand dollars when they get ensnared?
Not to mention that having a large consortium out there would draw the Trolls like a beacon, ensuring that any net they cast hooked the funds of every developer in the consortium.
And, ultimately, any good patent lawyer working for such a consortium would still just advise paying the troll most times. So the practical effect would likely just be to streamline the settlement process.
Small developers would, quite frankly, get far better bang for their buck directing any such consortium moneys into a patent-reform lobby.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zentechen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smashing|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrettcolin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LiteOn|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] samyzee|14 years ago|reply
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