I'm against software patents. They don't fulfil their intended function. If the duration was shorter, they might work.
I think it's important to note that patent law was developed for mechanical innovations, where it might take an start-up company decades to go from invention to market. Patents made sense because otherwise an inventor could be afraid to invest the time and money in attempting to market his invention, and therefore afraid to invest time and money in inventing things in the first place.
With software innovations, on the other hand, one could go from invention to market in years or even months. Many modern patents on innovations marketed by large companies are still pending
after they've hit the market, so they certainly aren't being used to protect the invention from 'theft' before the company has had time to develop it.
Instead, they are used
after an invention has achieved wide use to prevent competitors from improving upon their designs and 'stealing' their market share in the process. They are used to
inhibit the progress of science and useful arts.
For example, Thomson was still aquiring US patents which it claims apply to MP3 in 2001, which is
long after MPEG dominated the digital video market. These patents are not for protecting Thomson whilst it attempts to the enter the DV market itself: it has a very strong position in that market.
The patents are to ensure that Thomson can force its competitors to either pay its licensing fees, or make equipment that is incompatible with MPEG. If you want to make a DVD player, you must pay your competitor (who is hardly a startup, being worth $5bn) for the priviledge to do so. It should not be difficult to see that this hardly advances the progress of science and useful arts.
Note that this is somewhat different from the case of a physical patent on a component of a DVD player. In principle, one could develop an alternative component. Indeed, one could be encouraged to do so, so this may be
good for progress. Suppose the laser device was patented. A physical patent could not cover
all sources of laser light -- that would be tantamount to a patent on a law of nature, which have been established to be unpatentable.
The MPEG patents are manifestly different because they are wide enough to cover
all possible MPEG decoders. Innovation is discouraged because, no matter what innovation in MPEG decoding you come up with, you'll have to pay Thomson to be permitted to develop it, and if you came up with some totally new alternative, the ubiquity of MPEG would present a substantial barrier to entry in the market, not to mention that courts may interpret the patents vaguely enough that it is questionable as to whether or not one could possibly develop an alternative which you could
guarantee wasn't covered by patents. Note that Ogg is not
known to be free from patents: it is merely free from
known patents.
Quote:Original post by cbenoi1
The alternative to patents is trade secrets
No,
one alternative to patents are trade secrets. Another alternative is not having any protection of your algorithms, and competing on the grounds of the quality of your implementation and the support you offer for it.
Quote:Original post by cbenoi1
Sorry, but that one got lost in the translation. Can you give a real-world example of a "patented copyrighted software"? That will help the discussion.
I'm confused. Are you seriously claiming that you don't know of any copyrighted software which is covered by patents?
[Edited by - Nathan Baum on May 3, 2006 11:49:32 PM]
