Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

So if I invent, say, a genuinely novel new form of public key exchange, or a new psychoacoustic model that drastically improves audio compression, or a novel forward error correction scheme --- these things shouldn't be patentable, but a new kind of bicycle kickstand should be?

View on HN

In my opinion, that's exactly how it should be. Patents do not exist to serve corporations, developers, inventors or investors. They exist to foster innovation so that the public can reap the benefits.

Can you invent, market and sell a new type of bicycle stand without patents? No. The concept will be copied as soon as it hits the market.

Can you invent, market and sell a new type of algorithm without patents? Arguably yes. Startups do it all the time. A patent is neither necessary nor sufficient for success in this case. In fact, it seems that on balance, patents are far more harmful than they are good to legitimate software companies.

> They exist to foster innovation so that the public can reap the benefits.

Fair enough, but dislosure fosters innovation. Two companies making the same bicycle stand is no more innovative than just one.

> Can you invent, market and sell a new type of bicycle stand without patents? No. The concept will be copied as soon as it hits the market.

If a copier can market and sell a new type of bicycle stand, why can't the inventor do the same?

I note that many things, both physical and virtual, are sold without patent protection, so it's unclear why you think that patents are essential for physical things but not virtual.

Won't copyright and trade secrets offer enough protection?

No. Imagine I'm a 4-person startup hoping to capitalize on my revolutionary new psychoacoustic library. Copyright protections don't prevent Microsoft from reading my library, learning how they work, and creating a clean-room reimplementation. Similarly, it's hard to create a trade secret out of something that will need to run on every customer's machine.

Will patents help you against Microsoft? Does your four person startup really have the resources to take on a major legal team? From the patents question in the interview at http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101007/full/news.2010.525.ht..., it sounds like defending a patent isn't a pretty or an affordable business.

Patents take 5-7 years to issue and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to litigate. They're more like claymores rigged to a dead man's switch than they are a real defense.

But that's orthogonal to the question that was just asked.

However, if that idea is worth selling, you will be ahead in the market. Microsoft will need to catch up. They may buy you out. Software typically goes obsolete for reasons other than the "need" for protection.

Besides, by the time Microsoft does that, some other algorithm could quite possibly be created by somebody else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com