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Comment by skeledrew | Hacker News Reader

> open sourcing our proprietary DisplayLink technology ... by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our market-leading proprietary technology

This makes no sense. If they're screaming about their patents then detailed specs of the tech would be publicly available via the patents office for whomever wants to have a look. They can't make an argument about losing competitive advantage because that's what valid patents are supposed to protect. And I think there is some kind of hobbyist-friendly clause in patent law, similar to fair use, that allows non-commercial 3rd party implementation of patents, so ultimately they have no valid argument against this, just deep pockets to bury hobbyists in legal fees for daring to clean-copy "their" tech.

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IME, patents are generally not detailed specs of the tech. They're intended to detail higher level procedures or mechanisms to prevent competitors from introducing any kind of similar product that uses any kind of similar algorithm or idea. That's how patent trolls retain a competitive monopoly over their niche. You can't expect to reimplement a technology from its patents alone, even if the patent can aid in understanding something you have in front of you.

A valid patent must meet the enablement standard -- it doesn't need to be a full implementation, but it should enable a skilled professional reading it to reproduce the concept that it is covering.

The problem is that many companies are able to patent things that are too vague and use them as leverage even if they probably shouldn't be valid patents.

It is a balance, though. If you patent something too specific, e.g. irrelevant implementation details, your patent is worthless because anyone could just change the irrelevant parts.

> It is a balance, though. If you patent something too specific, e.g. irrelevant implementation details, your patent is worthless because anyone could just change the irrelevant parts.

Chemical companies love this -- just look at the refrigerant racket. Or the medicine racket. Both will wait until their current patent expires, then have a new slightly-modified one granted, and get the old product regulated out of existence. The end result is that they keep a monopoly for effectively life, even though expiring patents are supposed to eventually create an open market.

This works best in industries where chemicals need to be tested and approved before they can be used. Otherwise, one would be able to simply change irrelevant implementation details.

The root of that problem is regulatory capture, which is a much bigger problem beyond what can be done with patents.

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