>Programs were thought to be mere mathematical algorithms, and mathematical algorithms, as laws of nature, were not patentable.
And thats the way it should be now. I dont think you should be able to patent math, dna or the air we breathe
And thats the way it should be now. I dont think you should be able to patent math, dna or the air we breathe
Software patents is not even about code. Almost nobody that patents software makes code public accessible. With a patent you are supposed to make public the plans, in exchange of the monopoly.
The idea of patents was that anybody could replicate the work reading the plans, so society advances when the author of the original work dies.
With software patents the code is not there, so it becomes monopolies for abstract ideas, the more abstract the better.
Why didn't Google just copy Facebook and Twitter? Those would be easy apps to copy in the state they were when they first got famous.
It doesn't happen because its harder for people to copy ideas than you think it is. If you write software for a living and work in a big organization you will understand that they don't have a magic wand that they can just wave to make new products appear.
Network effects and jealously guarding their data. These days the technology is not nearly as important as the data.
But that is exactly the way it happens now: the little guy can consider himself lucky if he is not the one to get sued both by big companies AND trolls.
In the software world the problem is just utterly insane, but this is a general feature of the patent system.
Learn how to do this instead of learning how to just invent a Thingamajig.
Then you can consistently make Thingamajigs that are first-to-market products with great branding that people will choose over your competitors products.
Patents aren't needed. Copyright protection is.
People should be allowed to have their own namespace in the public market and it is beneficial to have a system of government to enforce this. We don't need to protect anything else.
The USPTO has processed 16,020,302 applications in its history. Obviously many of these are from big business, but many are from individuals. Why haven't the individuals figured out by now that they are worthless? Why do they keep falling for it?
Few (or zero) people believe that patents are universally valueless to the patent-holder.
What is widely believed, especially in the field of software, is that society would be better off without software patents. In particular, that "Progress in Science and the useful Arts", at minimum in the area of software, would proceed faster without patents. Whether or not it would be more just is less widely agreed upon.
Of course, many stakeholders profit from the existing regime. Some of those say "patents are good", some say "patents are bad, but while they exist, will shall use them".
Or do you prefer that the little guys spend millions of dollars against the big guys in court?. Who of course have thousands of essential patents each that the little guys infringe.
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1. That decision seems unlikely. "I want $X. But I'm worried that if someone copies my idea I'll get $0.2X. So I'd much rather keep it to myself and get $0 instead." I'm no fan of the assumption that humans always make rational economic decisions, but surely it isn't normal to be that silly.
2. The assumption that if the first inventor doesn't share their idea then that idea is lost to humanity and nobody will ever come up with a similar idea ever again just doesn't follow. We've got major business strategies (submarine patenting) and even an entire industry (patent trolls) who rely on the fact that this isn't how things tend to work out.
How on earth would that have been feasible? I mean, it would be somewhat realistic to imagine him not having the will to invent it in the first place. How on earth can one keep secret the design of a mechanical device that one sells to the public? Has any attempt to do so ever been successful?
I'm not so sure - I'm founding a nonprofit to find out if this is true.
This becomes a problem, though, when math essentially does become patentable, because it means we've barred people with the best background to review these patents from the profession that reviews them.
All in all, I think eliminating software patents is something that should be seriously considered. Maybe just use copyright? It's not an easy question, so I don't mean to be glib here. But eliminating them should at least be considered as one viable option. The current situation is really bad.
The problem is with the protection of "inventions" which are obvious or non-innovative, not with patents of one type of invention over another.
I am just trying to understand the rational behind what is and what isn't patentable.
Is it perhaps a question of applicability? Profitability? Enforceability? Is it a question of a difference in values held by mathematicians v. inventors?
If there is a difference between mathematicians vs. inventors it is an understanding that a mathematical description of a thing and the thing itself are two different things(one of which is patentable).
However a mathematical description of an algorithm is the algorithm. There is no dichotomy. Quicksort isn't "not math, but describable with math", it is math. Same with FFT algorithms, and the Pythagorean theorem. You wouldn't dare say that a "mathematical description of the Pythagorean theorem" is a distinct entity from the theorem itself (and that one of them is patentable)...