Patent Law Ruling Threatens FOSS 244
savio13 writes "The EFF has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a patent law ruling that could pose a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software projects. A recent Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision required that even the most obvious incremental advances can be patented unless it can be proved that someone else suggested it prior to the patent being filed. As such, many 'bad patents' are being used as roadblocks for legitimate innovators, especially those working for FOSS projects (who have better things to do then search through thousands of technical papers for some mention of the obvious). The full brief is available online in PDF format."
Re:Better Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
New license clause (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But... it's free. (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies don't patent things 'to make money', except indirectly: the primary use of patents these days is to keep new competitors out of the market, and free software is the worst kind of competition to have, since it doesn't cost anything. In any developed market, odds are all major companies will have patent cross-licensing deals, so patents don't affect them, they only affect new competitors that want to join the fun.
what about USPTO non-obviousness rule? (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable.
This says that if something is obvious, the patent can be rejected even if there is no real prior art or previous "suggestion" or anything. Does a judge have the right to change the USPTOs rules on it's behalf?
It's Not Like FOSS Devels and Users Have Any Power (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Soo... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a difference between "not done yet" and "non-obvious". The non-obvious leap is something where even if you knew about the problem you wouldn't have likely found the solution.
Take LZW for example, it's a rather straightforward addition to LZ78. In my books any competent comp.sci student would try that too. It's obvious. By the same token, it wasn't obvious how to get MP3 like efficiency 20 years ago in encoding audio [given that the state of the art back then was ADPCM, CELP and u-Law].
Most OSS developers couldn't implement an MP3 codec [hence the lack of options in choosing such a lib] but most could implement LZW, specially when given LZ78.
Tom
Re:New license clause (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no license. So the users are entirely responsible themselves for the use of the software. It also means they can benefit the most.
Tom
Obvious solution to this problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Steve
Re:Better Idea... (Score:1, Interesting)
The answer to these kinds of questions is always "it depends." Some inventions do not depend on a particular network protocol, a particular arrangement of Java objects, etc. To link the patentability of an invention to such trivial matters is absurd.
Step back and consider a mechanical invention. Suppose I invent a new type of chair that can never fall over. Mine is painted blue, made of metal, and has 4 legs. You copy my idea, but you paint the chair red, make it of wood, give it 2 extra legs, and add leather armrests. Copyright would not protect me in this situation -- but a patent would (depending on how the invention was claimed).
Why should we treat software any differently?
Start your lawyers... (Score:4, Interesting)
The patent system was designed to shelter innovation by offering a limited monopoly to develop a business or livelihood around it. Parts of it operate quite well, however, in the intellectual life it has serious shortcomings. Software is one of those parts of the intellectual life where the character of the process is more akin to governance then to making a cunning artifact.
This therefore brings us to three observations: first, software developers move much faster then business processes; Second, the goal of business is adding value (like support and auditing) to generate sales; third, the common wealth is ill served by business turf wars. If business believes in competition, then let them coach their teams better. I'll expand on these points.
The fundamental design of systems is very fluid. As an engineer that has worked on and co-ordinated large projects, I find that I tend to go though about four or five related designs before settling on a particular architecture. I have to think of the cost of the hardware, but also of the system cost. It serves the efforts no good if I design cheap hardware that prevents the software guys from achieving the system goals. And the software guys iterate over several solutions while deciding how to partition their part. When we are very, very lucky, we may have some time to sit down together and try to find the exact right "cut here" line!
Assuming that we all managed to get it right, and we are actually delivering what the customer needs, we get to support it. That is the value of business to me, as a designer. It means that others (The Customer) can benefit from our collective work, that they can continue to do so, and that they will soon find new, interesting things for us to do. Marketing here does the research of what is out there so we can digest it and figure out the better mousetrap. They also do the customer legwork so the people we are talking to know what their system requirements are. (their business can be treated as a system in this conversation) The rest is negotiation, and avoiding the dead ends.
A humourous example: The Customer Wants a Car in the Bauhaus Style; that is, the salient marketing features are spare, rectilinear lines. The dead end is delivering Bauhaus Square Wheels. Clearly, intellegent compromise is needed.
Playing around with turf wars, the adult equivalent of King of the Hill, is a gumption trap that will suck the life right out of the organization. I don't think any intellegent executive wants this, but they'll scrap if they have to. Wisdom consists of setting up our affairs so we don't have to.
As a humourous close, why hasn't someone started to patent forms of government? I see a huge market potential in this. Dictatorships could patent Democracy, for example...
EFF is the Voice, We Are the Angry Mob!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Watch EFF attorney Jason Schultz tear the roof off in the new documentary, ALTERNATIVE FREEDOM. Maybe you will learn something or be able to show your friends and then we can all make sure digital rights are always kept in mind...
Also features Dangermouse (of Gnarls Barkley), Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman...
Check it out:
http://alternativefreedom.org/ [alternativefreedom.org] [alternativefreedom.org]
Paper Patents (Score:1, Interesting)
Developers can access the paper patent repository for ideas relevant to their product.
Payment for inventions is by way of a patent tax on each product category. The tax level could be roughly 50% of the value of patents to that product category.
The allocation of the collected patent tax would be based on usage of the inventions, perceived value, etc.
With this approach, the pace of innovation should increase significantly, and thereby be an improvement over the current patent system.
Re:Let it collapse (Score:2, Interesting)
The only way the US government is proceeding along this globalism path without total economic collapse right now is the repatriation of already exported greenbacks,coming back in the form of trade for further IOUs (the economy is already borked from that right now, no fix for it really). When that stops, and it most certainly will sometime, well, the Feds can print up all they want to then,and you can see how that works out like in zimbabwe right now. It doesn't.
As to military might, excluding planet busting mass use of WMD, which would be suicide basically, I think the current running wars show how effective high tech is *or isn't* when you have significant numbers of the local population annoyed with you. It only takes a few percent of the locals really annoyed, that's it, you are stuck in a war of attrition you will lose eventually. They can right now barely hold on to small selected areas in a small country, let alone try to pull that off in numerous nations all at the same time all over the planet. I don't think it's even remotely possible to do that.
Re:Better Idea... (Score:2, Interesting)