The case against sotftware patents (Score 2)

Hmm - I read the rant and rave - but to someone who's not an American citizen, and not living in America, it's just another amusing example of people (and we have them here too - so I'm not US bashing) who don't understand that the future is a GLOBAL interest and the time for countries has passed - the internet is finally allowing us a global society, and in my mind at least, that is a good thing!

However as to patents themselves. I agree in principle - John Smith comes up with a great design for a new type of shelving - he investigates, tries to set up his own production - talks to a few plastic companies - no one is interested. Two weeks later one of those companies is producing a radical new design of shelving - I think we can agree that we want some protection for the small inventor..

However, we can see immediately two major exceptions -

1) Software

There are two problems with software, and to a lesser extent, hardware, that should rule them out of patent-ability completely -

a) the first thing is the pace of development - there are thousands of people all over the world working on every particular thing. When it comes down to it, 99.99999% of ideas aren't "original" - they are a case of putting facts together - someone says something, someone hears it, and manages to connect it with another fact - and an idea is born. That is why, if you look through history, so many amazing ideas (like calculus) were invented simultaneously by unrelated groups - its not that people have some marvelous genius to produce the idea, its just that the idea was "ready" - ie all the bits leading to the idea were out there, it just took someone to put them together - In the software industry, the technology is moving so fast, and the information is moving so smoothly that I refuse to believe that anyone can come up with an idea and get it to market before tens, even hundreds of other people have also independently come up with exactly the same idea - so do they really deserve anything for "getting there first?" - or even worse, for thinking of patenting it, whereas the majority of people actually do something wonderful, and post their idea on a newsgroup or in IRC or something.

b) the second problem with a software patent is that there are NO barriers to entry (whatever you may believe about Microsoft) - when it comes down to it, if you think of an idea - you are free to implement it with no cost (other than time) to yourself whatsoever - this is very different from the traditional small inventor picture, where they have to approach others to build their product, or invest an absurd amount of money into making a factory or business themselves. I am a developer who earns his livelihood from shareware, so I have a right to say this - I have even written (with a friend) a complete operating system - and believe that there literally aren't ANY barriers to entry - people use Microsoft/Adobe products and others because they are currently the best - not because they are made to - I used to run linux on my server, but changed to Win 2000 because it has a truly transparent proxy - if linux comes out with something better, or BEOS - I will change - and even though a large percentage of the industry aren't like that - ie they won't change products, even operating systems, at a days notice - the people who are driving the industry - ie us - the developers, the hackers, the techies (the little guys in the corner who everyone in the office asks for advice on their purchasing agreements) make all difference to the direction of the industry.

and think about it - when people start developing things themselves - they try to develop the idea as fast as possible because they know someone else is going to come up with it! Doesn't that mean that it shouldn't really be patented?! - ie it wasn't much of an achievement if they are fully aware that many other people are gunna have the same idea!

2) the human genome

I think we can all agree that there is no way that the human genome should be patent-able (and this argument also applies in the computer industry) - the reason? no one is INVENTING anything - they are just discovering something intrinsic - even that discovery would possibly have value - but with the genome, it's not a question of discovering something that others wouldn't discover for a while, its only a question of discovering something FIRST. There is a block of information out there owned by the universe - there are separate groups of people racing to learn about it - it's an absurd notion to believe that someone who gets there a day, month or year before someone else has any more rights to use the results than the others??!!!

It's like saying that if I read a self-help book on carpentry, before anyone else, then I can charge anyone for use of the information - because that is exactly what is happening - the genome is a book, written by god, or the universe, or the inherent structure of the system - and I don't thin any brownie points should accrue for being the first to read any part of it! Sure, patent the TECHNIQUES that allowed you to get there first, but patenting the code itself is just ridiclous