Software Patents: Difference between revisions

patentable?"

because they ARE obvious to professionals in the field.

But the patent office isn't a professional in the field of software, and neither

are the examiners; or perhaps as another poster would have it, neither are the

patent lawyers dispute the denial of claim.

It's not that open source proponents are plugging their ears and yelling about

should be patentable. See, songs are "obvious" (kind of) once you

have sorted out the parts that arn't unique. That doesn't mean, by any stretch

It is arguing from false premise to presume that just because something is

"difficult" to do and cannot be done equally well by all

deserves some ownership of the domain.

Because the award goes to the "first" and not the "best"

expression, we are in the race to be first. It naturally follows that the

In the back-case, a lot of things have been worked out over time and so are in

and sees that there isn't a patent on the idea and files one. Because we live

in a society where "simultaneous" and "at the same time" may

If, however, you perform a defense-in-detail (military talk there) and

under _current_ patent theory. That is when you apply the real-device patent

rules to software, the software patents don't hold up because of some key

points.

so described. You will never see this in a software patent. First, these

patents don't describe a specific invention, they are broad and mushy, and a

you that the claim stating "a protocol, usable across a network, which

causes the system to act as a server to a number of clients" doesn't

actually say a darn thing. In software design "protocol"

"server" "client" and "network" are generic words

claim it *seems* to mean something, but when a programmer reads such a claim it

up of a mess made by students or faculty." That is, it is a statement of

intent, not a description of action. It's set dressing. The problem is, *all*

the claims end up being general set dressing, and so can apply to whole ranges

intimates all sorts of things.

Is classic dirty fingers, the patent casts hearsay-like aspersions over a range

of activities without actually pinning itself down to meaning anything in

they were contracts they would all be thrown out of court for being vague. In

point of fact, software patents are "very SCO" for being subject to

You are dealing with an industry where, if you were to ask "what is a 'LAN'

and when does it become a 'WAN'?" of a large group of professionals, they

2) You cannot patent combining two (or more) elements, if those two elements

persist in doing the same job they always did. This is a SCOTUS decision from

the fifties (?) about the grocery store that put a conveyor belt next to a cash

doing the same thing.

means" (e.g. gluing instead of hammering) or a "new material"

(space-age polymer tar-paper) or a "new goal" (inverting a classic

in a patent as a primary claim.

sun off a... whatever".

they have a "valid" patent on the combination. Namely, they

apparently own:

logged in and entered his credit card information and shipping information and

begins browsing the site, a product displayed for sale may, on the page where it

being required by the customer.

there it is on the books and upheld in a court case, because the patent office

let it through and the trier of fact and the jurists were bulldozed over by

Really, as a person with twenty-five years under my belt of professional

already patented or already unpatentable things in the real world. Also, ALL

software is a repetitive accumulation exterior elements that the theoretical

Consider a final example.

Does the guy who invented the fence, have to pay the guy who invented sheep

fencing his pasture?

What of the guy who puts a fence around his cow?

brings in bales of hay?

his hay to a sheep owner?

operations add, remember, compare, and jump. Every computer program is made up

of these four operators. Oh sure, over the years compare and jump-backwards

In the other direction, there are power users who kind of understand these

things about these operations. And then there are the computer technology fans

latest game and browse the net.

is a whole technology priesthood of businessmen and their henchmen lawyers

the Most Holy Intellectual Property, and that their incantations of purpose and

But that's all snake oil, legalese, and obfuscation in the name of money and

As stated, we programmers understand our realm.

unreasonable, and in the end suppressive and expensive nonsense, you should

more than a regurgitation of common knowledge" with, if he's really good, a

dash of artistic inspiration sprinkled on top.

Until the software patent is killed (and probably for that matter the

"business method" patents on things like how Dell moves its boxes

vague monopolies on undefined domains of thought, will extort a HUGE "cash

entropy cost" on you and I and everybody else even remotely involved.

So where was the "vs c=Copyrights" part? Its that inspiration in the

regurgitation. Software innovation isn't invention, its art. It is a well

Screen of Death. But it *is* (for all that I have a degree in "Computer

Science) just art. Bad artist make bad art, and bad programmers make bad

So software is squarely and undeniably under the auspice of Copyright because a

programmer or company deserves the protection of their effort at expression, but

We write software. We write books. IF programmers should be able to patent

software, then authors should be able to patent their books, and every spy novel

didn't like...

anything at all.

[[Category:Patents]]

[[Category:Legal]]