[ale] Segue from MS threatening the community

Thompson Freeman tfreeman at intel.digichem.net
Tue May 15 16:14:09 EDT 2007


On 05/15/2007 03:06:22 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> In many cases, the patent office pretty much grants any
> patent that
> comes with the right paperwork and fees, under the
> assumption that IF it
> ever comes to a legal issue then the courts will deal with
> determining
> if the patent is valid.  Just look at the number of
> patents that have
> been invalidated by the courts on the case of prior art or
> obviousness.

A friend of mine has six or seven patents, all assigned to  
his employer of course. Every one of them was turned down  
at least once, only to be granted after being hammered in  
the head with more paper. Admittedly, these patents are  
chemical, not software, so there may be some differences  
here, but my impression is that the patent examiners and  
the patent office are working under a system rigged to make  
them idiots. IMHO of course.

>  The patent 'examiners' seem to be little more than
> paper-pushers who
> don't know the difference between paper and reality.
> 
> What's more is that, IMO, being able to patent something
> without a
> workable demonstration is evil.  In fact, all those
> Intellectual
> Property companies that make money off of nothing but
> licensing should
> be shut down.  If you want to make money from an idea,
> fine, but then
> you should produce the idea.  Knowledge is not a product.

Amen. Patent trolls steal from the mouths of usefully  
creative people. Competition should be in the marketplace,  
not courtrooms.

> JK wrote:
> > Rev. Johnny Healey wrote:
> >
> >> Virtually anything can be patented in the US, including
> the user interface.
> >> One-Click is a good example of this; you don't need to
> see the source code
> >> to know that the patent has been violated.
> >
> > IATotallyNAL, but I suspect that, while this may appear
> to be the
> > current state of affairs, it doesn't reflect legal
> reality.  For
> > example, it's my belief based on, basically, me reading
> Groklaw
> > a lot, that reverse engineering has always been
> explicitly
> > *permitted* under US patent law.  IOW, if you can figure
> out how
> > to do what a patented product does, more power to you,
> as long
> > as you don't actually *copy* the patented product.
> >
> > I suspect that something like One-Click, which takes the
> average
> > web-aware developer about 75 milliseconds to "reverse
> engineer",
> > should qualify as "obvious" even under the current US
> patent regime,
> > and therefore shouldn't have been granted at all. The
> strategy of
> > choice seems to be, "file patents (pat. pending) for
> everything (pat.
> > pending) in sight (pat. pending), and count (pat.
> pending) on the
> > patent office review process (pat. pending) to drop (pat
> pending)
> > the ball (pat. pending) sufficiently often that you get
> a few
> > granted."
> >
> > I think there are a few ideas in software that
> legitimately
> > deserve(d) patent protection (for a brief period!).  The
> notion
> > of function calls implemented by a stack, for example,
> is
> > brilliant, fundamental, and not totally obvious if you
> don't
> > already know about it.  However, most software behavior,
> if
> > you describe it to an experienced developer, she'll be
> able
> > to think of two or three implementations for that
> behavior
> > in ten minutes or so. Such things ought not to be
> patentable,
> > IMO.
> >
> > -- JK
> >
> 
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