____/ BearItAll on Thursday 02 August 2007 13:41 : \____
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Google: Kill all the patent trolls
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Google's head of patents believes the U.S. patent system is "in crisis".
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/02/google_calls_for_us_patent_reform/
>>
>> RealNetworks Case Highlights Sea-Change In Patent Law
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | "I can tell you that as a result of the KSR decision, we are receiving
>> | new training to determine how we process patent applications," Locker
>> | said. "Right now it's an open question as to how it will impact us. But
>> | it very well may mean that it will be a lot tougher for people to get
>> | patents."
>> `----
>>
>
> It isn't a question of making it tough to get a patent, if a patent is right
> then it shouldn't be tough, it's a question of whether ownership of patents
> should go to those who do not have a right to them.
Very true, but it's an /extremely/ difficult problem, especially when no
*device* is involved (e.g. software patents and business methods). Even
Microsoft admitted this in court. Additionally, where do you set the bat to
acceptance. Can someone patent the swing?
> People picking up patents for no other reason than no one else has picked it
> up. They play no part in the item that the patents corresponds to.
I think companies just like to boost some numbers that make their portfolio
looks more attractive and get more/better cross-licence patents. But the idea
is flawed. It encourages obscurity and patenting of anything one can get away
with.
> Then the other part are those patents that simply can not be attributed to
> anyone because far too many people and companies were involved in the
> development over many years.
Yes, a lot is cumulative. it's the nature of knolwedge, just like culture.
Should one patent a certain drum beat and then charge everyone whose tune
was /inspired/ by that tempo?
> As I have said here before, much of the software we use today was built over
> many years by many people and companies. How can someone claim ownership of
> the Button tool, when we all know that even the earliest UNIX had buttons.
> Also everyone who ever programmed has done some version of a button
I totally agree with you, but the patent issue is motivated by greed. Another
issue to consider here is that some patents are certainly valid because they
describe complex construction of machines. It's just the abuse of lost focus
(on quality) that throws the baby out along with the bathwater.
> It's a bleeding picture, a jpeg, the button is nothing more than a mouse
> click in a region which is where the picture of the button happens to be.
>
> We now wrap that in a class, it is still just a picture, jpeg/gif/png maybe
> you actually draw your button in OnPaint, then a mouse click in the region
> where the picture is is all that a button is.
>
> How does the system know which button is pressed? It knows where your
> application window is because it put it there, it has a list of the
> relative locations of each tool/button/bitmap etc on your client, it has
> the marker to the code it is meant to run associated with the region
> underneath the mouse when it is clicked.
>
> There is no great rocket science there, all that has changed from the
> orriginal buttons, is that the regions of the button is now inside other
> regions. Nothing has changed in principle.
Evolutionary, for sure. There is a chain of thoughts and ideas, so what is
being patented? The 'diff' between innovations?
> You can go through everything, comms, each item of a GUI, every bell and
> whistle on a PC and you can find nothing that can be said to be exclusively
> developed by anyone. Everything there has to be associated with many
> programmers over many years, variations in the code, but the same end
> results.
>
> But then if it proved a usefull function or set of functions, you published
> them where your fellow programmers could pick it up too. While there you
> pick up something someone else has written, maybe add a change of some kind
> and put it back for others to use.
>
> When I talk about this I don't mean some small geek club, I mean a global
> network, some times you shared through mags, mostly through buletin boards
> or occasionally someone would have an open space to deposite and share. It
> was international, or rather it was almost international, they were people
> in this from all over europe, india, occasional Aussies, Japan.
>
> It may be my memory but when I thought about this the last time I said
> simmilar in here, I really can not remember communicating with Americans in
> those BBs. But who is getting the benefit of all the work the rest of us
> freely put into it, the Americans.
>
> Those items that are being patented do not belong to you, that is what is
> wrong with your patent system. Some of your developers no doubt came up
> with mathods as the rest of us did, but I bet both socks they shared on BBs
> just in the same way we all did. So no one can claim ownership of them.
There's this assumption that the first one to file is the first one to own.
Also, due to the late introduction of software patents as a valid application,
there's a whole backlog.
> By the way, the Celts had the first TextBox. It was a wooden board with some
> numeric figures in a list, then at the bottom was a cut out oblong box, it
> is thought that the user was meant to put items to the sum of the numbers
> into the box, maybe jewels or gold, it's still an input box, just because
> they had set the GoldJewels property to true doesn't mean it wasn't capable
> of other input types.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Computers are useless. They only solve problems"
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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