Red Hat has filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court. In the brief, Red Hat explains the practical problems of software patents to software developers. The brief, filed in the Bilski case, asks the Supreme Court to adopt the lower court’s machine-or-transformation test and to make clear that it excludes software from patentability.
… I will throw away my Mark Shuttleworth pin ups and burn my circle of friends stickers and buy a fedora (and some more RH stock)
Oh, and I might switch distros .. but that is not very likely .. I love aptitude too much.
ha, if you have Mark Shuttleworth pinups… *shakes head*
not that i like the current patent system or anything, but there is a case to be made about inovation on both sides. No patens could lead to greater inovation, but HAVING happents has caused a need for others to try to reinvent the wheel in hopes of making it better and so on. if patnets were gone i feel that creativeity could be stifeled more than helped. it is because of a desire for change that linux and it’s software (for teh most part) even exist. if things were open to begin with it might not have happened, Linus even said himself (i think) that if he knew of FreeBSD when he started there would be no linux.
patents, and non open software models, created a need for others to try something different, and look how far we have come because of this. I think that the way patents work is not ideal and does stifel creativity more then it helps it, but at the same time who knows what would have been without them and the situation they created.
just a thought…
I believe copyrights actually accomplished the good that you attribute to patents here.
RMS created the free software revolution because computer vendors required non-disclosure agreements when using their operating systems – something they did using *copyright law*, not patents. Microsoft and other non-free companies keep their software proprietary through copyrights, not patents (indeed, Microsoft has been sued over patent violations repeatedly, but rarely enforce their own – Tom Tom being the exception, of course).
Have you *ever* seen a software developer, faced with a challenge, say, “I think I’ll go look through the patent office for a solution to my problem”? Of course not – the image itself evokes laughter. AFTER he’s solved all the challenges, the lawyers come in to decide which code will require additional, non-value-added changes to work around vague patents and the patent trolls who wield them.
Face it – software patents have been an unmitigated disaster, and the sooner the Supreme Court rules them a violation of the “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” clause of the US constitution, the better.
your right, copyright would make more sense in my post.
This is so ridiculous that I don’t even know where to begin.
Let’s just say that all open source licenses, including all versions of GPL, are enforceable only and only through the legality of copyright law.
Copyright is the legal basis of free and open source software.
Yes, it is. Where’s the ridiculous part? That licenses depend on copyright has nothing to do at all with whether copyright or patents motivated the free software movement. You kinda came out of left field there. [puzzled look]
1) Patents are used by those in dominant positions to maintain and extend their monopoly. Microsoft is an example of using their existing ideas, changing them slightly and patenting them – known in the pharmaceutical industry as ever greening.
2) Why should free software have to pay royalties to a patent holder? the whole purpose of a patent is to demand payment from a company who is making money off that particular piece of work – in other words, a share of the profits yielded through the use of another persons intellectual property.
How can you therefore demand royalty payments from a community distribution that redistributes LAME binaries which allow a person to compress audio? I can understanding demanding payment from a company who makes money but to demand payment from a non-profit distribution is stupid.
3) Patent holders should not be able to demand royalties from those implementing technology solely on the basis of compatibility.
Once you implement those three ideas, it shrinks to a very small pool of genuinely innovative ideas that actually should expect payments.
They’re also used by those in not-dominant positions to get a foothold against supposed-monopolies and defend their innovation. Whoever invents something regardless of their status deserves the rewards of their invention.
No, that’s not what patents are for. Patents are to protect innovators, including from people who want to give that innovation away for free. Not charging for it doesn’t make it any less of a crime – imagine if big companies started distributing the innovation of others for free. Is that fair?
You don’t. You send them a C&D.
This I agree on, so long as the implementation is sufficiently different from the original. Patents are more for protecting how it *specifically* works than what it does. LAME is a good example of how things are broken.
Not that I disagree with you, but regarding No. 1: Hows that working out for i4i?
I like patents, in fact I like the patent system is much better than the copyright system (in theory). The only issue is that software isn’t patentable under any sane system. You can’t patent algorithms and that what software code is when you get down to it. If any Judge was even the least bit familiar with software this would be obvious but by and large they aren’t. Business method patents are just as insane but it looks like people caught onto that a little bit faster. Once you start issuing crappy patents though the system starts breaking down. Its really doesn’t appear set up to handle disputed patents beside companies suing each other in hugely expensive court battles. Get rid of software and business method patents and you would clear out of good deal of the crap in the system, then set up a better review process for invalidating disputed patents and we would have a return to sanity
Edited 2009-10-03 00:58 UTC
I read through both Redhat’s and IBM’s brief, and I think that IBM ( http://www.patentlyo.com/08-964-ibm.pdf ) was flat out wrong on some points. For example IBM says ‘The disclosure required to obtain a patent ensures that “the knowledge of the invention enures to the people†and “stimulate[s] ideas and the eventual development of further significant advances in the art.‒ Software patents are practically unusable by actual programmers since they are written in lawyerese and do not include source code or pseudo-code. Redhat actually cites sources for this that have been written this millennium.
I think that software patents could possibly be useful for innovation if they were 1. Much shorter. 3-5 years would be more than sufficient to reward the actual work that goes into software innovation. The current 20 years is insane in software terms. And 2. were written so that average software programmers could understand them. Without those two conditions, software patents are a net drag on innovation.
Patents and copyrights are counterproductive as far as I can tell. They restrict what a person can do with real property for no real reason. There are many assertions that the proponents of so-called intellectual “property” make, but is there actually any evidence that their arguments are true? Every study that I have ever seen with regards to the effectiveness of patents makes me wonder if they are at all useful. In fact several studies conclude that they are counter-productive to greater innovation and that they result in monopolies in various fields as one or a few players create a patent portfolio that blocks new comers from entering the field. There is also no evidence that copyrights help anyone but the largest players in the media and book writing.
Ideal systems that we can create in our mind don’t matter. The fact is that any system run by a government is going to change to suit those who are best at lobbying, which are the larger and more powerful entities who change the rules to favor themselves at the expense of the poor and newcomers to the field. The state creates rules that create privilege where it would not otherwise exist.
I hope that software patents are struck down with this case or that this case opens up the doors to ending software patents.
http://www.againstmonopoly.org/
I’m glad one of the major players are stepping up and letting the world know the patent system is doing nothing for their business.
FTA: “Software patents form a minefield that slows and discourages software innovation.”
Very nice way of putting it, Rob Tiller.
I definitely see patents as counter-productive.
Regarding software copyrights, what I would like to see is a *time-limit* on the copyright – say, five years. After that, the software goes into the public domain. Surely five years would seem to be long enough for software copyright protection?
Does software really have to be under copyright for longer than that, and if so, why? What benefit does a longer period give to a coder who uses GPL, BSD, MIT licenses?
Edited 2009-10-04 22:22 UTC
Or at least require renewal after 5 years. The original US copyright required renewal after 14 years. I would imagine much software would have had it’s copyright expire if this was still the case.