Just to be clear: it's not as if software is un-protectable. Good code can be kept a trade secret, is copyright its registrant, and there are trademark rights to consider also. Moreover, there are “soft” (non-IP) protections, like maintaining the software, getting into a space first, and (whoa!) having a product that actually just performs better.

The problem with software patents is that they are like minefields in the software innovation universe. One cannot just freely extend an idea, because it could be patented, and if it is bang-o you violated the patent laws: http://endsoftpatents.org/a-litany-of-lawsuits

Yes, even software.

Patents may have made sense for mechanical devices that have to operate under the laws of physics. Software is just applied math and has no such limitation. Creating a software patent simply creates an un-deserved monopoly around that idea.

Simply put, software patents are bogus.

Weary from comment reading on the intent generation post, marking this 6th popular post as 7/10.

I feel your frustration and recognize that great value is in implementing ideas, but we should credit the inventor somehow as a society.

Weary from comment reading on the intent generation post, marking this 6th popular post as 7/10.

I feel your frustration and recognize that great value is in implementing ideas, but we should credit the inventor somehow as a society.

I think your argument about GPS is true, some things are obvious. Some things aren't. I think your argument suggests you have a problem with the threshold, not the existence of patents.

As you stated, patents are the ticket to M&A. It's just the way the system works now. Getting rid of patents will throw out the baby with the bath water. You have to put up with the bath water.

I agree that patent trolls shouldn't be allowed to exist. The owner of a patent should be required to show that it is part of a product. If the product doesn't exist, neither should the patent.

As a person involved in the industry how do you think Patents should be reformed?

You mention you are in favour of a first to post system like Europe. To me this seems to be worse then the current US system. If I invent a product, produce that product for several years but don't patent my invention then someone could step in and steal all my hard work.

Personally I have yet to think of a software process that should be able to be patented (thats not to say there isn't one). For processes like one-click buying it just seems stupid to be able to patent. But software processes are based around UI flows that are constantly changing and as such are generally increment in change.

I hold judgement on other areas of patents as I don't really have as in depth knowledge as for computer software based patents.

Obviously this won't solve all issues, and there will still be some serious abuse. However, this is a feasible enhancement to the current patent laws. In other words, it can be implement without drastically changing the patent system. It's actionable!

Not only that, it will in essence shutdown all the patent holding only companies since they never build anything.

Again, I understand there are way better solutions, it's just that this solution at least has a chance of being enacted. And it would have a respectable impact.

“Patents and copyrights and the like were and are designed to protect inventors. Not innovators.”

Wrong on both counts. They happen to protect inventors AND innovators (yes, there is a distinction, but both can be patented), but that is simply the means to an end; namely, allowing overall technological progress to be made.

Very importantly, patents do not exist to protect some nonexistent “right to exclude others from using your ideas”. They exist only for the practical purpose of allowing invention and innovation to take place so that everyone can benefit from such.

This is also, incidentally why they expire. The inventor chooses to patent something and receives protections, but in return, their ideas become public domain when the patent expires. This is one way in which patents are VERY different from property, which obviously never expires.

You're right. Startup funding should be abolished. Or wait, startups can still be funded, but the mechanism whereby they might ever be profitable will be abolished.

What should be abolished is stupid, low-class prole monkeys trying to make legislation.

I think there is the capability, it's just that USPO is overworked. That is why is believe a 'true' test for obviousness should be deferred to cases of litigation. At that point, there is no doubt that the extra work involved is not being wasted.

In other words, the defendant in an patent case should be able to request a thorough obviousness assessment from the USPO. Should the patent fail the test, then the patent evaporates, as does the case, and the litigant pays all the costs.

The only way you could get tangible benefits going into the public domain is to *require* working source code to be in the patent application, that will go into the public domain.

You are giving people sanctioned monopolies where there is no need for them to exist! Furthermore the public get no benefits at all unlike patents from other fields.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

The term “intellectual property” has been in documented use since at least
1818. The concept iof providing legal protections for inventions (patents,
copyrights etc) goes back at least to the 16th century, and is also
explicitly called for in the Constitution (a document that was also “dreamed
up by lawyers”)

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

But who cares? OK, lets not use the term “intellectual property” for this
discussion…

Again, from Wikipedia (quoting Fagerberg):

An important distinction is normally made between invention and innovation.
Invention is the first occurrence of an idea for a new product or process,
while innovation is the first attempt to carry it out into practice.

Patents and copyrights and the like were and are designed to protect
inventors. Not innovators.

But it doesn't exist, “Intellectual Property” is just a fanciful term with no basis in law, it was dreamed up by lawyers to try to make patents, trademarks and copyrights seem the same as real property. The law however treats all three differently and their protection is much weaker than that of property, which is actually protected by the Constitution.

The purpose of patents is as Chris originally stated, and as your own quote from Wikipedia confirms; to provide incentive for innovation.

You are completely apart from reality.

Poor NTP didn't get no compensation over their poo they placed there.

Yes obviousness is the issue but there is no capability to assess this. There should be but there isn't.

How anyone can say that's not a drag on innovation is quite beyond me.

Software patents didn't exist when Microsoft was founded, or, better still, when IBM started making computers. Those two companies seemed to do all right for years.

And finally, it is not true that patents exist to benefit inventors. Read the Constitution; its wording is very clear here, even if the grammar is a little archaic. Patents exist to promote innovation. Providing a monopoly to inventors is the *means* by which innovation is promoted, not the end goal, and it is an optional means which Congress may enact, or not, as the situation warrants. If you don't agree with that, take it up with Thomas Jefferson, but that's the current law of the land.

From that wikipedia entry on eugenics that i linked to earlier:

The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in
1883,[10] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin. At
its peak of popularity eugenics was supported by prominent people, including
Margaret Sanger,[11][12] Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Prescott
Bush, Theodore Roosevelt, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard
Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Winston Churchill, Linus Pauling[13] and Sidney
Webb.[14][15][16] Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was however
Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf, and
emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of “defectives” that had
been pioneered in the United States.[17]

“This kind of legal framework is a massive, historic, break with the past history of the world. Previously only nobility, or feudal landed gentry could own property of any kind (eg, “the divine rights of kings.”)”

was to a new-found societal progress. I was simply reflecting on that, and also trying to underline the new restraints. Although I would consider myself or my ideals rather removed from what I understand to be those of the so called “progressives”, I can't help but notice your use of the word is distinctly pejorative. Or perhaps it's juxtaposition with the word “deplorable” that makes it so.

Nonetheless, societal progress can be attained without subjugating people to doctrines of the select few. Likewise, societal progress is not a phrase that must immediately evoke conflicting ideologies. Evidently, supporters of the patent system see its outcome as leading to societal progress, some unabashedly so.

As for eugenics, I agree, the notion is deplorable.

As I said, repeatedly, I am in favor of reforming the system.

But I am opposed to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and, in a
larger context, to overheated rhetoric substituting for thoughtful
discourse.

As an aside, I am uncomfortable with the idea of “societal progress” and
even more so the notion of trying to stop or encourage its being
“hinder[ed].” such was the primary motivating factor behind the deplorable
“eugenics” movement (promoted by many of the “progressive” leading lights at
the time) and we all know how that ended:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics