Moron Software Patents
One of the problems with software patents is that nobody has any idea what is or is not novel. I can't find it now, but I made a post earlier about one of the many tech experts who talked about the "pinning" feature of Windows 7 like Steve Job's NeXT team didn't really invent it, and, honestly, it may be older than that since my history only goes so far back. When experts in the field can't readily identify whether something has been done before, how can patent examiners possibly get it right?
Another problem is that we have very little historical record of things like this. The amount of software in the world currently is more diverse than many can possibly claim to be experts in. The software that came before is even tougher. How many people are left that really remember how those old unix and big-iron GUIs worked? More importantly, where would one go if they wanted to find out? We have YouTube and such now to show summary videos, but those aren't exactly historically exhaustive about what has come before. They lack the sort of technical detail to establish prior art presuming there's even a record there.
Not that prior art is going to matter much if the current congress gets their way. If we move to the patent-first rather than invented-first, then a complete historical record will actually be counter-productive. The trolls could go through videos describing the work of those early luminaries and just start submitting patents for everything that they see. If they manage to nail down anything they move to Texas and start ripping people off.
I'm not looking forward to the consequences of this on the free software programming that I do.
Update:
Interesting article tracking the current state of the smartphone lawsuits
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101007/22591311328/meet-the-patent-thicket-who-s-suing-who-for-smartphone-patents.shtml
Update:
At PyCon 2011 I watched an interesting talk about a patent lawyer that programatically hunted through patent applications to build up information about a portfolio for a company. They're not required to give out that sort of information, even though it's all public, but he needed to do an analysis for patent liability. My thought is that it would be funny if he sold this sort of system to the patent office, and then sued the patent office for infringement because the standard software license and patent puts all of the responsibility on the user. It would be a much meaner version of the guy in Australia who patented the wheel.
http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how-to-kill-a-patent-with-python-4897800
Another problem is that we have very little historical record of things like this. The amount of software in the world currently is more diverse than many can possibly claim to be experts in. The software that came before is even tougher. How many people are left that really remember how those old unix and big-iron GUIs worked? More importantly, where would one go if they wanted to find out? We have YouTube and such now to show summary videos, but those aren't exactly historically exhaustive about what has come before. They lack the sort of technical detail to establish prior art presuming there's even a record there.
Not that prior art is going to matter much if the current congress gets their way. If we move to the patent-first rather than invented-first, then a complete historical record will actually be counter-productive. The trolls could go through videos describing the work of those early luminaries and just start submitting patents for everything that they see. If they manage to nail down anything they move to Texas and start ripping people off.
I'm not looking forward to the consequences of this on the free software programming that I do.
Update:
Interesting article tracking the current state of the smartphone lawsuits
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101007/22591311328/meet-the-patent-thicket-who-s-suing-who-for-smartphone-patents.shtml
Update:
At PyCon 2011 I watched an interesting talk about a patent lawyer that programatically hunted through patent applications to build up information about a portfolio for a company. They're not required to give out that sort of information, even though it's all public, but he needed to do an analysis for patent liability. My thought is that it would be funny if he sold this sort of system to the patent office, and then sued the patent office for infringement because the standard software license and patent puts all of the responsibility on the user. It would be a much meaner version of the guy in Australia who patented the wheel.
http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-how-to-kill-a-patent-with-python-4897800