At the risk of getting flamed, I would like to respectfully disagree with the apparent majority opinion on this list that all software patents are bad, that the fact that software can be patented is a bad thing. I would like to argue that the PROCESS and the details, not the entire concept, are flawed.
Why does IP protection (patent, copyright, TM, and trade secrets) exist? It is so that people can be rewarded for their creativity. You can write a song, for example, and the economic benefits from that song go to you, the creator, not to someone who rips you off. Why should someone who invents a machine made out of brass gears have access to patent protection, but not someone who invents a "machine" made out of computer instructions (the latter group being much more likely to include one of the members of this list)? Let me be up-front about my own situation. I have been on both sides of this issue. I was an "innocent victim" of the Univac LZW compression patent (just like the poor programmer in this video) and I have an outstanding application for a patent in the area of software piracy prevention. Speaking of the video, some of its premises are flawed. Yes, copyright protection is in theory free, but in the US, in order to enforce copyright, you need to register your copyright. The fee is not high, but it's not free. More importantly, copyright and patent protection are quite different. Yes, copyright protects you against someone ripping off your source code (assuming they have access to it) or screen designs. But for example, in the case of my piracy prevention "machine," the key ingredient, what I have created, is not the source code - the only source code is a simple demo program written in VB - but rather "how the machine works" - and that is not protectable by copyright. The four pillars of IP protection (copyright, TM, patent, and trade secret) have evolved over the years and remained distinct because they provide complementary but distinct benefits. I would argue that software patents are not inherently bad, but rather that two key reforms are necessary. First, as many people have argued, the PTO needs more software intelligence. They need a better ability to discover the ridiculousness of patenting blinking cursors or mainframe-to-PC file transfers. They need better processes for discovering prior art. There are many proposals floating around for what those processes might, and an evaluation of the various ideas is beyond the scope of this e-mail. However there is an even simpler reform available, that is less discussed: shorten the term of software patents. As the video points out, twenty years is a long time in the software industry. Twenty years may have made sense when it took years for an assemblage of brass gears to make its way across the country, but makes no sense in an industry that re-invents itself every few years. Let software inventors reap the fruits of their creativity, but limit their monopoly power to do so to a lesser number of years. We could debate what that period should be, but I would argue that something in the range of three to five years made sense. Thank you for your consideration. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Knutson, Sam Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 7:07 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Patent #6886160 How Software Patents Actually Work :-) http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatAnim050418En ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
