I was pretty disappointed by Joe's line of arguing in the whole patent discussion. It's become painfully obvious over several episodes that when a discussion involves Apple, his judgment is pretty severely hampered by his feelings towards that company. Saying that Apple has a right to enforce patents is one thing, but implying that criticizing Steve Job's patent trolling is "communist", and that people who don't agree with him on the patent system are naive about business and don't "support capitalism" is just ridiculous.
The irony of it all is that it's Joe who shows himself to be pretty naive about the whole patent thing. All this talk of the lone inventor who has "double-mortgaged his house" or the company that has invested millions of dollars to get a patent makes me wonder if he's been paying attention at all to the reality and debate regarding patents as it's been evolving in the past 10+ years. One need only consider the case of Marshall, Texas (http://overlawyered.com/2005/01/marshall- texas-patent-central/) to realize that the patent system, where it concerns software or IT in general, is severely broken and hampers innovation. I don't think anyone would dispute the intention of patents: to protect inventors and offer them a chance to profit from their own, original ideas. However, two important criteria for granting a patent are that it's new (no prior art) and that it's non-obvious. And over the past couple of years it's been pretty clear that the USPTO has failed spectacularly in applying these criteria. Examples of ridiculous patents that were granted by the USPTO are, unfortunately, many. Some are even in the Apple vs. HTC case (the one for voltage regulation, for instance, granted in 2008(!): http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=tEaqAAAAEBAJ&dq=7,383,453). The situation now is that the patent goes to the first person/company that applies for it, regardless of whether or not they were actually responsible for the patented invention, and seemingly regardless of whether the patent actually makes any sense. To challenge that patent then takes a lot of lawyers and a lot of money. This "grant first, ask questions later" severely disadvantages smaller companies who don't have the budget for lengthy legal proceedings. Hearing Joe talk was like listening to someone who believes that the US patent system actually works as intended, which is very hard to maintain. Yes, the *idea* is good, but the execution is atrocious. The simple fact is that although companies still patent things they actually invent, more often they simply apply for as many patents as they can in the hopes that they will be granted. This has nothing to do with stimulating innovation (the original intention of the patent system), but with building a patent portfolio to use defensively ("don't sue use, 'cause we'll sue you back"). That's fine, as long as you don't actively sue other companies. Once you use ridiculously broad patents, with lots of prior art, to sue other companies (as Apple has done), then, in my opinion, you become a patent troll. You are then basically practicing a legal form of extortion. And yes, I realize it's all legal. But "legal" and "right" (in the moral sense) are completely different things. I would defer to the Dude in The Big Lebowski with his statement "you're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole". I would suggest that Joe read up on the patent debate before making any more comments (try this for starters http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7810.html). Also, it'd be good is he wasn't so obviously biased towards Apple. And I too would love to hear the posse interview a patent attorney. I think it definitely falls within the scope of the podcast, as many Java developers produce code that is eventually patented, either by themselves or their companies. Regards, Maarten -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
