Infographic: The Problem With Patents

The Frugal Dad blog posted this infographic on software patents it discusses some facts of the patent industry and how it’s changed as software, technology, and the internet have developed.

Judge rules on contested evidence in Oracle-Google case

CIO Magazine is reporting that in a preliminary ruling before the Java IP trial, significant evidence both sides attempted to introduce has been ruled eitherr admisable or inadmissible.

Oracle and Google have both won and lost in a number of their efforts to keep evidence out of the upcoming trial in Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the Android mobile OS. At issue is whether Google has infringed on Oracle's intellectual property rights by using Java without properly licensing it.

CIO Magazine

I can only assume the witnesses will be required to swear "I promise to tell the such parts of truth as judge permits and nothing like the truth."

Microsoft patent on PVR Functions in Game Console

It completely eludes me how this isn't prior art. Microsoft's Xbox is a PC and PCs have been able to record digital video in the background for a long long time. Myth TV comes to mind.

A digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component allows users to record media content on the gaming console. The DVR application also integrates itself with the console menu. Once integrated, users can record media content while playing games. Alternatively, users can record content when the gaming console is turned off.

Gizmodo UK

Canadian Patent Office Allows Amazon.com’s “one-click” Patent

The issuance of the “one-click” patent may be just what Amazon.com and the [Canadian] Patent office wanted. However, for members of the public who wanted the law related to business method and software patents clarified, it is a missed opportunity to have the Supreme Court weigh in on this critically important issue.

Barry Sookman

If you think software patents are bad enough.

Software patents are not the worst thing imaginable.

You've mentioned "one-click patent" - but it's not software patent, it's UI patent. UI patents are worse then software patents: where software patents are "useful in theory but not in practice" these (as well as business patents) are unconditionally evil.

They give no disclosure gain at all (because by necessity they are disclosed when they are actually used ..

[Read more at LWN.net]

FOSS developer's campaign against software patents moves ahead

Melbourne developer Ben Sturmfels is sure of one thing: his campaign to end them in their entirety will succeed in the long run.

He began with the collection of signatures last year to submit to federal parliament. In February, Sturmfels' petition was accepted by the government's Petitions Committee, in three batches. "Collecting 1000 signatures on paper is a hard task and a huge one in terms of the amount of paper needed," he said with a grin.

He argues that patents are not necessary to encourage innovation in their industry, that the term of a patent (20 years) is too long, and that the cost involved (in avoiding infringing patents, and defending against patent lawsuits) is not viable, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses.

Full Story at iTWire

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet: This particular junk patent covers clicking a phone number on a phone list and your smartphone automatically dialing that number!

British Telecom joins patent attack on Google Android

BT joins patent attack on Google Android - Telegraph:

"In a broad complaint, BT claims that Google Maps, Google Music, Google Search, Android Market, location-based advertising and the Google social network all infringe its intellectual property. [...] “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT's inventions without authorization,” the court papers say."

That patents comment, The Gameshelf

Andrew Plotkin's "The Gameshelf" blog has a posting about the difference between having an idea and having a fully expressed idea as well as a number of other musings.

"The basis of our patent system is ensuring that innovators get paid." I came back with "That's the goal, not the basis", which was probably overcondensed. I was trying to point out that goals are not results. If the existing system isn't doing its job, the system is broken. In theory, you can't patent a naked idea; you have to put it in some kind of physical form. In practice, the boundaries between "idea" and "invention" have gotten very fuzzy; the physical form of software (or process, or a procedure) is irrelevant. Okay, that makes my quote fuzzy as well. The question, as several tweeters have pointed out, is obviousness -- or, the difference between the easy part and the hard part.

Full posting

US heavies NZ on software patents

Paul Matthews wrote this opinion piece for The National Business Review:

A pending international trade treaty could override a recent New Zealand law change that excluded software from patent protection. All the political parties supported the controversial change.

But the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could see the US pro-patent view override our local law makers.

Full Article

Essay about Software Patents

Long essay by Daniel Tunkelang

A Practical Rant about Software Patents: "As things stand today, software patents act as an innovation tax rather than as a catalyst for innovation. It may be possible to resolve the problems of software patents through aggressive reform, but it would be better to abolish software patents than to maintain the status quo." Read More...

He's very clear that he's opposed to software patents in their current form, and presents an overview on what is going on with software patenting today from his basic view point on how software patents are damaging innovation in software development.

The Threat Of Parallel Filing

Thoughtful article from Simon Phipps of Computerworld on how corporations hiring programmers get them to watch their innovation for ideas that could potentially be patented. "In the corporations where I have worked, programmers have been incented along with other engineers to constantly watch their work for ideas that could be encapsulated in a patent. This 'parallel filing' - developers doing work and filing patents on their innovations at the same time - results in the creation of a ring-fence around each activity in which the engineers participate." Full Article

Software Patent “Rant” Misses The Point

"Another day, another uniformed rant about the evils of “software patents.” The author quickly demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of NPE patent litigation[...] Examining this sentence by sentence, it’s easy to demonstrate what’s wrong here"

Patrick Anderson, the author of this blog takes a paragraph by a software patent opponent and deconstructs it sentence by sentence rebutting each point as he goes.

Full Article

Obama plans to reduce US patent issue delays

Silicon Valley Sleuth Reports that Obama plans a fundamental rethinking of software patents and a substantial speeding up of the US patent issuing process which currently takes a minimum of three years.

They say "The US government has announced plans to cut the amount of time it takes to get patents cleared by the US Patent and Trademark Office.[...] The new plan is to set up a fast-track system that will aim to get important patents issued within 12 months. A review process will also be set up to examine problems with existing patents without companies needing to resort to legal action." Full Article

US Justice Department investigates Web video group

Stephen Shankland at CNET News has reported that the US DOJ is investigating whether the actions of patent licensing group MPEG LA are stifling the Google VP8 video encoding technology. The problem seems to be that MPEG LA is actively seeking businesses with patents related to V8 to see if it can assemble a patent pool like the H264 pool. The complaint is that by publicly doing this, they are scaring businesses away from adopting V8 for fear that they may be faced with excessive royalty charges in the future and using this fear to unfairly force people to licence H.264.

There's a lot of background on the MPEG patents history and some interesting quotes from people who have previously attempted to break the H.264 licensing model

On2 (2002):

"'MPEG-4 is trying to monopolize the substantially software-based interactive video compression industry, plain and simple,' ... 'It is a move by a few very large companies to dominate a market and fix prices. Recent pricing policies by MPEG LA for MPEG-4, and the customer reaction to them are ample evidence of this.'"

Nero (2010):

"'Absolute power has corrupted MPEG LA absolutely,' said Nero, which makes CD- and DVD-burning software, in its complaint. 'Once MPEG LA obtained monopoly power in the relevant technology markets, it used that power to willfully maintain or extend its monopolies for years beyond their natural expiration...and administer its licenses in an unfair, unreasonable, and discriminatory manner that stifles competition and innovation, and harms consumers.'"

Article...

Christchurch Earthquake Community Response

Completely off-topic for this blog, but I'm a New Zealander and am trying to publicise this as widely as I can. A dedicated volunteer team of Internet people, programmers, web masters, and other computer savvy helpers have built the Christchurch Earthquake Community Response site to coordinate help efforts. If you need help or can offer help, please go there.

Glyn Moody Submission to UK Independent Review

In his Open Enterprise blog Glyn Moody has provided a late draft of his submission to the UK Independent Review of "IP" and Growth. Hecovers both software patents and digital copyright in his submission. The following is purely related to his points on Software patents. His submission includes:

"There are two central problems with software patents. First, software is essentially a series of algorithms - sets of computer operations; algorithms are purely mathematical techniques; which means that software patents are patents on mathematics - that is, pure knowledge. Attempts to frame software patents are being “applications” of this knowledge “in the real world” have failed dismally to draw any convincing dividing line between knowledge and its application, or between the “real world” and the digital one that exists inside computers. "The other problem is that software patents are often granted on key ideas that cannot be coded around. This creates a kind of choke hold on knowledge. The situation has got so bad that programmers no longer investigate whether their code infringes on software patents, since it is almost inevitable that it does - so many broad and trivial patents have now been granted around the world. Moreover, in the US penalties for infringement are trebled if there is “knowing” infringement, which leads to the ridiculous situation that it is better not to try to find out whether you are infringing."

His submission continues in a similar vein and concludes "to promote the UK computer industry, and encourage innovation here, software patents of all kinds should be eliminated"

Quora: Costs and benefits of patents for start-ups

Advice and experience from someone who's been there Ken Tola's answer to In what scenarios will software patents filed during the early stages of a startup become a defensive barrier?:

"patents and NDA's are only as good as your lawyers and your legal budgets. Having been involved in patent litigation, I can tell you that they are easily some of the most complex cases around and the uncertainty of winning a case is extremely high. "To go further down the negative path, it takes 2-3 years to get a patent and about $50K - do you really have that kind of money?"

It looks like his experience hasn't been that great but he sees them as a necessary evil to get early seed money.

Qualified support to draft patent guideline by NZOSS

The New Zealand Open Source Society was given a briefing by the IPONZ office of the MED and their president, Don Christie, says:

"When MED walked us through it, we found we were largely in agreement, we went into the meeting thinking software that merely improves the operation of the computer itself could be patented under the guideline.

"On careful reading, the guideline makes it clear that efficiency gains are only a relevant test for inventions containing embedded software, not the operation of general-purpose computers. The guideline also distinguishes physical effects from logical effects — merely transforming or displaying information is not a physical effect.

"NZOSS believes there is room to improve the guideline ..."

More...

Original released under a CC BY creative commons licence.

Why Software Patents are worse than useless

Kiwi software developer Dave Lane on Why Software Patents are worse than useless:

"MS had tried to submit the same patent in New Zealand after the applications were denied by the US, Europe, South African, and Japanese patent offices for being obvious and subject to prior art. They thought they could count on the incompetence of the NZ patent assessors - and they would've been right had it not been for our challenge! It was a disgusting and highly unethical move by Microsoft. But if we had only caught one, how many other trivial software patents (or those subject to prior art) had already been passed?"

Quite a long personal essay on his experience with Software patents, his opinions and his involvement in opposing them. This is pertinent as New Zealand is being lobbied by the USA which want it to adopt their Software Patenting system in place of the recent law that makes software essentially unpatentable.