Subj : Re: Software Patents
To   : comp.programming
From : Dave
Date : Fri Jul 08 2005 06:17 pm



Peter Ammon wrote:
> CBFalconer wrote:
> 
>> There is hope yet.  Somebody did the right thing.  See:
>>
>>   <http://swpat.ffii.org/log/05/ep0706/>
>>
> 
> Can someone please explain to me why people get so riled up about 
> software patents?  From my perspective, patents are an incentive to 
> research and invest in novel approaches to problems.  Why spend any 
> effort researching the best approach if competitors can copy it 
> immediately?

That's a fair question.  Let me answer it with another question.  What 
if Tolkien were able to patent stories about relatively weak people 
overcoming massive odds to score a victory over evil, so that anyone who 
wanted to do something similar would have to pay him?  He wouldn't just 
be protected by copyright (which would reasonably stop me writing, say, 
a novel called "Lord of the Cubes", where some shorty called "Fordo" and 
his wizard friend "Nagdalf" twatted some nasty dude called "SoreOne" 
with the help of a smelly thing called "Loggum" that eventually fell 
into the "Crack of Quake" carrying the "One Cube To Define Them All"), 
but would also lock out anyone else from writing that generic brand of 
novel.

No end of US patents demonstrate this behaviour.  It seems the USPTO 
pretty much rubber-stamps anything that's "obvious process" plus "with a 
computer", take their $10k and go onto the next one.

Take Amazon's 1-click thing for instance.  They have a patent on being 
able to buy something by pressing your mouse button once???  WTF is that 
all about, and how exactly is it beneficial to everyone else?

.