"How to Save the Republican Party"

[gaelic cowboy]

Copyright and patents are meant to promote arts and science, not stifle it. Art and invention belong to the public domain, the patent/copyright term is merely a government-granted monopoly to the creator to reward the effort. It is not a license to rent-seek to the end of time.

Software patents need to be the first on the block. Software is already covered by copyright, and you aren't supposed to be able to patent math, which is all that software is.

The Democrats are owned by Hollywood when it comes to IP-related issues, this is as good a place as any for the GOP to lead the charge.

Actually patents have never really being good promoters of art and science, they are along with copyright about making sure someone get paid for there efforts.


If no one can protect the software they produce then it will be ripped off, essentially no one will pay for any of it. Now i'm guessing here that this probably wouldn't hurt the development of software, but software employment becomes much reduced.

Software companies would essentially have to compete in service provision after you bought the product, in fact they would probably have to give it away for free in order to extract rent from you instead.

no one will be willing to scrap them so at best patents will be be more easily challenged, and also the narrow definition of copying and theft of software will need to be looked at.

[drone]

If no one can protect the software they produce then it will be ripped off, essentially no one will pay for any of it. Now i'm guessing here that this probably wouldn't hurt the development of software, but software employment becomes much reduced.

Software companies would essentially have to compete in service provision after you bought the product, in fact they would probably have to give it away for free in order to extract rent from you instead.

no one will be willing to scrap them so at best patents will be be more easily challenged, and also the narrow definition of copying and theft of software will need to be looked at.

Source code is protected by copyright, binaries are generally what gets delivered to the customer.

[gaelic cowboy]

Source code is protected by copyright, binaries are generally what gets delivered to the customer.

but you wouldn't be able to rely on copyright to protect your source code though Drone cos in this non-patent scenario it's just math and that's in the public domain.

[Lemur]

gaelic cowboy, do you believe that naturally occurring genomes should have patent protection? Algorithms? Mathematical equations?

Why do you believe copyright is insufficient?

[gaelic cowboy]

gaelic cowboy, do you believe that naturally occurring genomes should have patent protection? Algorithms? Mathematical equations?

algorithims no but if there used in software that I wrote developed and therefore created a function that was never there to start with then yes.

genomes obviously not but if i figure a way to use genomes for something then yes

Why do you believe copyright is insufficient?

Drone reckons the software is just maths therefore I can claim the maths would lead me to the same place, essentially it would be impossible to prove you hadnt copied it.

After all code is really binary numbers which is public domain

[drone]

but you wouldn't be able to rely on copyright to protect your source code though Drone cos in this non-patent scenario it's just math and that's in the public domain.

Source code is like a book. You can tell a basic story many ways, but the character names and places are unique. Copyrighted source code means no one can take my files, compile them, and sell the executable. But they can write their own code that does the same thing.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Software patents were invented to make the likes of IBM a lot of money. Rent-seeking is all they are good for (licensing), hence the niche occupied by the patent troll. Particularly since the lifetime or validity of a patent bear no relationship to actual product or maturity in the market.

That's part one of the problem. Part two is the fact that most of these software inventions have prior art writ large upon them, plain to see for anyone in the trade*. Unfortunately patent offices don't really do this whole "checking the application" thing. So there's an inordinate amount of dross, obvious, or prior art patented, whatever the intentions of the law supposedly were.

Part three is that when it comes to genuine inventions in the art of software, patents don't fit at all. Patents are supposed to protect specific inventions brought to market, not vague descriptions or generic concepts. However, most of the insights in software fall into the "generically reusable concept" category (either as part of computer science or as part of engineering "best-practices"), not in a specific design. Specific designs tend to wind up being algorithms which are not supposed to be patentable in the first place.

Part four is that everyone knows it so it's a matter of war-gaming the system so you can be bigger and badder than your nearest competitors and therefore frighten them off. MAD is not a very healthy paradigm. It's a culture in which people play games like "who can get the whackiest patent past the USPTO?".
[*] And that goes for a lot of patents where "hardware + software" is involved as well. Consider the 2000's era patents on icons on a cell phone, which are distinctly wrong when you recall that your 90's era brick with antenna had those as well, nevermind the questionable novelty of pictograms on a screen at the time. (Pictograms on a screen being something out of the lab from the 50's/60's.)

http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis...ent_troll.html

[gaelic cowboy]

@ Tellos Athenaios pretty much everything you wrote can be solved without removing patents from any industry.




I can understand the arguements against patents, however seeing as a lot of the economy is tied up in them we better be certain it's a good idea.

[Tellos Athenaios]

@ Tellos Athenaios pretty much everything you wrote can be solved without removing patents from any industry.

Solved, how? Will the USPTO, or for that matter any patent office, suddenly do their job properly when it comes to software patents? Will patent lifetime be reduced to something suitable when compared to how many iterations of the invention will or could occur in that time? Will patent applications get processed swiftly so they may be granted or rejected before the subject is outdated or common knowledge?

Anyway there's of course a small problem with "pure software patents" in that pure software is merely algorithms and therefore math, as illustrated: http://paulspontifications.blogspot....hematical.html

[gaelic cowboy]

Solved, how? Will the USPTO, or for that matter any patent office, suddenly do their job properly when it comes to software patents? Will patent lifetime be reduced to something suitable when compared to how many iterations of the invention will or could occur in that time? Will patent applications get processed swiftly so they may be granted or rejected before the subject is outdated or common knowledge?

Anyway there's of course a small problem with "pure software patents" in that pure software is merely algorithms and therefore math, as illustrated: http://paulspontifications.blogspot....hematical.html

So we scrap em because they cannot do there job in the patent office.

if certain patents like this can be proved to be illegal than they should indeed be scrapped. I suspect a lawyer will demolish such an arguement easily though, surely they could claim everything is maths and therefore all patents must go as maths is universal.

[ICantSpellDawg]

IP reform is def somewhere I would like to see the GOP focus. I would like to see them focus on a number of personal liberty issues in a new way.

Busting up monopolies and trusts is not anathema to free-market economics. A system that is capable of disrupting trade is a corruption, like a blood clot. Added to this, the system would be outside of the power of citizens. I'm all for laws that lower taxes, reduce loopholes and eliminate any government incentives for monopolization of industry.

[HopAlongBunny]

The problem with that is the "market" is itself an incentive to seek, obtain and defend monopoly power. Without government regulation and intervention, the "market" actually strives to stifle competition.