@ Efflixi Aduro: This will
never be completely over. The patent lawyers and the big companies would gain so many benefits by Software Patents, they won\'t simply give up and go home. This isn\'t a mere political issue, it involves the public vs. some big companies. One of them will lose out, and the companies are doing everything they can to be the winners. They can hire dedicated lawyers and trained, professional lobbyists (like mercenaries, lobbying for what they are paid to lobby for). Therefore we must remain very very vigilent so that it wont sneak in eventually.
@ ramlambmoo / Gentar: I find the FFII analysis to be really good. Yes, it obviously paints the worst case scenario. However, the likelyhood of that, or at least something similar happening is really big. I think I even explained the reasons on another similar thread here before, bt here goes a summary:
1) Just look at what is happening in america. Not just the IT sector, but also the pharmacy sector. The patent system is almost consistently being abused to simply block competitors from any concievable route to achieve something similar, or even better. This includes patents on mere ideas, which are definitely not patent-worthy (a patent is for things that have been
done, not things that may some day be doable).
2) The IT industry has grown rapidly and hignly innovatively without patents, so obviously it doesn\'t need them. So even if Software patents wouldn\'t hurt (but I think they would), they would certainly not benefit it ina any way. Therefore, they would merely add yet another bureaucratic monster that just eats money, thereby effectively draining the industry, if only by a bit. Things would become more expensive.
3) Look at PS as an example for all FOSS (Free and OpenSource Software): how are they going to obtain a patent? Even if you are a hobby coder, could you afford to buy a patent? OR the license for one? Fact is that companies have and will continue to patent even APIS (Application Program Interfaces). These are required by everyone who wants to actually write a program for the system. Imagine now Microsoft having a valid patent on the Windows API, and them requiring fees, say, 1$ per copy of the resulting program.
Now look at PS: How many copies of the windows version have been downloaded? Assuming it would be \"only\" 100000, then the PS team would have to shell out 100000$ to Microsoft, only to be allowed to do the work of writing a program that runs on Windows! Microsoft did
nothing to help them, so they\'d charge for doing nothing!
A real invention makes it easier to complete a task, it does not charge for being allowed to do that task in the first place. But since this is almost the same in the IT sector, you\'d end up with exactly that.
4) Algorithms: these are the only thing that might be patent-worthy. However, this has been excluded from patentability for a very simple and very good reason: they belong to mathematics, and thus are directly coupled to enlightenment of the entire population, by enabling it to better understand the world they live in. Forbidding use of a mathematical method (which an algorithm is), will therefore greatly hinder scientific research, slowing it down to a crawl compared to what it is today, because almost every new insight is built upon previous insights made by others. Disallowing that, even for limited time, is just insane.
Also, algorithms are nothing but recipes. They are a set of instructions, listing steps to be taken in order to achieve some goal. This is essentially true for every computer program. Therefore, writing a computer program (i.e., software), is translating the idea in the head of the coder from the coder\'s language to the language of the computer. Just like translating a recipe from chinese to russian. This is hardly an invention. Therefore, the only \"patentable\" thing would be the pure idea, and this is quite obviously a really bad thing. How many ideas have any of you ever had? How many of them were actually new? What would you have done when you\'d not have been allowed to have / apply that idea due to having to pay patent fees if you would?
5) The patent system\'s
sole reason to exist:
Inventions in some sectors are expensive to make, because they require expensive and specialised equipment, so an inventor indeed takes a risk when attempting to invent something: it costs a lot of money to even get started, even if it fails. Now usually, when one succeeds, one would have to hide it because otherwise it\'d be copied and one would lose out.
Therefore, in order to create an incentive to inventors to take these risks, the patent system was introduced. The reaoning is that by granting a monopoly on the use of the invention, the inventor could
1) be enticed to invent things that actually have an application, i.e., pays off and
2) be sure that they will indeed get a reward from what they invented.
The patent system is essentially a tradeoff, made to get the best possible public good: innovation. The tradeoff is
locking out everyone except the inventor from use of the invention for a long time vs.
the invention likely not being made at all due to the high risks without reward. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that the public gains more by being locked out for a few years than being locked out forever.
A patent therefore exists
not to reward the inventor, it exists to further the public good.
However, this is
not the case in IT: the invention requires almost no investment at all (even for a commercial development package and a SOTA (State Of The Art) computer, $3000 will easily sffice). Therefore, there is zero risk that an inventor has to take. This means that all inventions possible will be attempted, so the public will gain the full innovation without the need for lock-out. Therefore, the lock-out effectively
harms the public, because it locks out others while there is no benefit in return. This way, patents, even without the abuse that is common today, would stifle innovation in the IT industry, even more than they do in other industries.
6) Based on the way patents have already been used to try to get rid of competitors,
Companies do not want to innovate. Innovations are risky: people may dislike the innovation and move to alternative vendors. If they could, companies would maintain the status quo, never innovate, thereby maximising profit.
Who innovates are small and medium enterprises and individuals, i.e. those who seek to enter the market or just like to provide others with their new idea.
And due to that, companies have to keep innovating, because otherwise these individuals would take over their market share.
Now, using patents, what\'ll happen?
The individual may be rich and be able to patent not only one, but, say, 10 ideas they have (provided they do have that many.).
sadly, in order to actually have a product to incorporate these ideas into, they will need to use about 50 other ideas that have been patented by others. These others will obviously want fees, so we see that even free / shareware will cease to exist, save for the most basic utilities.
But it\'ll be worse: say it\'s a commercial product that will be selling for $200. A word processor. Now it is obvious that big companies will hold the majority of required patents. So the developer will have to pay fees. Now given a mere 1$ per copy sold will increase the products cost by 50$, which can very easily be the difference between a customer buying it or not. Therefore, the new product will be inherently less marketable than the others, increasing the hurdle for newcomers.
But what if, say Microsoft, doesn\'t
want the product appearing at all, because it would obviously compete with their own product? They would simply refuse to grant the license, or charge an unreasonable fee for it, knowing that this will have the same effect. So even if they could take out licenses for most, the product won\'t ever be able to be marketed, because if they market it, they will be sued over patent infringement.
Therefore, innovation has been effectively been stifled. And this doesn\'t even take into account the impossibility to actually know which patents you infringe on, as effectively searching the databases is impossible. So it\'s likely that you\'ll unknowingly infringe on a whole lot of patents that then act as landmines, able to blow up your product any day.
Please don\'t quote the Acacia case here. Acacia is not a software company. They didn\'t even invent anything. Instead, they are a company of lawyers that has specialised on suing others over patents that Acacia has aquired. IOW, they have never furthered innovation, they simply exploit the legal system. The original inventors see nothing of the millions Acacia extracted. Also, this is an exception. Acacia has deep pockets, real inventors don\'t (if they did, they wouldn\'t need the patent system\'s incentive even in other industries!).
This is why Software Patents are so bad: the best case would be them not hurting (and that would involve an unreasonable amount of good will on all sides, something not only Microsoft isn\'t known for), but the worst case would be complete standstill. The most likely case is a medium between nothing changing (save more bureaucracy and slightly higher cost) and standstill. In no case there can be any benefit.
Edit: Oh, and as I mentioned on the other thread: Me or the FFII are not alone with this analysis: Bill Gates (Yes, the Microsofty) has come to
thevery same comclusion in 1991, when he said:
Originally stated by Bill Gates
If people understood how patents would be granted when most of todays ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a standstill today.
