what is your opinion on the marriage of software and patenting

what is your opinion on the marriage of software and patenting


anyone, even people who don't know what i am going on about can post there opinions, but i do like to know if you have some inside info about it

i will not give additional information, please say if you "googled what i am on about" and then formed a reply

for anyone who really wants to know:

a "intellectual ventures" contacted my company, thinking it was a USA based small busness.

 

Patents are a weird one. If it was my company, I'd love patents, because they let us take credit and earn money from what we innovated. But if I wasn't in that position, I'd hate them.

I think the issue with patents is they've gone too far. The fact that companies can hold up to 100,000 patents is ridiculous.

If something is patented, companies should be allowed to produce it, but have to give a percentage of the profits from it to the people who created it, for the length of the patent, provided an agreement is reached.

 

in Belgium anything can only be patented once, and they deny your patent if its silly

then again foreign patents are seen as valid, and companies just get there patents somewhere else

 

patents in general are retarded, at least the Canada and America garbage. For instance, Amazon patented one click shopping, if you have an online store you have to have like a confirmation box or something else to make it 2+ clicks, or else they could sue you.

 

There's a difference between thinking of something first, and genuinely innovating something, and that's the problem.

 

http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.html#5

 

Software patents really needs to be time based, about 2 years sounds right ... (and yes who ever approved of the 1click buy patent should be set on fire. What is that even? A patent on a kind of agreement? Seriously if i wanna buy something from someone i don't want anyone tell me how I've to do it, beside me and the seller.)

It would be also nice if there were some kind of expiration dates on unused patents which cannot simply be renewed by paying the fee again. Because these kind of patents work in 99% of the cases against common good, mostly to keep the income as high as possible no matter how much better products/solutions/etc are already found. If you find something better but less profitable than an existing product you'll also find that the market leader will pay the most for your patent to keep it of the market. Ridiculous.

 

It's not about time based, it's just about simple judgement. 1 click buy is not innovation, it's "we thought of it first". Creating a brand new drug that could revolutionise things. That's innovation. Modifying an existing one to do something slightly different? That's just "we thought of it first". Or more importantly, thought to patent it first.

But the thing is, I doubt there's any way in which there could be fair judgement on where to draw the line.

 

there are about 3000 patents in the US atm that are about "backing up multiple computers trough the internet"

any backup system violates "someone's" patent

 

Patents suck. There was a patent filed in 1979 that covers position detection based on magnetic fields. It's the basis for the power glove tracking and VR gloves. I read it, and it didn't have enough detail to explain how it's actually accomplished. A patent is supposed to be so that you get exclusive rights to that technology, but in return, you have to tell everyone else how your technology works so that people can innovate from it.

It's obvious that the original intent of patents is no longer the point because patents are just written in legalese and don't actually tell you enough to innovate on what is covered. There are so many patents that are basically GPS location tracking but use different legal terms to try to sound innovative, and the Googling the owner of the patent just proves that they're some loser who has never actually applied the technology for any real use.

In terms of software patents, I suppose it's more along the lines of mp3s and the record industry. You can't apply how things used to be to how things are done now. Patents don't apply anymore just like how the old ways of the music business don't apply anymore.

Patents are big in the news right now because Google and Microsoft are trying to pressure each other by holding their patents over each other's head. Microsoft gets $7 from each cell phone manufacturer that makes an Android phone because Microsoft said Android infringes on their Windows Mobile patents. Google just bought a bunch of patents so that they can now go back to Microsoft and say, "Get rid of that $7 fee or we'll sue you for stuff in your Windows Mobile OS that is now infringing on our patents." What was the point of the patents in this case? They're just blackmail.

 

there are companies that do nothing else then have patents, and sue small companies who break there patented things

mostly they want a settlement just enough to not bankrupt the company, and if they don't settle they will get bankrupt from the lawsuit costs (because they will drag it on and on and on)
such a company has contacted me, but i basically gave them the finger, since if they want to sue me they need to spend a fuck-ton just because they are USA based and my company is Belgium based
but it would work for any USA company for them, they prob did bad research on me.

Mafia practises

 

The major problem with patents is what krenzo said. Back then it was a form of securing your intellectual property from being used by someone else; Now patents are being used to secure monopolies.

 

did anyone even read my link

 

I did, but I figured no-one else would, so there was no point discussing it.

 

What's your company, and what kind of patent were they threatening you with?

 

Considering that you can basically re-release anything made in any other part of the world under a "chinese" patent you could theoretically just release a chinese approved version of anything, Example "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGmqIkhjEPE" Final combat is a chinese port of TF2, it wasn't done by valve but was instead done by an entity independent of valve. So basically someone copied a game from one of the most popular game studios on the planet and got away with it because it was released in China.

 

Holy fucking shit. There is almost no difference at all. Thats incredible. Pity no-one in China has made something like Ha Flyfe 3

 

How do you know the developer's are completely independent from valve?

I have a hunch final combat is valve's project to localize tf2 in China.

 

The company in China that is releasing it is called "Xun Lei Thunder" they plan to release it for free but obviously with the micro-enterprise catch.

I also know this isn't valve's doing because the game mechanics have fundamentally changed, take a look at what they did with a few of the classes. If you go through the developer commentary for TF2 you will see that alot of the things you don't recognize or see as different; all of these "new" additions were explicitly not incorporated because Robin thought that they broke the game.

I.E. There are now hand grenades and a class that is built like it's for Cowa dooty which is game breaking on a multitude of levels etc etc.