7 ms·

Software Patent Abolition Petition

150 points by Krylez 15y ago

tzs 15y ago
That's not a very well done petition. Here are some of the problems. (1) The America Invents act was not toothless. It contains provisions that put major hurt on patent trolls. (2) It fails to actually state any realistic action items. (3) It shows a misunderstanding of the role of the President in the patent system. What they are trying to accomplish requires Congressional action, not Presidential action.
- Natsu 15y ago
  You're right and they should use that to improve the petition, but I still think it's important to show that lots of politically active folks care about this. Sure, Obama can't just end software patents on his own. But at least it puts the opposition on the map, politically. Still, that's all the more reason to want to make a good case.
  - tankenmate 15y ago
    Here is a petition that calls the WH out on the petitions just being PR stunts; somewhat tongue in cheek, but mostly serious. https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...
- marshray 15y ago
  I liked it better than the first one. (1) It's not just trolls that are dragging us all down with patents. (2) Eliminate patents, starting with the software ones. (3) The President doesn't vote on the federal budget either, but it's not correct to say he doesn't have a role in it. In this case the USPTO is under the Executive Branch, so actually, I would think the President would have a lot of authority in the matter.
  - dlikhten 15y ago
    (1) Trolls are definitely a problem, but so is apple, MS, and Oracle. Hell we saw what happens when Samsung got pissed off, they decided to start suing for patents the world needs to implement cell phones. Samsung may have failed, but MS may not. (2) Patents are good, as long as they are NON-OBVIOUS. In the realm of software, a lot of things are obvious. In fact most of what is patented is obvious. The problem is that its non-obvious until an engineer needs to solve it, then it will become obvious as it is on the path to the solution. Software patent problem: SOFTWARE IS ALGORITHMS; MATH! You cannot patent equations. We have lots of proof that software is just an equation, though more complex and in a different form. Hell implement it in Lisp and you have lambda calculus. That's the point. Software is mathematics. End of story. Cannot be patented. (3) President is not in full power, but not powerless either. He can put pressure via the citizens.
    - marshray 15y ago
      we saw what happens when Samsung got pissed off, they decided to start suing for patents the world needs to implement cell phones Wasn't it Apple that fired the first shot there?
- Krylez 15y ago
  (1) America Invents improves the patent office's efficiency at awarding patents and switches the U.S. from first-to-invent to first-to-file. IMO, both will be a boon to trolls. (2) The action item is the title of the petition. (3) Government branches don't operate in silos. When the President demands something from congress and pushes it hard enough, he usually gets something on his desk. It's a petition, not a bill. I want my President to act, not pretend that he can't do anything about it. He's the one who lit a fire under Congress and called out obstructing members by name to pass healthcare reform. I've relentlessly contacted all my representatives and senators, but congress does nothing without pressure.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
cel 15y ago
This bigger petition received an official response today: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-pate...
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  The OP petition is an answer to this official response.
sp332 15y ago
Petitions are not a good medium for this conversation. The response to the previous petition https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-pate... pointed to the place where the actual discussion is happening, http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/faq.jsp http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/faq.jsp and http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/comments.jsp http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/comments.jsp
- gbhn 15y ago
  Agreed. A petition was worthwhile to elevate the attention given to the matter. It could be the response was a brush-off, but it might also be an invitation to the party. It's pretty hard to overestimate the impact that executive branch policy has on the PTO. If there truly were a "quality-first" directive, with mandates to reject hard-to-understand and overbroad applications on teachability and novelty doctrines, that would have a huge impact on the patent landscape. But there's a ton of work to do in crafting a suggested directive that would accomplish that, and petitions aren't really the proper vehicle for such suggestions. It might be more productive to interpret the press release as an invitation to work on that document, and the pointer to the AIA page as a forwarding address to take the initiative to the next level. So: what ought be the content of "Executive Order N to the Patent and Trademark Office?"
huhtenberg 15y ago
I frankly do not understand such black and white take on software patents. I don't think that all of them are evil. If one invests his time and money in developing a software algorithm - something non-trivial, say, an IFS compressor for binary data - why should such invention not be entitled to the same level of exclusive use protection that a mechanical design receives?
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  The previous story on this provided the perfect response: "If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering would be incompatible with the patent system too." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882)
  - hugh3 15y ago
    But millions of people have workbenches and toolboxes in their garages, and are quite capable of building physical objects and devices.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      s/machine shops/nanoassemblers/ then, if you like; software still has a much smaller barrier to entry. And for the record, I don't necessarily believe in mechanical engineering patents either, but as a software professional I primarily care about abolishing software patents, because they hurt me personally.
    - marshray 15y ago
      But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy. It more or less amounts to "arts and crafts". This changed with computers. You could never start a car factory in a garage, but there was a golden age where you could start a high-tech electronics company like HP or Apple. Today you can start a web-based or software company on a laptop in a coffee shop or library. This is a big deal, let's not kill it. Software patents have to go away or we're going to be stuck in the industrial age, which would be bad because we've already sold off most of our factories.
ozataman 15y ago
How about we start spending more than 5 minutes writing these petitions? Several points are missing and what's there doesn't even convey the key points clearly.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Dude, this is the internet. We don't think things through here, and I think the President should be weeping for gratitude that the petitioner deigned to use more than 140 characters to unburden himself. Weeping.
law 15y ago
We don't have "software patents," since software (as code) isn't patentable subject matter. Instead, we have "business method patents," which cover the systems and methods used by the software in conjunction with an operating environment that are putatively novel, non-obvious, unique, and enabled. I'd imagine most people fall into two camps: (1) business methods shouldn't be patentable subject matter solely because they satisfy the machine-or-transformation test (as articulated in a trilogy of cases from the 1970s and most recent in Bilski); and (2) even if they should be, many of the business methods today fail on non-obviousness grounds. Proscribing the issuance of 'software patents' isn't the problem. The problem is that in this digital age, we're relying on the machine-or-transformation test for business practices that exist in the virtual world. Because of the prevalence and impact of the internet in the global marketplace, there's now a fundamental difference between a ROM chip in a device containing instructions interpreted by a microprocessor and a software program compiled into machine readable code stored in RAM and processed by your computer's CPU.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're a joke and a waste of time.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your email address.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    Can they use them for anything? Wouldn't it be illegal to use them for any political purpose at all?
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    Did you notice there's a Facebook Like button? So Facebook knows when you go to a government site. I imagine Facebook also knows which petitions you sign, or at least which ones you click on. I say imagine, because although I'm signed in, it still asks me to sign in before I can sign the petition, and signing in while I'm signed in leads to a 404.
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    I never understand the gambit about trying to hide your email address and I understand it even less here. Who cares if the White House has my email address?
monochromatic 15y ago
Has any online petition every accomplished anything? Serious question.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  I can think of one, non-governmental one: http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Interesting. Can you point to any official response from Netflix referencing that petition, or did they just take the desired action without referencing the petition?
    - MartinCron 15y ago
      There was more outcry than just the petition. Lots of people emailed in, tweeted, whatever. The official "OK, we're not killing profiles" message does not address the petition directly: http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-away.html http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-a...
anigbrowl 15y ago
The credibility of any given proposal is inversely proportional to the number of pejoratives used to articulate it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

150 points by Krylez 15y ago

tzs 15y ago

That's not a very well done petition. Here are some of the problems. (1) The America Invents act was not toothless. It contains provisions that put major hurt on patent trolls. (2) It fails to actually state any realistic action items. (3) It shows a misunderstanding of the role of the President in the patent system. What they are trying to accomplish requires Congressional action, not Presidential action.

Natsu 15y ago
You're right and they should use that to improve the petition, but I still think it's important to show that lots of politically active folks care about this. Sure, Obama can't just end software patents on his own. But at least it puts the opposition on the map, politically. Still, that's all the more reason to want to make a good case.
- tankenmate 15y ago
  Here is a petition that calls the WH out on the petitions just being PR stunts; somewhat tongue in cheek, but mostly serious. https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/actually-ta...
marshray 15y ago
I liked it better than the first one. (1) It's not just trolls that are dragging us all down with patents. (2) Eliminate patents, starting with the software ones. (3) The President doesn't vote on the federal budget either, but it's not correct to say he doesn't have a role in it. In this case the USPTO is under the Executive Branch, so actually, I would think the President would have a lot of authority in the matter.
- dlikhten 15y ago
  (1) Trolls are definitely a problem, but so is apple, MS, and Oracle. Hell we saw what happens when Samsung got pissed off, they decided to start suing for patents the world needs to implement cell phones. Samsung may have failed, but MS may not. (2) Patents are good, as long as they are NON-OBVIOUS. In the realm of software, a lot of things are obvious. In fact most of what is patented is obvious. The problem is that its non-obvious until an engineer needs to solve it, then it will become obvious as it is on the path to the solution. Software patent problem: SOFTWARE IS ALGORITHMS; MATH! You cannot patent equations. We have lots of proof that software is just an equation, though more complex and in a different form. Hell implement it in Lisp and you have lambda calculus. That's the point. Software is mathematics. End of story. Cannot be patented. (3) President is not in full power, but not powerless either. He can put pressure via the citizens.
  - marshray 15y ago
    we saw what happens when Samsung got pissed off, they decided to start suing for patents the world needs to implement cell phones Wasn't it Apple that fired the first shot there?
Krylez 15y ago
(1) America Invents improves the patent office's efficiency at awarding patents and switches the U.S. from first-to-invent to first-to-file. IMO, both will be a boon to trolls. (2) The action item is the title of the petition. (3) Government branches don't operate in silos. When the President demands something from congress and pushes it hard enough, he usually gets something on his desk. It's a petition, not a bill. I want my President to act, not pretend that he can't do anything about it. He's the one who lit a fire under Congress and called out obstructing members by name to pass healthcare reform. I've relentlessly contacted all my representatives and senators, but congress does nothing without pressure.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

cel 15y ago

This bigger petition received an official response today: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-pate...

patrickaljord 15y ago
The OP petition is an answer to this official response.

sp332 15y ago

Petitions are not a good medium for this conversation. The response to the previous petition https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-patent-office-cease-issuing-software-patents/vvNslSTq https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/direct-pate... pointed to the place where the actual discussion is happening, http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/faq.jsp http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/faq.jsp and http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/comments.jsp http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/comments.jsp

gbhn 15y ago
Agreed. A petition was worthwhile to elevate the attention given to the matter. It could be the response was a brush-off, but it might also be an invitation to the party. It's pretty hard to overestimate the impact that executive branch policy has on the PTO. If there truly were a "quality-first" directive, with mandates to reject hard-to-understand and overbroad applications on teachability and novelty doctrines, that would have a huge impact on the patent landscape. But there's a ton of work to do in crafting a suggested directive that would accomplish that, and petitions aren't really the proper vehicle for such suggestions. It might be more productive to interpret the press release as an invitation to work on that document, and the pointer to the AIA page as a forwarding address to take the initiative to the next level. So: what ought be the content of "Executive Order N to the Patent and Trademark Office?"

huhtenberg 15y ago

I frankly do not understand such black and white take on software patents. I don't think that all of them are evil. If one invests his time and money in developing a software algorithm - something non-trivial, say, an IFS compressor for binary data - why should such invention not be entitled to the same level of exclusive use protection that a mechanical design receives?

JoshTriplett 15y ago
The previous story on this provided the perfect response: "If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering would be incompatible with the patent system too." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882)
- hugh3 15y ago
  But millions of people have workbenches and toolboxes in their garages, and are quite capable of building physical objects and devices.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    s/machine shops/nanoassemblers/ then, if you like; software still has a much smaller barrier to entry. And for the record, I don't necessarily believe in mechanical engineering patents either, but as a software professional I primarily care about abolishing software patents, because they hurt me personally.
  - marshray 15y ago
    But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy. It more or less amounts to "arts and crafts". This changed with computers. You could never start a car factory in a garage, but there was a golden age where you could start a high-tech electronics company like HP or Apple. Today you can start a web-based or software company on a laptop in a coffee shop or library. This is a big deal, let's not kill it. Software patents have to go away or we're going to be stuck in the industrial age, which would be bad because we've already sold off most of our factories.

ozataman 15y ago

How about we start spending more than 5 minutes writing these petitions? Several points are missing and what's there doesn't even convey the key points clearly.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Dude, this is the internet. We don't think things through here, and I think the President should be weeping for gratitude that the petitioner deigned to use more than 140 characters to unburden himself. Weeping.

law 15y ago

We don't have "software patents," since software (as code) isn't patentable subject matter. Instead, we have "business method patents," which cover the systems and methods used by the software in conjunction with an operating environment that are putatively novel, non-obvious, unique, and enabled. I'd imagine most people fall into two camps: (1) business methods shouldn't be patentable subject matter solely because they satisfy the machine-or-transformation test (as articulated in a trilogy of cases from the 1970s and most recent in Bilski); and (2) even if they should be, many of the business methods today fail on non-obviousness grounds. Proscribing the issuance of 'software patents' isn't the problem. The problem is that in this digital age, we're relying on the machine-or-transformation test for business practices that exist in the virtual world. Because of the prevalence and impact of the internet in the global marketplace, there's now a fundamental difference between a ROM chip in a device containing instructions interpreted by a microprocessor and a software program compiled into machine readable code stored in RAM and processed by your computer's CPU.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're a joke and a waste of time.

hugh3 15y ago
Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your email address.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  Can they use them for anything? Wouldn't it be illegal to use them for any political purpose at all?
- sixtofour 15y ago
  Did you notice there's a Facebook Like button? So Facebook knows when you go to a government site. I imagine Facebook also knows which petitions you sign, or at least which ones you click on. I say imagine, because although I'm signed in, it still asks me to sign in before I can sign the petition, and signing in while I'm signed in leads to a 404.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  I never understand the gambit about trying to hide your email address and I understand it even less here. Who cares if the White House has my email address?

monochromatic 15y ago

Has any online petition every accomplished anything? Serious question.

MartinCron 15y ago
I can think of one, non-governmental one: http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Interesting. Can you point to any official response from Netflix referencing that petition, or did they just take the desired action without referencing the petition?
  - MartinCron 15y ago
    There was more outcry than just the petition. Lots of people emailed in, tweeted, whatever. The official "OK, we're not killing profiles" message does not address the petition directly: http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-away.html http://blog.netflix.com/2008/06/profiles-feature-not-going-a...

anigbrowl 15y ago

The credibility of any given proposal is inversely proportional to the number of pejoratives used to articulate it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]