Lots of people who are complaining about software patent law are not screaming for their total abolishments. I might, but only because I've long held the opinion that reform was in order, but every idea I've read or come up with myself has been shot full of holes in short order. I've concluded that there's no way to get it right, so abolishment is simpler all around, and a much clearer goal than nebulous, ill defined, "reform".
For example, a 2 year expiration term doesn't really help all that much. The few patents that most would agree are novel and thus, if anything is, worthy of legal protection, do not generally become market feasible for a year or two. So... by the time the product has passed the "early adopter" phase and is starting to hit the mainstream, which, by the way, is when you can _start_ earning money in earnest, the patent law protection runs out. Note also that by squeezing the patent term, that $60,000 cost associated with getting one the right way is starting to be an awfully large number, if you've got only 2 years to turn it around. Meanwhile, the patents we all love to bash, such as amazon one-click, would be filed and become annoying right away. In many ways, the mere fact that a patent causes significant economic effect within 2 years is almost 100% equal to a patent NOT being particularly novel. In fact, it is trivial to demonstrate that a patent on something that's already existed is likely to pay off within those 2 years, because a smaller company does not want to gamble on going to court to get the patent revoked. If you had to give me a choice: Current law, or, reduce term to two years, I'd definitely go for the two years. But only because it gets us closer to total abolishment. Note that the above analysis, if you agree with it, suggests that there exists no magic "patents last THIS long" number that works. At best there's a local maximum (which I'm fairly sure would still mean the law does more harm than good), but, because the technology world moves very quickly, this would definitely be a moving target. Even we hypothesize that this local maximum does more good than harm, how would you propose the law is set up so that it tracks this local maximum appropriately? Having to do a million man march in washington every 15 years to fix the law because it is incapable of adjusting itself does not sound like a solid plan. On Sep 7, 9:04 am, Fabrizio Giudici <fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 9/5/10 20:38 , Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > > > Fabrizio, asking for reform might be a good idea, but reform to > > _WHAT_? I haven't seen any proposal that makes a decent case that > > implementing it would lead to a patent law system we can all be > > reasonably happy with (i.e. happier than foregoing software > > patents altogether). > > I suppose that's because all people reckoning that the system is > flawed are screaming about quitting patents, rather than reforming > them :-) > > My simplest proposal? A very short expiration term. I think that a > reasonable number should come out from a deeper analysis that I'm not > able to do, but for the sake of discussion I'd say two years. A > software patents would be enforced for two years, giving plenty of > chances for the patent holder to have a ROI, but opening to the > competition pretty soon. > > - -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici -www.tidalwave.it/people > fabrizio.giud...@tidalwave.it > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla -http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAkyF4+YACgkQeDweFqgUGxfgbwCdEv7GZPjVJDSSzom6PCNnWn1p > cogAnR2W1hA/3QvPoFBj2rsKAMOkjph1 > =i/Ka > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
