But the Facebook/ConnectU situation did happen in a world of patents, they were just insufficient to help ConnectU. I'll fully agree that giving a limited monopoly for a limited period of time does give an incentive to both innovate and then disclose your innovations instead of keeping them as trade, but can't we agree that the current system has flaws that can be fixed? The notion that we must either live in a world with the current patent system or a world with no legal protections for ideas is a false dilemma, there are plenty of other alternatives.
One that is bounced around a lot is to make it much more difficult for patents to be granted, by improving how the patent office tests for novelty. My first problem with that idea is that it is already too difficult for small or independent inventors (yes, I know "coding in your mother's basement" is a Hollywood stereotype, I was using it as a form of figure of speech), and such a change would only exacerbate the problem for them while making it slightly more difficult for large like IBM or Google (as a disclosure, I should probably mention that I work for IBM, and these are my and only my opinions, blah, blah, blah) and their armies of lawyers to get around. And the second is that in many cases, testing for novelty is very hard. There are some inventions that are clearly novel, some that clearly are not, but I have a feeling most are going to be in between. Another idea I'd like to put forward is to admit that the granting of a patent is no more than a rubber stamp and the actual test of novelty doesn't occur until either a legal challenge is made on the patent or until a lawsuit is filed against a violator of that patent, where more of the burden of proof gets put on the inventor. Then the actual granting of a patent can be streamlined so it is easier for independent inventors to go through the process (or even make it closer to copyright law where you are automatically granted copyrights when you produce something). Patent trolling would become less viable if it is harder to get a court to agree with your patent. Essentially we would just be moving some of the decision making from the executive branch to the judicial branch, which I contend would be more effective since then you have advocates for both sides debating the merits of the patent. On Mar 5, 1:04 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com> wrote: > 2011/3/5 Reinier Zwitserloot <reini...@gmail.com> > > > The US natural level of software innovation is X. Due to patents, it is > > modified to Y. Is Y larger? Smaller? About the same? > > > You claim it appears high, and then conclude this means Y can't be > > significantly smaller. This makes no logical sense. > > Not exactly. The fact that Y is currently high (higher than any other > country in the world) shows that the system is not as broken as people who > want to abolish all software patents claim. Therefore, the burden of proof > that X is higher is on them. > > By the way, the Zuckerberg story shows what would happen in a world without > software patents, since none were filed. If you believe the story as it's > being told today, Zuckerberg was able to "steal" (or reuse) the original > idea without any legal worries, thereby forcing the original authors to have > to sue him in order to claim what's theirs. This seems backward to me, but > that's basically what the absence of software patents will lead to. > > The Google / Oracle lawsuits prove that either non-novel patents hold up in> > court > > There hasn't been any appearance in court yet! That was my point, we just > don't know where this is headed, so we can't use this case as a sign that > software patents are broken or that they work. > > Let's discuss this once a verdict is rendered, or a settlement is reached. > This might be a few years in the future, but we will probably have learned a > lot in the meantime. > > -- > Cédric -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@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.
