Tim, it is my understanding that recent ('90s?) patent court rulings have held out that combination is basically always non-obvious- which is why we have so many silly patents for e-commerce. I'm sure one of your co-authors can give you a lesson on this :)
Michael Masnick
· 4 years ago
Welcome on board Tim. Some of us have been screaming about this for years and years... Good to have more voices recognize how awful this situation is.
Of course, RIM is not completely innocent either. They've been one of the bigger enforcers of patents on their side, as well -- so there's a bit of "live by the sword, die by the sword" in all of this.
Still, the NTP situation is particularly ridiculous, and the stories that make it to the press have been problematic in that very few reporters have taken the time to actually understand the issues involved (as if that's a surprise).
As one of our analysts, Derek Kerton, is fond of saying: If NTP could patent wireless email, how come no one has patented combining wireless address books or wireless cameras. You shouldn't get a patent for mixing two things like this together, but NTP did... and, for some reason, it's taking the USPTO forever to figure out that it was a mistake. Even worse, they're not doing it based on the obviousness test, but on "prior art". It's unfortunate that the USPTO seems to have decided that prior art is the test for obviousness.
Doug Lay
· 4 years ago
I'm inclined to agree with you about the NTP situation, but I think your argument here about invention in software may be overbroad. What about the RSA public-key encryption algorithm? Obvious? I think not. For a more marginal case, how about PageRank?
Linus Torvalds expressed an interesting idea a few years back - allow patents on software but with a much shorter term, say 3 to 5 years. I find this a pretty interesting idea, and I could support it IF it were combined with much more rigorous testing for non-obviousness and prior art on the part of the PTO. Unfortunately, I doubt the PTO is even remotely capable of getting its act together, and certainly doing away with software patents altogether would be preferable to the current situation.
Steve
· 4 years ago
I personally feel that copyrights/patents should be completely abolished. There was invention before patents, and music before copyright. It seems to me that the only time I hear anyone take the 'pro-IP' stance they always have some sort of vested interest in it.
I hold four patents and also review patents for our legal group from time to time. I was told that one of the requirements for a patent is to be innovative and non-obvious to someone practiced in the art. In my opinion, all four of my patents are obvious, by my engineer definition of obvious.
The patent lawyers have told me over and over again that my definition of obvious is not the legal definition of obvious. This is usually after they find out that I have not written up a disclosure on something I'm working on. I have never been able to get them to explain the legal definition of obvious in a way that ever made sense to me. So, I just write up my invention disclosures and submit them.
We don't patent everything we can. We only patent things that will protect the products that we manufacture. These are mostly hardware but some are software running in the hardware.
Dan Z.
· 3 years ago
Tim: Are you saying that no software engineer should be able to protect their intellectual property? I think you are really missing the boat. Just because an idea is obvious doesn't mean that the implementation of that idea is as trivial as you make it.
The challenge in software engineering is not just merging "parts" together to reduce complexity. Managing complexity is important. However, sometimes you have to create the parts as well.
Now, I do not as of yet have an opinion on if NTPs patents are legitimate or not. However, I really must reject the claims that you have made about software engineering.
All Comments
Of course, RIM is not completely innocent either. They've been one of the bigger enforcers of patents on their side, as well -- so there's a bit of "live by the sword, die by the sword" in all of this.
Still, the NTP situation is particularly ridiculous, and the stories that make it to the press have been problematic in that very few reporters have taken the time to actually understand the issues involved (as if that's a surprise).
As one of our analysts, Derek Kerton, is fond of saying: If NTP could patent wireless email, how come no one has patented combining wireless address books or wireless cameras. You shouldn't get a patent for mixing two things like this together, but NTP did... and, for some reason, it's taking the USPTO forever to figure out that it was a mistake. Even worse, they're not doing it based on the obviousness test, but on "prior art". It's unfortunate that the USPTO seems to have decided that prior art is the test for obviousness.
Linus Torvalds expressed an interesting idea a few years back - allow patents on software but with a much shorter term, say 3 to 5 years. I find this a pretty interesting idea, and I could support it IF it were combined with much more rigorous testing for non-obviousness and prior art on the part of the PTO. Unfortunately, I doubt the PTO is even remotely capable of getting its act together, and certainly doing away with software patents altogether would be preferable to the current situation.
I personally feel that copyrights/patents should be completely abolished. There was invention before patents, and music before copyright. It seems to me that the only time I hear anyone take the 'pro-IP' stance they always have some sort of vested interest in it.
I have a post on my blog that you may be interested in, it is about how every letter and number in the english language is trademarked by one or more companys, with links to USPTO searches to prove it.
I hold four patents and also review patents for our legal group from time to time. I was told that one of the requirements for a patent is to be innovative and non-obvious to someone practiced in the art. In my opinion, all four of my patents are obvious, by my engineer definition of obvious.
The patent lawyers have told me over and over again that my definition of obvious is not the legal definition of obvious. This is usually after they find out that I have not written up a disclosure on something I'm working on. I have never been able to get them to explain the legal definition of obvious in a way that ever made sense to me. So, I just write up my invention disclosures and submit them.
We don't patent everything we can. We only patent things that will protect the products that we manufacture. These are mostly hardware but some are software running in the hardware.
The challenge in software engineering is not just merging "parts" together to reduce complexity. Managing complexity is important. However, sometimes you have to create the parts as well.
Now, I do not as of yet have an opinion on if NTPs patents are legitimate or not. However, I really must reject the claims that you have made about software engineering.