DISQUS

Ted · 3 years ago

There is no baby. We need to pull the plug.

matt · 3 years ago

i have been a computer programmer for nearly 20 years. i've written more code than i care to even try to recollect. yet in all that time there is nothing that i've written that i would consider patentable. to me software patents are as ridiculous as saying a certain arrangement of lego blocks should be patentable.

the only people that profit from software patents are patent attorneys.

Brian Moore · 3 years ago

Well, there's one way to find out. Some kind of review of all existing software patents is obviously in order. Ones like this obviously need to go -- you can't patent that... you just can't. Let's get rid of all the crazy, asinine patents like this and see if we have anything left. I'm willing to grant there might be some...

Oh yeah, and revoke the bar licenses of lawyers who used any of those patents as grounds for a case.

Or maybe just summarily execute them. You can't go wrong with that.

Ted · 3 years ago

In arguments over this issue in the past, software-patent proponents have raised examples such as the RSA alogorithm, which was a nice bit of non-obvious work which is very easy to copy once it is disclosed (I believe the shortest implementations of RSA fit within 20 or so lines of code).

Of course, I remember my college mathematics professors mocking the RSA patent back in the early 90s -- not because the algorithm is bad or obvious -- but because it is, after all, just math. The RSA patent was essentially a patent on raw mathematics. Imagine if the first guy to figure out triangulation had been able to patent that (or at least its application to measuring stuff at a distance).

All math becomes, at some point, useful in some application. If we allow patents on particular applications of mathematics (such as understanding the difficulty of factoring large primes and its applicability to assymetric encryption, i.e. RSA), then ALL of MATH becomes patentable.

Yet we have traditionally considered math to be facts of nature, and therefore unpatentable.

The contradictions continue. Software patents are an absurdity, unless you want to open up all ideas and facts as privately ownable.

Tim · 3 years ago

In addition, the RSA patent was granted more than 20 years ago. If that's the most recent example they can come up with, good software patents must be truly few and far between.