From epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk  Mon Oct 16 16:46:04 2000
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 17:46:04 +0100 (BST)
From: Edward Avis epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk
Subject: [Patents] Threats to developers

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Gregory Aharonian wrote:

>Yes, companies do use their large portfolio of patents to harass other
>COMPANIES.

And you think this is a good thing?  Is it a net benefit that companies
have to spend money on lawyers rather than on R&D?

>But show me where such large companies have gone after
>INDIVIDUALS like those who feel they have guns pointed to their heads
>when they are programming.

How about Unisys and LZW?  This shows another problem with software
patents BTW - stopping interoperability, since GIF is a de facto
standard.  It's not as if LZW is a particularly effective algorithm -
far better ones exist, it just so happened that LZW became commonly
used, whereupon Unisys were able to unleash the lawyers and start
demanding protection money from website owners.

There are many other cases where developers have not dared to develop
software because they fear getting sued.  TrueType is one example.  And
what about cryptography?

Things like crypto algorithms, which take lots of effort to develop,
are the strongest candidates for patentability.  But I think the case is
still not strong enough.  There are plenty of strong algorithms out
there developed without the incentive of patent revenue; most of them in
fact.  The original reason for patents, publishing details of an
invention that would otherwise be kept secret, does not apply here
because any cipher must be published before anyone will trust it.  (A
similar argument holds for file formats too.)  The only remaining reason
is that the 20-year monopoly provides an incentive for R&D; but as I've
already said, there's no evidence that such work would not be done
without the promise of a patent.

>An individual programmer has little to nothing to fear about software
>patents.  It is only when a company has a software product profitable
>enough to attract patent lawsuits do they have anything to worry about,
>and even then, many have been able to successfully fight off the
>patent lawsuit at a moderate cost.

I don't know what you mean by moderate cost, but given the nature of the
software market, having to fight patent lawsuits is a huge burden on the
typical startup or smallish company.

>Certainly, cleaning up the patent
>examination process would see less stupid patents for companies to assert
>that others have to waste their money successfully fighting off.  But
>it still leave other software patents to issue that do satisfy novelty
>and non-obviousness and enablement requirements.

Given that the patent system has not yet been cleaned up, would you be
happy to delay a decision on legalizing software patents until it has
been?

-- 
Ed Avis
epa98@doc.ic.ac.uk





