Hate to say it, folks, but a large proportion of patents dealing with software are actually the tools and weapons of looters.

In the software industry, patents allow anyone to become a tax-man. Even the simplest and most obvious ideas - the kind that everyone invents in their mind as a matter of course even in a single day's programming work, can be patented.

This means that it has become infeasible to perform a search of the patent registry for every idea one uses in a day's work. Even in just that 8-12 hours, you will infringe on at least a couple of hundred of vaguely-written patents, maybe thousands.

If attacked by a patent troll, you can agree to pay their unearned "tax" of thousands or millions of dollars, and/or a percentage of your own business revenues. Or you can spend thousands or millions to take them to court and try to get the patent invalidated as being not a true invention.

"right amount of time"... unless you start looking in the software sector. In that space, 20 years is dozens of generations. By the time you've learned to develop with a given framework, that framework is already out of date with new frameworks hitting the prime time.

I say abolish the patent system. If I come up with an idea totally on my own, but someone else has a government granted monopoly, I cant commercialize my idea. How is that fair?

I agree that the patent system is antiquated and should really just be abolished. It retards progress instead of promoting it. The patent lawyers are the only ones who benefit from it.

He has a real point. Today the world is filled with "patent trolls" who simply file on just about anything with no intention of actually commercializing what they patent. They just lie in wait and pounce on whoever actually commercializes the idea (and the other person may have independently thought of it) in an attempt to milk them of whatever they can.

I think that if you think of something you should be able to commercialize that without fear of being sued by some patent troll. Otherwise, the patent trolls provide no benefit to society and actually retard inventors from bringing things to market.

Below are completely original lyrics written by me dino, the inventor of the internet. Flake off, Al Bore.

Imagine~by His Excellency Dino Allosaurus, Esquire

Imagine no laws against stealing.
The streets will be road warrior reeling.
Imagine no possessions.
I wonder if you can.
You may say I'm a looter,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
For lots and lots of wicked looting fun.
And the world will be at one--for the taking.

I think his objection is misplaced. Patents last about the right length of time (20 years) to reward innovation without becoming a hindrance to follow-on innovation.

It's copyright (thanks to Hollywood) which goes way beyond that point of balance and perpetuates rent-seeking monopolies.

I would reform copyright by reducing it, after the first five years, to only a right to collect a standard royalty (similar to the "automated mechanical licenses" that already exist in music publishing) so that an author can no longer veto follow-on creators using his material. I would also let the user pay that royalty to the patent office, thus solving the orphan works problem.

I would also eliminate software patents and make them use copyright. Because in software as in music, after 3-5 years the amount of follow-on creation that IP stifles is much greater than the creation it protects.

and I though the heat shield came from Albany international and it was made of tiles. however the judge was correct.

the purpose of patents is beneficial for the government. I have been issued 4 and after the first one ended still no company came along to copy me. So I stopped paying the service fee to the government for the other 3 and still no copiers. in this day and age so much is NOT made in the USA a product can be copied in asia and when you find out its to late and the cost of a law suit is exorbitant. I recommend that one make their product and say nothing and just sell it.

Technically a patent is not insurance that can deny another party the right to develop a similar idea. In strict terms, only the party who brings the idea to concrete concept (a prototype) has solid grounds for challenge. Companies that cave to the trolls don't have a very good legal staff in my opinion. One of my friends had developed the concept of a metal plate form of heat shield for reentry and patented it. Lockheed later developed a prototype of the same kind of plate, and attempted to file a patent. When my friend challenged Lockheed in court, the judge simply said, "I recognize you filed the paperwork earlier, but where's your prototype?"

MikeMarotta, who says he does not like one-liners,
has come up with one of the best:

.... the real test of a free market is not how hard you are allowed to work
but whether or not you are allowed to be lazy. ....

This is quite deep, it really needs an explanatory paragraph.
Maybe- consider the Stalin and Kim dictatorships, they encourage and reward hard work, not with money but with power and prestige. But do not get your head too high or it comes off! Laziness is not allowed, but to the extent that the state provides for all, the system encourages laziness.

When a free market is working right success is rewarded, taking it easy may or may nor be admired but is permitted - as long as you live within your own resources. In other words, all the rules, incentives and rewards are in harmony with individual freedom and productivity in the economy.

Thanks.

That's more in the nature of Trademarks and while it is annoying you can come up with a different phrase. If they challenge the existence of your entire product that's harder to deal with. The
re are situations, particularly in music, where relatively small amounts of text or note sequences become involved in a copyright battle that are a gray area. Theoretically, we should be able to protect an individual's creation but allow people to independently create their own products and distinguish between that and them copying someone else's invention.

Same thing happens with Copyrights. People have copyrighted phrases, like "Millennium band" etc and prevented me from using it as a designation of my last invention..."self adjusting ring band".

Domain names as well have been acquired for sale too.

Although Lennon was using the bicameral mystical interpretation, heaven as in "The Heavens", the universe is what it actually means or better yet, what we can observe and hell being just the opposite.

I do like your definition of "Utopia" +1

I am well aware of the evolution of patent laws having several patents of my own, also the system in which obtaining one can be corrupt as well.

There are new modified patents around, (and I am sorry I have not the links to share) that allow someone to build on what you created and you can still profit and assign the degree of profit you desire also.
After selling my last patent, ( a spidel like stretch band for finger rings), I never looked any further into these new patents.

The problem is that patent's can also be a way for someone to steal the fruits of your creation. Unlike copyrights which generally require you to copy someone else's work to violate them, you can violate a patent by dint of your own creativity coming up with a similar idea.

A patent is supposed to be only available for true spark of innovation and not the normal product of a practitioner in the field. Following this precept limits the amount of times an innocent innovator is robbed of his efforts by the existence of a patent. Unfortunately if this isn't followed then it becomes quite common.

The area of endeavor where this is the most striking is in software development where the patent office has and is still given out patents for very obvious ideas, often ones that have been in use for years -- just not patented.

The other problem is the fact that the idea of "having a program to do x" is usually quite simple and a very small part of actually developing the code to do the task. When someone invests all the time to realize the idea and make it marketable they may find themselves sued by an 'inventor' who didn't invent anything but wrote a patent application for something like "Use a computer to store files accessible from multiple places".

While the idea of a patent is that you publish the secrets behind your idea so that others can use it, software patents are written in "patent speak" and are utterly useless for anyone who would actually implement the idea.

I imagine there is no heaven, no hell below us. It is a basic fact of reality, not imagination. Although, if you were raised otherwise, it does take some imagination to come to that realization.

There's nothing wrong with living in peace, either. Capitalism brings peace. Mysticism and collectivism are the sources of war. People do not fight and kill for or die for things they can buy or sell. We fight and kill and die for mystical intangibles like "family" and "honor" and "country" and "tradition." Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II, Harry Truman and Korea, John Kennedy and Viet Nam, and then the Bushes (who were mortal enemies of Ronald Reagan). How many examples are enough?

Utopia? Here's a utopia: All of the producers get to keep all of the benefits of their productive labor. Put a label on that, comrade.

To me, the real test of a free market is not how hard you are allowed to work but whether or not you allowed to be lazy. Capitalism brings leisure... to imagine things...

He creates value by teaching. As I pointed out, patent law is not predicated on protecting your intellectual property but on providing a (so-called) "social good" or "social benefit." I suggest that you trace the actual evolution of patent law in the United States to see how we got into the mess we are in today. Doing away with all patent laws would knock the system back to about 1450 when the City of Florence created the first patents. (Earlier examples are known. But consider them. For instance, if you invent a new food preparation should everyone else be prevented from using it or modifying it? Why not? Just asking.)

Johanna Blakely on TED Talks explains why the fashion industry eclipses all other protected sectors combined.
https://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_bla...

We can all agree that intellectual property is valuable. The best means and methods of protecting it are not so well defined.

US Patent and Copyright laws have changed substantially since the Constitution was drafted. For many decades you could not get a patent without an actual working model.

It used to be - contrary to myth - that the rights belonged to the first inventor.. A few years ago, the US joined the rest of the world and now give rights to the first to file..

The basic theory of the patent is to provide "public benefit" to your idea: you have to publish what it is and how it works. In return, the patent gives you the right to sue anyone who infringes. You could just keep your ideas and methods secret. That works well for Coca-Cola. Note, therefore, that it is not the intended purpose of patents to protect your intellectual property. We can all agree that it should be but it is not. Therein is the fundamental philosophical flaw in the system.

The professor's points are cogent and considerable. You might not agree with the over-arching conclusion but the facts in evidence are real.

As a follow up...I did email the professor and he explained that while he agreed that we should not give up patents, the system, itself was in dire need of repair. With that, I could agree with him, but I told him that mentioning John Lennon's song about a Socialist Utopia was probably not the best way to begin the conversation.

Ooooh....GOOD comment

The professor obviously cannot create value but does desire to invent a way to steal the fruits of someone else's value creation...that's why I call creatures like those....parasitical humanoids.
(humanoid, because they are nothing more than a retarded brain in a worthless body with no mind or conscience).