Are patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses? (1 Viewer)

[Maximus Zeebra]

Microsoft just patentet RSS..

There are thousands of examples of strange and bizarre patents that are groundless and based on nothing but greed and bulls***..

Is it time to change the patent scheme, is it working good or not?

 

[faithful_servant]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

Take away patents and you take away the motivation to develop new products. If a company can simply take thier competitors work and profit from it, why should anyone invest in R&D at all?

 

[rathi]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

The patent system is broken. Far too many patents are filed, and patents for insanely stupid things get passed all the time.

Software patents are a miserable joke that are nothing but weapons for lawyers to fight with. Patents in things like DNA sequences are even more absurd.

The original purpose for patents as a means of promoting private developers to share their work remains. So does many of the original items that received patents. However, do the nature of modern technology and massive amount of patents themselves, the system is broken.

The entire system needs to overhauled and updated to meet the needs of modern technology. Patenting things like software and naturally occuring dna sequences needs to stop. The entire means of processing granting and viewing patents also needs to be completely changed to handle the massive volume.

 

[Maximus Zeebra]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

Take away patents and you take away the motivation to develop new products. If a company can simply take thier competitors work and profit from it, why should anyone invest in R&D at all?

I didnt sat abolish patents, I said fix the system.:2wave:

 

[faithful_servant]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

I didnt sat abolish patents, I said fix the system.:2wave:

OK, be more specific in what problem you are discussing. Everything needs to be fixed, it's a matter of which problem you choose to address. I can find problems in even the best of systems and usually find ways to address them (it's what my employer pays me to do), so when you say "fix the system", you're being far too vague in what you are asking.

 

[faithful_servant]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

The patent system is broken. Far too many patents are filed, and patents for insanely stupid things get passed all the time.

Software patents are a miserable joke that are nothing but weapons for lawyers to fight with. Patents in things like DNA sequences are even more absurd.

The original purpose for patents as a means of promoting private developers to share their work remains. So does many of the original items that received patents. However, do the nature of modern technology and massive amount of patents themselves, the system is broken.

The entire system needs to overhauled and updated to meet the needs of modern technology. Patenting things like software and naturally occuring dna sequences needs to stop. The entire means of processing granting and viewing patents also needs to be completely changed to handle the massive volume.

Elimnate patents on software?? Are you stupid??? Software development is an incredibly expensive process and to simply allow anyone to take your hard work and sell is exactly what the patent process is designed to prevent. The same thing applies to DNA sequences (BTW - what they are patenting is the unique arrangement of sequences to produce an organism that behaves differently from it's naturally occurring counterpart, no one is simply patenting naturally occuring DNA sequences - BE HONEST).

 

[Maximus Zeebra]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

OK, be more specific in what problem you are discussing. Everything needs to be fixed, it's a matter of which problem you choose to address. I can find problems in even the best of systems and usually find ways to address them (it's what my employer pays me to do), so when you say "fix the system", you're being far too vague in what you are asking.

Well, the patent system is totally broken, and on the limit of being a joke.

 

[faithful_servant]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

Well, the patent system is totally broken, and on the limit of being a joke.

Mechanics hate people like you.
Please describe in detail what is broken. A vague statement like that gives people NOTHING to work with. Take your car to the shop and tell the mechanic that it broken and see what happens. They will either just start tearing things apart trying to figure out WTH you're talking about, or they'll push you car into the street and tell you to stop wasting thier time or (most likely) they'll ask for more information and you'll end up wasting their time. So stop wasting time and explain the details of what defines "broken"...

 

[Maximus Zeebra]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

Mechanics hate people like you.
Please describe in detail what is broken. A vague statement like that gives people NOTHING to work with. Take your car to the shop and tell the mechanic that it broken and see what happens. They will either just start tearing things apart trying to figure out WTH you're talking about, or they'll push you car into the street and tell you to stop wasting thier time or (most likely) they'll ask for more information and you'll end up wasting their time. So stop wasting time and explain the details of what defines "broken"...

Ok, I would focus especially on software patents, but not limited to that the patent system in its current form is totally broken.

Technologies pop up here and there were there are no patents, like the latest example, RSS, which is not something Microsoft invented. It was invented from different systems from Apple, Microsoft, Projex-X, and differnt open source.
Now, microsoft has decided to patent RSS, and take all the glory. This basically means that even if Microsoft has stated not to take licening money for RSS, they CAN take licence money and will have ownership of RSS even if they didnt invent it. There are hundreds of bizarre cases like this every year.

Another example is the widely used "shopping cart" in internet stores around the web, this must be one of the most widely "misused" patents, because it was actually patented by amazone, and they got their acceptance on the patents long after all kind of companies had implemented this system on their webs. Now they want everyone to remove the system or pay a high licence fee.


Maybe you have heard of the format JPG(JPEG), or compressed pictures for computers, te most widely used picture format in the world. Some company actually had a patent on it, they tried to make a case for the patent office so that they got their rights to charge licences to everyone that used it(every person with internet or computer or any large corporation in the world)..
Luckily, this was one of the cases where the companies claim was refused, because the patent was too widely used and there was no way they could enforce their patent.

BTG, a British company is still struggeling in court trying to win a case of their patents for "program updates over the internet", which would change the whole way things would work on the internet.. Microsoft would no longer be able to have automatic updates without paying an outrageous price.

In a "TV fight" between Microsoft and Apple, Microsoft took the longest straw and patentet instant messaging over TV.

Microsoft had to pay 500 million € to a company that had patented the way PDF and Jave was handled in their web browser Internet explorer.

Google has patentet "free wifi", that makes money with commercials.

Disney have taken a patent on "downloading music in fast food restaurants".

Amazone patented "user reviews of shoppable book items".

Creative patented the way songs were showed on the screens of IPODS in the beginning, forcing apple to change or pay licence for it.

Dell has taken patents on "autorun" on DVDs for computers.

Microsoft is in a process to take patents on "smileys".

Microsoft patented calling the phone number "911" from computers.

The list goes on, there is a patent for every little single thing you can imagine, and if you wanna start something that has to do with software, you can be sure you are breaching a previous patent in some way, and that you have to pay for this when your company gets big.

Microsoft is now trying to build a case against Linux and open source, saying they are in breach of Microsoft patents, on things that Microsoft "copies/stole" from Apple and the open source enviroment..

The point here is that everything is allowed in the software patent market, no matter how stupid or damaging for the industry.
I would say the current patent system for IT and software is completely broken and working against its intention, it must have a large overhault and be fixed to fit the modern world..


It and sotware is one example, I havent really studied any patents besides these.

 

[rathi]

Re: Is patents in its current form outrageous and damaging for businesses?

Elimnate patents on software?? Are you stupid??? Software development is an incredibly expensive process and to simply allow anyone to take your hard work and sell is exactly what the patent process is designed to prevent.

Do you know anything about software patents? Software patents today are so broad and numerous that everyone who make any decent amount of software is infringing on someone else's patent. Its not actually possible to tell if software is infringing or not. The only way companies even deal with software patents is to get patents of their own. Then they can countersue anyone who sues them with their own patents. Its like nuclear war, with the only survival mechanism being MAD.

And the problem with patents on Gene sequences is that they are NOT always based on things that have been manipulated. Furthermore, gene sequences can be spread and created in ways the current laws can't imagine. I work in the BioTech industry, and I fully aware of the consequences of copyrighted sequences. Monsanto is currently suing people who accidently end up with their GM products. Its not that patenting gene sequences is inherently bad, just that currently the patent office and IP law in general cannot handle it.