China don't believe in patents?

[BigFunky]

Quote from Tracy McGreedy:

You're not serious, are you? Assuming they are not yours, you cannot infringe on existing patents, and borrow technologies for free to register new ones. Tell me, you're a tech by day and lawyer by night?

Improving a new technology and applying for a patent on it isn't an infringement on an existing patent, unless you start to use it commercially. It's a situation that happens a lot, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry - an original researcher will develop a new drug then patent it, then a competitor will develop a composition/formulation of the drug which is say more easily absorbed then patent that. The original patent holder can't use that composition without infringing the second patent, and the competitor can't sell their composition because it infringe the original patent. This results in either the original patent holder coming up with their own composition, licensing the rights to the composition from the competitor or cross-licensing so that both may sell similar products.

Pharmaceutical companies are the likeliest to do this because they're happy to collaborate with a competitor to develop new products while at the same time simultaneously sue each other in dozens of countries over dozens of different patents, and not bear a grudge. It's just business. Though part of the reason why pharmaceutical drugs are so expensive.

Software companies don't seem to co-operate to this level, perhaps because software patents are so recent and haven't matured, or because most software companies are headed by egomaniacs.


I'm a registered patent attorney with a science background.

 

[Tracy McGreedy]

So assuming it hasn't been filed, and just for example sake, I can write a speech recognition algorithm into Windows XP source that can recognize simplied Chinese via frequency waves of human voice, and then do a $200 patent filing and squeeze Microsoft out of that biz?

And tell me, if one of the 'fundamental' concepts of the patent system is to provide free access to the description of the invention and how to perform it, why isn't Windows XP source code open for all to see?

Quote from BigFunky:

Improving a new technology and applying for a patent on it isn't an infringement on an existing patent, unless you start to use it commercially. It's a situation that happens a lot, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry - an original researcher will develop a new drug then patent it, then a competitor will develop a composition/formulation of the drug which is say more easily absorbed then patent that. The original patent holder can't use that composition without infringing the second patent, and the competitor can't sell their composition because it infringe the original patent. This results in either the original patent holder coming up with their own composition, licensing the rights to the composition from the competitor or cross-licensing so that both may sell similar products.

Pharmaceutical companies are the likeliest to do this because they're happy to collaborate with a competitor to develop new products while at the same time simultaneously sue each other in dozens of countries over dozens of different patents, and not bear a grudge. It's just business. Though part of the reason why pharmaceutical drugs are so expensive.

Software companies don't seem to co-operate to this level, perhaps because software patents are so recent and haven't matured, or because most software companies are headed by egomaniacs.


I'm a registered patent attorney with a science background.

 

[Anthead]

Quote from Retired:

Here is an extensive discussion on the origin of chess --

http://www.ishipress.com/origin.htm

The person who wrote that knows absolutely nothing about ancient Indian history and contemporary South Asia. He selectively quotes texts to suit his one-point argument.

He makes the assertion that given the current state of Pakistan, it is inconceivable that a game like chess could be developed there. This is beyond bizarre - and shows a shocking ignorance of the history of the region that is present-day Pakistan.


It is very, very well-established that chess as it is known in the Western world was first created in India and then refined in Persia. If anything, it can be argued that if chess wasn't invented in India, it was most probably invented in ancient Persia. There is nothing Chinese about it.

As I stated, Chinese chess perhaps preceded Indian chess, but that's not what we know of today as chess.

Some of the other assertions are equally ridiculous. How do you go from a toy propeller to the invention of helicopter? And note that many of these so called invention claims are based on not a consistent record of innovation and use, but mere references in Chinese texts.

If you go by that sort of thing, why the ancient Indians invented all sorts of things including airplanes, guided missiles and what not.

You know who doesn't have to around shouting from the rooftops we invented this and we invented that? The British and the Americans that's because they did indeed invent a lot.

 

[BigFunky]

Quote from Tracy McGreedy:

So assuming it hasn't been filed, and just for example sake, I can write a speech recognition algorithm into Windows XP source that can recognize simplied Chinese via frequency waves of human voice, and then do a $200 patent filing and squeeze Microsoft out of that biz?

And tell me, if one of the 'fundamental' concepts of the patent system is to provide free access to the description of the invention and how to perform it, why isn't Windows XP source code open for all to see?

If that was something that was new, i.e. no one had ever published how to do it, or actually written a publicly available program to do it, then yes you could patent that.

The reason that Windows XP source code is not published is because there is no patent on 'Windows XP'. A patent is for a new invention, which is generally a manner of doing something new, or a new way of doing something old. To patent 'Windows XP' it would need to be defined in words what the invention is, and that invention would need to be new and non-obvious. What is inventive about XP compared to previous software?

An operating system is a huge piece of software that essentially comprises many small programs. Any of those programs may have been a new invention and been patented. Just like 'Photoshop', when it starts up there's a big list of patents that it's protected by. That's not to say that there is a patent on 'Photoshop'. The patents are for component parts of the program, such as a software algorithm for fast blur, or for detecting the outline of shapes. Those sorts of things have patents on them and that's why Adobe spends so much money buying up small companies that invented them. But 'Photoshop' itself is a general program for manipulating photos which on its own in general terms is not new or an invention.

Likewise for Windows XP, there's no need to patent it as a whole when the individual parts can be patented. Furthermore the source code in the patent descriptions only needs to be an example, it doesn't need to be what is actually used in the source code for XP.

Basically XP source code is a trade secret, and the complied code is protected by copyright.

 

[11Blade]

Quote from trefoil:

Hmm.
You say you believe in a free market, but your principal complaint about how drugmakers use patents is that it benefits their shareholders, executives and corporate coffers?
Huh?

I am not against corporate profit, I am against profiteering - there is a difference

By that statement you tacitly agree then that patent's do stifle innovation?
(you did not contend on that)

if there were no patents, there would be dozen's of manufacturers making the same drug or derivative thereof benefiting the customer and setting a free market price rather than a government mandated price-fix that only benefits the fat-cats and not the market participants (customers)

so YES that is not free market behavior, in a free market, companies are rewarded for providing the best product or most desirable product (not necessarily the cheapest).

I think we will continue to disagree on the patent issue. I do however foresee a radical change in patent administration in the near future.

 

[11Blade]

Quote from trefoil:

How does AMD make competing processors in that case?

They actually had to prove to the courts that they reverse engineered the x86 instruction set and started out with PIN compatible x86 processors. (a la clean room version I think of the 386 or 486)

Same as TransMeta, National Semi and VIA

now their processors are not pin compatible with Intel but are instruction set (i.e. x86 + extensions) compatible.

they technically have no "Intel Inside" technology in their processors

11Blade

 

[dcraig]

Software patents are a terrible idea, and vigorously opposed by many engineers and scientists.

Here is a nice example of how idiotic software patents are:

http://webshop.ffii.org/

Software can be protected by copyright law, which does not require an army of lawyers.

 

[Intelinvestor]

When German made 4-wheel cars, and filed a patent,

American has to make 3-wheel or 5 wheel cars to avoid infringing their patent.

It is that ridiculous.

Quote from Tracy McGreedy:

Their architecture is entirely different.

 

[Tracy McGreedy]

The "whole" consists of hundreds if not thousands of patents. In practical terms, it's the Same thing. Using a trademark brand to act as mother ship for all of it's component patents.

Quote from BigFunky:


An operating system is a huge piece of software that essentially comprises many small programs. Any of those programs may have been a new invention and been patented. Just like 'Photoshop', when it starts up there's a big list of patents that it's protected by. That's not to say that there is a patent on 'Photoshop'. The patents are for component parts of the program, such as a software algorithm for fast blur, or for detecting the outline of shapes. Those sorts of things have patents on them and that's why Adobe spends so much money buying up small companies that invented them. But 'Photoshop' itself is a general program for manipulating photos which on its own in general terms is not new or an invention.

Likewise for Windows XP, there's no need to patent it as a whole when the individual parts can be patented. Furthermore the source code in the patent descriptions only needs to be an example, it doesn't need to be what is actually used in the source code for XP.

Basically XP source code is a trade secret, and the complied code is protected by copyright.

 

[Tracy McGreedy]

Microsoft takes on the free world
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe. Fortune's Roger Parloff reports.
By Roger Parloff, Fortune senior editor
May 14 2007: 9:35 AM EDT


(Fortune Magazine) -- Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.


The patent owner: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer;

The patent hater: Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman.

"It's a tinderbox. Patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here some where." --Eben Moglen, Executive director, Software Freedom Law Center
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But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.