🚀 go-pugleaf

This discussion of whether byte-ordering is obvious or not is
interesting, but, I think somewhat misses the point wrt the patent.  The
question should be, does patenting byte-ordering benefit the public?
That is, would people be able to more easily do something (like transfer
data) because the patent exists?

To me, the answer is manifestly ``no''.  Many people ``invented''
canonical byte-ordering; the public benefitted by many people being able
to legally do so; the patent doesn't help anyone except the patent
owner.

This may be true even when the technique in question is not obvious; for
example, the RSA patent (see below for the LPF's discussion of this, for
those of you who don't know know what this is).

The patent system is supposed to benefit the public at large by making
inventions accessible.  The founding fathers felt the best way to do
this was to grant a limited-term monopoly on the invention, thus
encouraging such inventions.  When patents (that is, software patents)
fail to benefit the public, then those patents ``should'' be
disqualified, according to the original (and, I think, good) intentions
of the patent system.

karl@cs.umb.edu

[from the June 1991 LPF mailing.  Ask me if you don't know what the LPF is.]
@heading RSA Inc.@: Shuts Down Public-Key Mail Encryption

Programmers who haven't grasped the full scope of the harm done by
software patents sometimes offer the RSA patent as an example of a
software patent that ought to exist.  What they mean is that RSA
encryption is not obvious, the way backing store is obvious, or
natural order recalc.  And that is something we can't deny.  But this
does not imply that the patent granted for it is free of abuses, or
that issuing a patent was good policy.

Perhaps the facts in this article will help dispatch the RSA example
as an argument in favor of software patents.

Public key encryption was developed in the 1970s by professors at MIT
and Stanford.  These schools gave an exclusive license to a company,
called RSA Inc.@:@footnote{Since cosmetically renamed to Public Key
Partners.  I use their former name because it seems more appropriate
to their nature.}, which has done its level best to prevent the most
obvious and useful application of public key encryption: the delivery
of encrypted mail on the Internet and Usenet.

Widespread use of encrypted mail depends on the universal availability
of the software.  There have been several attempts to provide free
software to the network so that everyone would have it.  RSA Inc.@: has
squashed every one.

The RSA patent was obtained for an algorithm called RSA after the
names of the professors that developed it.  This May, a new public
domain mail encryption program was released.  It used a different
algorithm, called the Rabin algorithm.  (The `R' in RSA does not stand
for Rabin.)  RSA Inc.@: claims their patent covers this algorithm,
too.

In fact, they claim their monopoly extends to any algorithm that
performs two or more exponentiations and combines the results.  This
is a very broad class of algorithms.  (The president of RSA likes to
boast of this broadness as if it were a measure of his merit.)

This illustrates the subtle deception behind statements made by the US
Patent and Trademark Office that they do not grant patents on
algorithms.  It is true that no patent covers a single algorithm; this
is because a patent monopolizes a class of many related algorithms.

While you might naively think that prohibiting a broad class of 
algorithms is even worse than prohibiting one, the Patent Office
doesn't think so.  By careful choice of words, they can deny the
existence of algorithm patents, and give the impression that algorithms
are not being prohibited by patents.  For example:

@quotation
First, many assumed that we would grant a patent on a computer program
or a mathematical algorithm.  As we have stated, we will issue patents
on computer processes@dots{}, not on programs or mathematical algorithms.
@end quotation

@noindent
(This comes from testimony of Jeffrey Samuels, acting commissioner of
patents and trademarks, in the house subcommittee on intellectual
property.)

This case also shows how the patent system can do great harm while
doing absolutely no good.  The algorithms concerned were developed by
professors who inevitably would have published them, patent system or
no.  There was not even a possibility that society would benefit by
issuing this patent.

Another interesting aspect of this case is that several MIT professors
now receive government funding to do research which cannot be used
without infringing the RSA patent.  The effect is to provide a
government subsidy for RSA, Inc.@:, under the guise of research done for
the public good.

At the podium, the representatives of RSA, Inc.@: pretend to be doing
the public a service.  They claim that use of public key encryption
would be impossible without their help---that users must be carefully
taught how to use it.  Their recent actions reveal that their help is
not necessary---and also their true motives.