🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <873@nddsun1.sps.mot.com>, by waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com (Mike Waters):
> {and if YOU can keep the attribution straight ... }
>>A patent search will be of little use with software if you are trying to
>>ensure your code doesn't violate any patents, because a) it won't reveal
>>pending patents, or patents not yet applied for; 
> 
> I assume that you concede that the COST isn't the factor then? 
> 

For me and alot of other software people cost IS the factor.  This I
believe also applies to the FSF, most if not all small software developers,
and shareware/for-the-fun-of-it software people.

> Naturally it only reveals the ISSUED patents as of today, did you expect
> anything else?

I would like to get an idea of who is going to be in line to sue me
for some trivial piece of software that I came up with on a Saturday
afternoon.

> 
> If no-one has filed a patent then publication (i.e. in the program
> documentation, specification oreven the code itsefl!) prevents anyone from
> patenting it. What is the problem?

This has not prevented what started this thread - the backing-store patent,
which (according to the LPF article in DDJ) was first implemented at MIT
in the LISP machine years before the patent was applied for by AT$T.

> 
> I am not aware of ANY compiler smart enough to "invent" what wasn't
> already there.

Then you obviously have not looked at compiler output from a good globally
optimizing compiler.  These things hack your input so bad that you cannot
recognize it as what you did.  BTW, have you ever heard of register
allocation - most compilers will use this today without ever being told.

> 
>>There is if you've got money.  I don't think the courts will care much what
>>you charged for the product -- the issue is not how much did you get for
>>the product, but how much should you have paid in licensing fees, and whether
>>treble damages should be awarded.
> 
> Any specific citations? I am not aware of this being a software problem
> particularly. Ham radio gets along fine with circuit patents.
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't think that I understand your statement here.  What does a hardware
product's patents have to do with a hardware component's patents other than
the product is made of the components?  As far as court awards for patent
infringment, I believe that courts award on damages to the sueing company.


> I wasn't aware of the deletion of "obviousness". Just because its
> software certainly doesn't make it obvious.
> 

To go back to the backing-store patent, you don't think that it is obvious
that if I have several overlapping windows on my monitor then window
manager should probably save what is in the windows that are covered up
instead of going through the steps to recreate the window when I bring it
up to the foreground.  Does every piece of paper on your desk (except
the ones that you have a full view of) get recreated when you look at them.
How about in a book.  If I read page 28 of a book and then flip back to
page 5, does page 5 get recreated or has it been saved somewhere.

>>backing store and XOR cursors and the like could never have been patented,
>>nor could most of today's software patents.
> 
> I have a file of about a hundred software patents, every one of which
> was quite innovative AT THE TIME FILED!
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, but the backing-store and XOR cursor are not innovative.  The XOR
patent is a mathmatical law.  Probably very innovative when it was
discovered along with other laws of nature.  What if PI had been discovered
around the same time  would a patent on a number be allowed.  It is not
obvious (I guess it is now, but wasn't when discovered), but is a fact of
nature.  I doubt that a lot of people here would agree that all of your
100 software patents were innovative at anytime in software history.  A lot
of innovative were not thought of (or just dismissed) because of the
limitations of the hardware at one time or another.


> 
> Depends what you call "invention" I guess. I don't call re-inventing the
> wheel particularly inventive nor particularly useful. Much better to pay

Yes, but at one time the wheel was inventive. Even though the wheel was
inventive it was still obvious that some shapes move over a surface easier
than others.  This is again a law of nature.

> 
> When I look at the progress made in hardware from the 1960's to the
> present, then compare the progress in software I really have to wonder
> at statements like this. Even the US government couldn't afford a 4Mbyte
> machine in 1960, today a home type PC runs that much.

Which is one of the reasons that backing-store was not developed until
it was.  In order to save what your window looks like you have to have
someplace to save it.  For a computer this is usually memory.  Until
recently it was not cost effective to be able to have enough memory on
a system to save a window to.

> 
> But we still have almost identical operating systems, substituting such
> radical innovations as CRTs (hardware) for cards (hardware) and actually
> trying to do some graphics (hardware). Having spent 20 years as a CAD
> software developer it seems tome that the only REAL innovation has been
> to adapt old ideas to new and better hardware. No wonder there is so
> much fuss when you have to pay for re-inventing someone elses' wheel!

A lot of these radical hardware ideas were done by software people who
were trying to do more things with the systems that the had.  Read the
book Hackers sometime.  Course it would be hard to do graphics without
The software stuff to do it.  These "old" sofware ideas like CAD (that's
what 30 years old pretty old for a field that isn't much older), simulations,
and graphics are what have pushed for "new" faster hardware.  They each
push each other.

> 
> In the account I read from the USPTO, it was the courts who forced this,
> the USPTO would just as soon avoid the whole mess like the good
> bureaucrats they are!

In the account that I read (LPF) the USPTO took a court case (Diamond vs.
Deihr) that was about the usage of a computer program in the process
of the curing of rubber, generalized and broadened it and then started
issueing patents for software.  The court case had nothing to do with software,
just whether the usage of a computer program in a rubber curing process
(I guess to keep track of chemicals, timings, etc.) was enough to make the
process unpatentable.  The court ruled that the process was patentable.

>>Software is uniquely vulnerable because the patent office refuses to use
>>computer science people to assess the patentability of software patents,
>>whereas they use chem people to assess chem patents and so on.  Nobody in
>>the patent office who figures out whether a new software patent is obvious
>>or based on prior art has any idea what IS obvious or prior art in the
>>software field.  
> 
> I assume that you have personal knowledge of this? 
> 
> Sounds like the problem is easily fixable though, hire some CS types.

Yeah, kinda obvious isn't it (hey, maybe I should patent that - the idea that
you should actually hire someone qualified for a job), except that the
patent office refuses to hire CS people.  For CS type patents or anything else.

> What has made the industry grow BTW is the drop in hardware prices,
> software has done nothing whatever to cause this. That is why the
> percentage of total system cost due to software has gone from insignificant 
> in 1950 to the dominant cost today.

Yeah, I guess the development of such things as spreadsheets (now every
business person has to have a computer), word processing software (now
every secretary has to have a computer), graphical user interfaces (now
every idiot can be computer literate and has to have a computer) and such
have had nothing to do with the huge growth in the computer industry.
Just try taking all the software off of your computer and turning it on -
you now have a large electrical door stop.  The hardware prices have dropped
so much because of volume production along with innovation and better
techniques.  Since everyone now "has" to have a computer then there are
a lot more sold.  This is kinda known as a cycle.


john gay.

I don't know if I speak for my company - nobody here will even give
me the time of day (or night).