🚀 go-pugleaf

karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:

>In article <58801@bbn.BBN.COM> pplacewa@bbn.com (Paul Placeway) writes:
>>A few things to keep in mind: if the protection you desire were
>>allready in place 5 years ago, your company probably would not exist,
>>because the command structure and interface of UNIX would be
>>propriatary to AT&T.

>Ack!  I hope that this posting is not representative of the views of the
>opponents of software inventor's protection.  I'd hope that the discussion
>could be made on the basis of understanding of the issues, not on the basis
>of misconceptions.

>UNIX is proprietary to AT&T.  We, like other UNIX system vendors, pay a
>license fee to AT&T to be allowed to use their invention.

Unless I am mistaken, you are paying AT&T to use their code, which is something
most, if not everyone in this group accept as a basic part of the software
industry.  Certainly Andy Tanenbaum doesn't pay AT&T royalties for cloning
the Unix interface, since he rewrote all the code from scratch.

>>If using recursion as a programming technique were patented, the
>>renewal of that patent would expire about 4 years form now.

>This is false.  There's prior art for recursion going back at least to
>the fifties.

>>Quick Sort, Heap Sort, Shell Sort, etc. would all be patented.  YOU
>>COULN'T SORT DATA WITHOUT PAYING A ROYALTY.

>This is false too.  If they were patented when they were discovered, the
>patents would have long since expired.  Further, in order to have a situation
>where "YOU COULDN'T SORT DATA WITHOUT PAYING A ROYALTY", all the sorting
>techniques would have to be patented at the same time.  Since there are
>still undiscovered sorting methods out there, it'd be difficult to imagine
>a hypothetical situation in the past where sorting was totally locked up
>with patents.

I think you're deliberately missing the point of these two arguments about
patents on basic software concepts.  He's trying to get you to think about
what would happen if many of the major software concepts had been patented
at the time, rather than being released as a "public domain idea".  The
answer is that it would stifle innovation, as people would have to keep
an eye on what patents they need to license (if they can) as they're 
writing their code.  And if you have doubts about the chilling effect
on competition, read on...

>I think that the discussion of the merits of patents can proceed without
>any upper-case fear-mongering.  If software patents should be done away
>with, it's not for some simple and obvious reason.  Other fields have
>been patenting things for a long time and there have been no disasterous
>effects.

Perhaps you should read your history books before making a claim like
this.  In fact, many of the large conglomerates that exist today arose
by the very same tactics that sparked this discussion.

Companies like AT&T, GE, Westinghouse, etc., used patents to create a
legal monopoly over their respective fields.  They acquired all the 
patents they could, and would swap patents in other fields for patents
in their own.  Having many of the major basic innovations patented in their 
fields made it very difficult for competitors to gain a foothold in the 
industry.  The conglomerates also used lawsuits (many times they were 
obviously baseless, but they still cost lots of money to defend against) 
to put the persistent competitors out of business.

Any company who tried to get started in those industries found most
of the important innovations already patented.  And those who managed
to innovate around that found themselves harrassed with meaningless
lawsuits.

The only good thing to come out of this was the large well-finance
research lab that the conglomerates could afford (Bell Labs, GE CRD).
But forget about competition.  

If you want references on this, I can get them.  In the meantime, think
very carefully before you try to explain why the software industry will
somehow be different from the telecommunications, electric power, 
electronics, and other similar industries in the first half of this 
century.
-- 
--
Trip Martin
night@pawl.rpi.edu