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Difference between revisions of "Software patent quality worse than all other fields"
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# Jargon and lack of tangible components can make a mundane software idea sound technical. | # Jargon and lack of tangible components can make a mundane software idea sound technical. | ||
# It's impossible for a patent examiner to judge obviousness. Software developers use so many ideas during their work, only a tiny percent ever get submitted to the patent office or otherwise published. | # It's impossible for a patent examiner to judge obviousness. Software developers use so many ideas during their work, only a tiny percent ever get submitted to the patent office or otherwise published. | ||
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+ | ==Expert evaluations== | ||
+ | |||
+ | From NPR's article [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack When Patents Attack]: | ||
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+ | <blockquote><pre> | ||
+ | [[David Martin]], who runs a company called M-Cam. It's hired by governments, banks and business to assess patent quality, which the company does with a fancy piece of software. We asked Martin to assess Chris Crawford's patent [US5771354].<br /> | ||
+ | <br /> | ||
+ | At the same time Crawford's patent was being prosecuted, more than 5,000 other patents were issued for "the same thing," Martin says.<br /> | ||
+ | <br /> | ||
+ | Crawford's patent was for "an online backup system." Another patent [US6003044] from the same time was for "efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems." Yet another [US6587935] was for "mirroring data in a remote data storage system."<br /> | ||
+ | <br /> | ||
+ | And then there were three different patents [US6049874, US6038665, and US6014676] with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title: "System and method for backing up computer files over a wide area computer network." [...]<br /> | ||
+ | <br /> | ||
+ | We also asked Rick Mc Leod, a patent lawyer and former software engineer, to evaluate Chris Crawford's patent. "None of this was actually new," he told us.</pre> | ||
+ | </blockquote> | ||
==Examples== | ==Examples== |
Revision as of 20:44, 21 August 2011
Quality problems can happen in any category of patents, but the quality of software patents is particularly bad. This is probably a fundamental problem that can't be avoided in a domain as abstract as software.
Contents
The ideas are too abstract
In chemistry, ideas are described concretely, such as Trans-6-[2-(3- or 4-carboxamido- substituted pyrrol-1-yl)alkyl]-4-hydroxypyran-2-ones.[1]
In software, ideas are described as "point of sale location", "material object", or "information manufacturing machine".
Possible reasons
- Abstract algorithms can be described in so many ways.
- Jargon and lack of tangible components can make a mundane software idea sound technical.
- It's impossible for a patent examiner to judge obviousness. Software developers use so many ideas during their work, only a tiny percent ever get submitted to the patent office or otherwise published.
Expert evaluations
From NPR's article When Patents Attack:
[[David Martin]], who runs a company called M-Cam. It's hired by governments, banks and business to assess patent quality, which the company does with a fancy piece of software. We asked Martin to assess Chris Crawford's patent [US5771354].<br /> <br /> At the same time Crawford's patent was being prosecuted, more than 5,000 other patents were issued for "the same thing," Martin says.<br /> <br /> Crawford's patent was for "an online backup system." Another patent [US6003044] from the same time was for "efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems." Yet another [US6587935] was for "mirroring data in a remote data storage system."<br /> <br /> And then there were three different patents [US6049874, US6038665, and US6014676] with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title: "System and method for backing up computer files over a wide area computer network." [...]<br /> <br /> We also asked Rick Mc Leod, a patent lawyer and former software engineer, to evaluate Chris Crawford's patent. "None of this was actually new," he told us.
Examples
- Unbelievable software patents
- FFII's webshop which uses 20 ideas patented in the EU
- Microsoft developer's internal comments about his own patents indecipherable by anyone but a patent attorney
- Some Kodak patents
Related pages on ESP Wiki
- Raising standards is not our goal
- Silly patents
- How to read patents
- Why software is different
- Software patents produce legal uncertainty
- Software is too abstract, software patent quality is terrible
- The disclosure is useless
- Infringement is unavoidable
External links
- Why are Software Patents so Trivial? other version (possibly identical), by FFII
- Is software too abstract to be patented?, 18 Nov 2010, Rob Tiller (Red Hat)
- Why Software is Abstract, by PolR, 7 Oct 2010, Groklaw
- An Open Response to the USPTO — Physical Aspects of Mathematics, 26 Sep 2010, Groklaw