Software patent quality worse than all other fields
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].
At the same time Crawford's patent was being prosecuted, more than 5,000 other patents were issued for "the same thing," Martin says.
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."
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." [...]
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
- 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