Bonum Certa Men Certa

Pressure is Mounting for All Software Patents to be Tossed Out, Even in the United States

The trolls' office belongs in the graveyard

Patent Office - Herbert C. Hoover Building



Summary: Thanks in part to patent trolls, the reputation of the USPTO is disintegrating, more calls are being made for annihilation of all software patents, and Europe is meanwhile trying to mimic or inherit the mess from the USPTO (the trolls' office)

THE Lodsys troll has been useful in the sense that it encourages people to actively call for the end of software patents. As more lawsuits get filed by this patent troll (Lodsys carries on with yet more lawsuits in Texas, of course), one venture capitalist says that "Enough Is Enough" and to quote him from his blog:



I believe that software patents should not exist. They are a tax on innovation. And software is closer to media than it is to hardware. Patenting software is like patenting music.

The mess around the Lodsys patents should be a wake up call to everyone involved in the patent business (government bureaucrats, legislators, lawyers, investors, entrepreneurs, etc) that the system is totally broken and we can't continue to go on like this.

First of all, the idea of a transaction in an application isn't novel. That idea has been resident in software for many years. The fact that the PTO issued a patent on the idea of "in app transactions" is ridiculous and an embarassment.


It's important because the patent propagandists keep saying that a business cannot receive capital unless it has some patent monopolies to exclude rivals with. Several venture capitalists have been trashing this lie over and over again; the above is just one among several who speak about the subject repeatedly. This was also published in Business Insider, which adds in a separate article that "Software Patents Are Driving Fred Wilson To The Brink" and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry says:

He's absolutely right.

We've all know the problems with the patent system. Anything and everything gets patented without regard to the merit of the idea or who actually came up with it first (as opposed to filed it first). Patent trolls go wild, racketteering startups and innovators (the opposite of what the patent system was supposed to do, reward the little guy). Big tech companies amass patents like so many nuclear warheads in an unending, resource-swallowing Cold War.

Some people claim it's better to "reform" the system than abolish it.

But that's not true. At least for software, patents make zero sense.

A great example of a creative industry without patents is fashion. People copy each other all the time. Do fashion houses go bust? No. Do innovators go poor? No, they keep innovating at an even faster pace.

Software companies also copy each other all the time, and straight copycats don't generally do well. (And when they do, it's usually not just copying the idea, it's also great execution--ain't nothing wrong with fast followers, who bring competition to markets.)


Gizmodo too has just published this article about why software patents should not exist. To quote the opening sentences: "Patents are supposed to encourage invention and protect inventors from being ripped off. At least, this was the reasoning when patents applied to things like steam engines and drillbits. But software? That might be a whole other question.

"Patents were always intended for physical things—mechanisms that did something better in a way that would have never been obvious to another inventors. A genuine leap forward. The advent of software complicated things—and Microsoft's immense commercialization of software pushed software patents forward at a blistering pace.

"Things like a single-click online purchase dubiously fit that great leap criterion—and it's yielded a giant bundle of money for Amazon, which owns the patent on that button. If you try to use it without their permission, out come the lawyers."

How foolish does the USPTO want to look? It does not represent the will of the people, although it might represent the will of selfish patent lawyers (the patent system was not originally for them). At this current pace, the USPTO risks a collapse, no just the loss of public support. Sadly, in the mean time those American monopolies it granted to companies like Microsoft are being exploited and exported to harm Europe too. Yet again we've gotten hold of a new document [PDF] from the European Commission, which foolishly enough endorses RAND. It says that "intellectual property rights essential to the implementation of specifications are licensed to applicants on a (fair) reasonable and non-discriminatory basis ((F)RAND), which includes, at the discretion of the intellectual property rightholder, licensing essential intellectual property without compensation." Something has gone slightly rotten in the Commission [1, 2].

Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025