Bonum Certa Men Certa

Rob Tiller and A.J. Venter Explain Why Software Patents Are Bad, Apple Clarifies Patenting Other People's Software Ideas

"We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

--Steve Jobs, Apple



Summary: Latest evidence of software patents disdain and patent news about Yahoo, Apple, and Palm

In today's earlier post about patents we showed a lawyer, Professor Eben Moglen, opposing software patents. Rob Tiller from Red Hat is a similar case of someone who protests against software patents this week, despite him being a legalese type and not a developer. From his short article:

There's abundant evidence, though, that software patents serve this objective poorly. For example, as Bessen and Meurer explain in their book Patent Failure, the cost from litigation based on patents in some industries, including software, is several times the profits from patents. This means that for the software industry as a whole, patent costs exceed their benefits. This fact is still not common knowledge, but it is slowly sinking in, as patent litigation continues to grow.

Patent lawsuits (even meritless ones) can cost millions of dollars to defend. This reality creates an economic opportunity for non-practicing entities (a/k/a patent trolls) whose only purpose is to threaten and bring patent lawsuits. The large costs of defenses drive many defendants to settle by paying patent aggressors substantial sums taht are still less than the cost of defense. Such settlements may make business sense, but they divert resources that could be used for more productive purposes, like innovation.


There is another new piece from South Africa -- one which compares software patents to monopolies on numbers. Here is part of a long explanation:

So there you have it – not only is every program a number – they are all simple integer numbers that can be counted, and all the great skill and artifice of the programmer is really just a much more efficient way of finding the number we want – rather than counting through them all and checking if it is the one we want (which could take centuries to be honest).

You cannot ask for a more simple piece of proof that a program is in fact a number – that software is discovered rather than invented. The fact that we have very effective methods of discovering them does not change this and doesn’t change that you should not be able to patent numbers.

I still highly recommend reading the article I linked – especially if you are a lawyer or activist involved in the software patent field as it explains the underlying theories very clearly. Effectively it tells you how it came to BE that these numbers are useful, and how we derive their particular useful meaning from them. That process of derivation is what computer hardware does, and a better tool to do that with is patentable (which is why you should indeed be able to get patents on computer hardware), but go in with this basic understanding. That every computer program really is just a number, that those numbers can be reached by simple counting – I’ve proven this to you here, and all of computer programming – as wonderful and delicious and artistic a field of endeavor as it is – is really in the end – just a faster way to count to a number that we like. This does not reduce from programming any of it’s artifice, if anything it adds to the merit of the field because the processes by which we count are complex and fantastic and beautiful and we are always looking at ways to count even more effectively so we invent new programming languages and ideas like agile programming to help us do it even better – but in the end, the results is just a number that anybody could have counted to – and that is NOT an invention you can patent.


The company once known as "Yahoo" (now a shell of Microsoft with troubling history as "de facto pyramid scheme," according to a fascinating new piece from this prominent former employee) has just beaten a parasite and won a case involving software patents:

ITS A PATENT WIN for Yahoo this week as the web portal opens the champers after winning the Bright Response patent case.

Bright Response sued Google and Yahoo for nicking its '947 patent, which covers the invention of an automatic message interpretation and routing system.


Further to the FutureTap story [1, 2] (Apple potentially threatening a company that produced an application for its platform), there's "damage control" from Apple:

Apple Confirms They’re Not Trying To Kill Third-Party Apps With Patents



Reading over the comments on our post (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) about the Apple patent diagram fiasco last week, you would have thought Apple was the most evil company in the world. Many believed that Apple was attempting to patent ideas that third-party developers came up with. Essentially, the thought was that Apple was trying to steal from their own developer community — and were doing so that blatantly. I mean, people actually believed that.

As we noted at the time, this was not likely the case. Instead, Apple was probably just using diagrams of existing third-party apps for examples of other things they were actually trying to patent. Lo and behold, today comes word from the third-party developer at the center of all of this confirming this to be the case.


Why did Apple patent that if there is prior art and there is no interest in offence? Apple has, after all, decided to attack Linux-based phones using software patents. Apple sued over Android and it has already intimidated Palm (over WebOS) using patents. It turns out that Palm (HP) is now patenting what may have remained from Foleo.

That’s where Palm’s freshly-filed patent for “Compact removable voice handset for an integrated portable computer system/mobile phone” comes in. It takes the ill-fated Folio concept to a whole new level by turning the pre-netbook into a dock for the phone that acts as an input device, larger screen, and other magical things. The patent notes that while the connection is decidedly physical, the phone and computer could also communicate wirelessly.


It will be interesting to see what Palm does now that Hurd is out and Microsoft is in (in the form of a Vice President responsible for software). In any case, under HP's wing, Palm needn't fear Apple's patent artillery anymore. Apple is a patent aggressor whose patents are very often imitations of other companies. Earlier today we found this suggestion that governments should ban the Apple hypePhone. Linux on the contrary should be preferred for the ability to inspect code. As the author puts it:

Android on the other hand is secure by design as it is based on the most advanced kernel's in the world -- the Linux kernel. This is the reason most mission critical businesses now use Linux.

Unlike Android which is open source, the closed source nature of Apple technologies like iTunes makes it impossible for end users to know what is happening to their information and data.


As we showed days ago, Apple is also negligent when it come to patching its operating systems, all of which are proprietary.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Peril of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Illuminates the Dangers of Founders Leaving or Being Forced Out
Whatever you may think they stand for, you risk being fixated on what they originally were and perhaps what their Web sites still say
Difficult Times at Soylent News
We hope that Soylent News will recover from this
Crimes of the EPO Are Costing Everybody in Europe
Since virtually everyone in Europe is a user of software (almost nobody is a forest dweller like in countries near the equator), this impacts everybody
OSI's Blog is Still 100% Microsoft-Sponsored Attacks on Free/Open Source Software
OSI is a compromised, defunct body. It exists to serve the enemies of its original mission.
Red Hat is Suing to Protect From Patent Trolls
Why doesn't Red Hat (IBM) also lobby to eliminate all software patents once and for all?
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Probably Has No Choice But to Shut Down Its Office
Net Income -$686,366
Modern spyware and the problems of "Discord newspeak"
The history of modern instant messaging...
 
Europe's Second Largest Institution, the EPO, Exploits Lack of Oversight to Commit Crimes Every Day
Immunity begets impunity, which in turn begets crime
[Video] Richard Stallman's New Talk in Germany Covers What Free Software Means, Why LLMs are "Bullshit", and Lots More (Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin)
Closing Keynote Day 3 - Dr. Richard Stallman - Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin
Transcript of Latest Public Talk by Dr. Richard M. Stallman (RMS), Delivered Last Month at Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin
quick-and-dirty transcription
Links 10/09/2024: Big Brother Awards Germany 2024 and Telling the Unemployed to 'Drive Uber'
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/09/2024: DUIs and Useless Analytics
Links for the day
New Article in redhat.com: How to Install Microsoft Windows
That's just about as bad as that sounds...
A Decade Ago Things Became So Bad at the European Patent Office (EPO) That Staff Jumped Out the Window During Working Hours
Colleagues saw the suicide; the EPO's response wasn't to tackle the causes but to bolt down the windows (like factories in China installing controversial 'suicide nets')
COVID-19 Ushered in Attacks on Human Rights and Things They Said They Had Introduced Temporarily Are Still in Effect/Operation Today
COVID-19 changed a lot of things
Quitting Academia When Its IT Systems Are Dominated by Clowns Who Outsource
It seems like a common trajectory
Why the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Owning or Renting Office Space Mattered
"In the long term, the FSF needs to own its future office space, but then the deadly risk is that the property ownership becomes the end goal rather than software freedom."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 09, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, September 09, 2024
Nearly Two Years After Quitting My Job
My colleagues and I were bullied by managers (grievance complaint got filed) who didn't even know what "Linux" was
Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part XVIII - In Conclusion
Many activities can be done offline without having to sign anything
Links 09/09/2024: More Trash Balloons and Collapse of Real Estate Market in China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2024: ROOPHLOCH and More
Links for the day
Wrong Priorities at IBM
Lavish spendings on a 16-year contract for the most expensive place while firing tens of thousands of staff
Links 09/09/2024: LLMs Manipulated to Lie, More Corruption Found in COVID-19 Contracts
Links for the day
The Best Interface is Outdoors, It's Nature!
Not everything should be replaced by or emulated by digital devices
Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part XVII - A Personal Perspective
The bottom line is, it's possible to reduce (albeit not entirely eliminate) how many things one signs, presses "OK" on and so on
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 08, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, September 08, 2024
Always Taking Things Up a Notch
Nothing will stop us
[Meme] EPO Keeps Masking Its Corruption With "Diversity and Inclusion" (Hiring the Wife of a Friend of Someone Who Bribed His Way Into EPO Presidency)
chain of nepotism
Very Large EPO Applicants Now Threaten a Boycott of the EPO (the EPO Management is Trying to Bribe Them to Change Their Plans/Minds While Hiding It From Staff)
If corruption prevails to this extent, it will have severe international effect
Gemini Links 09/09/2024: Gemini Application Developer Guide and ROOPHLOCH 2024
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2024: 'Dieselgate' Criminal Trial Starts Late, Mass Layoffs at Volkswagen
Links for the da
On Losing the Job at Google After Talking About Committing Acts of Violence Against Colleagues
We still have a highly toxic element trying to enter and fracture our community
[Meme] Patent Monopolies as Bribes at the European Patent Office (EPO)
bloggers who report crime are being threatened with lawsuits by several law firms hired by the EPO to cover up crimes
New EPO Letter Expressing Concerns About EPO Violating Its Charter, Clearly Violating Rules (Possibly Bribing Siemens With Monopolies) and Granting Loads of Fake Patents to Make More Money
Why does the EU tolerate the EPO's crimes and how much longer will this go on for?
NIST is Threatening to Sue You With Patents on Mathematics (That Aren't Even Legal in the First Place) If They Don't Like You
They're asserting monopolies on mathematics
[Meme] EPO 'Hush Money' to Companies That Point Out EPO Breaks the Rules
A bribed doorman: "We have patent examiners, but if you say the right words, we'll bypass them for you"
Gemini Links 08/09/2024: WebDAV, OpenBSD, Pocket Reform, and More
Links for the day
Links 08/09/2024: Super Typhoon and Lots of Climate Journalism
Links for the day
Certificate Authorities (CAs) Are Serving the Authorities, Not You
The centralised CAs "model" is not working
Rage in the Propaganda Machine
There has never been a better time to quit social control media
The Free Software Movement Must Not Assume That Truth and Science Always Win
Sometimes the bad people and the liars get ahead
Peter Eckersley and 'Afterlife'
It's better to look after one's health at present than to pursue all sorts of perceived 'insurance' policies
Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part XVI - When Radio is No Longer "Read-Only" (Listening Mode) Because Someone Listens and Sells Your Data
Who would want to put up with this?
Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part XV - "Zoom's terms of service change sparks worries over AI uses" (and More)
Then they wonder why users get all grumpy?
redhat.com is Promoting Revisionism and Lies Regarding the Origin of the Term "Open Source"
debunked many times before
Software Patents Against GNU/Linux Again
Patent extortion against OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
IBM is Cutting - Almost in Half - Its Office Space in Austin, So Expect Many Layoffs (RAs)
IBM reduces office space by 187,00 square feet or 37%
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 07, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, September 07, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day