6502

StrangeDays said:

6502 said:

StrangeDays said:

6502 said:

wood1208 said:

This must stop otherwise companies can not continue innovating, developing good products for rest of humanity.  It is not black and white but the patent laws should be if either you or company is innovator so entitled to protect your intellectual property. But, if you are a investor or a group who buy and sell patents than they are considered product/item(not IP) owner so can not sue others for infringement. What about cross licensing and a company wants to buy patent/s from someone or a company. It is complicated but somehow such patent brokers must be stopped suing genuine product developing companies.

Well, it is called intellectual property and it is property that can be bought and sold and has an inherent value. Sometimes you can invent something but don't have the means to commercialize it so you sell your invention to a company that can. The second company still has the right to enforce the IP. While I am against frivolous lawsuits, if people own intellectual property (regardless on how they got it, inventor or bought it) they have the right to defend it. In fact, in some cases, if you don't defend it, you lose your exclusivity rights to it. 

Much of software patents are bunk, as very often a software patent is an attempt to patent a vague idea rather than an implementation. In software, implementations are code. And code is protected via copyright. Thus, there are many software devs who believing awarding software patents is the root problem. 

Well, that's your opinion and it is up to the courts to decide validity. And, you do not have to implement a patent to apply for one. I've applied for several prophetic patents that have been granted but never implemented.

https://www.bitlaw.com/guidance/patent/when-to-file-a-patent-application.html
"You do not have to actually make or implement your invention before you file for patent protection. Many valuable inventions are protected by patents even before the first working prototype is constructed. However, you are allowed to file for a patent application before implementation only if you can describe your invention in sufficient detail that a person having ordinary skill in your technology is able to create your product “without undue experimentation.” "

This idea was pre-code and doesn’t apply well to software. Sure, if you designed on paper exactly how your cotton mill is going to work, that is valid because you had to design the physical implementation on paper despite not manufacturing it. But software is different by nature. Here patents are erroneously awarded for ideas separated from specific implementation detail. This is why we have patent trolls suing Apple and whoever for ideas like “network transportation of packets carrying a compressed video transmission over networking protocols” etc etc. In software, my implementation (written code) can be entirely different than yours for the exact same idea.

Software isn’t like physical inventions. The analogy breaks down and what worked for physical machinery doesn’t work for software. Thus the argument that software should only be protected via copyright and not patents.

StrangeDays said:

6502 said:

wood1208 said:

This must stop otherwise companies can not continue innovating, developing good products for rest of humanity.  It is not black and white but the patent laws should be if either you or company is innovator so entitled to protect your intellectual property. But, if you are a investor or a group who buy and sell patents than they are considered product/item(not IP) owner so can not sue others for infringement. What about cross licensing and a company wants to buy patent/s from someone or a company. It is complicated but somehow such patent brokers must be stopped suing genuine product developing companies.

Well, it is called intellectual property and it is property that can be bought and sold and has an inherent value. Sometimes you can invent something but don't have the means to commercialize it so you sell your invention to a company that can. The second company still has the right to enforce the IP. While I am against frivolous lawsuits, if people own intellectual property (regardless on how they got it, inventor or bought it) they have the right to defend it. In fact, in some cases, if you don't defend it, you lose your exclusivity rights to it. 

Much of software patents are bunk, as very often a software patent is an attempt to patent a vague idea rather than an implementation. In software, implementations are code. And code is protected via copyright. Thus, there are many software devs who believing awarding software patents is the root problem. 

wood1208 said:

This must stop otherwise companies can not continue innovating, developing good products for rest of humanity.  It is not black and white but the patent laws should be if either you or company is innovator so entitled to protect your intellectual property. But, if you are a investor or a group who buy and sell patents than they are considered product/item(not IP) owner so can not sue others for infringement. What about cross licensing and a company wants to buy patent/s from someone or a company. It is complicated but somehow such patent brokers must be stopped suing genuine product developing companies.

lkrupp said:

My structural engineer son tells me the Mac version of Excel is pretty damn good these days, not quite on a par with the Windows version yet but quite serviceable in his line of work. He still uses the Windows version, however.