Forest for the Trees

“ The USPTO has repeatedly shown that they do not possess the ability to issue software patents responsibly. This isn’t the agency’s fault — it’s impossible in practice. As Stallman says, it often takes advanced computer scientists to even realize that two given patents are functionally identical, or that a patent application represents something trivial and already in widespread use.

—

Another point to my list of reasons against software patents by Marco Arment.

And we haven’t even gotten into the subject of patent trolls yet.

“ We gave everyone a peek at HP’s slate device during CES 2010 and people got excited.

—

HP’s Slate Device Runs The Complete Internet

If by “excited” they mean “burst out laughing”, I guess that is true.

» Speaking of Patents

Lukas Mathis brings into discussion the group closest to my heart, small businesses:

While large corporations can afford to get defensive patent portfolios, small corporations often can’t. It’s not that they couldn’t come up with ideas to patent. Most small companies could easily come up with dozens or hundreds of patentable ideas within days. But actually getting patents is expensive. Not just in terms of money (including paying lawyers), but also in terms of time. If employees are writing patents, they’re not improving the company’s products.

This is the main reason why we vigorously fight against software patents in EU. Mathis also brings up another reason: how patents are supposed to be a trade-off for their applicants:

[T]he inventor «pays» for the protection by giving society (and his competition) access to the invention.

This trade-off does not apply to many software patents. I only need to spend five minutes on Amazon’s site to figure out how one-click shopping works. There is nothing useful I can learn from reading the patent. Likewise, I only need to turn on an iPhone once to figure out how to unlock it. This means that Amazon or Apple don’t give up anything when they patent these ideas. There is no trade-off involved; the state grants these patents «for free», because nobody gains anything from the publication of these ideas. They are already public.

Patent laws were built to foster innovation. In the world of software, they mostly seem to inhibit it.

» United States Patent Application: 0080270152 – an application to patent patent trolling

Claims

A method for a non-inventor first party to acquire and assert a patent property against a second party, the method including the first party performing the following acts:obtaining an equity interest in the patent property;writing a claim within the scope of the patent property, the claim being written to cover a product of the second party, where the product includes a secret aspect, the secret aspect including an unobservable aspect, where writing the claim includes performing research using a computer to convert the unobservable aspect to an observable aspect;filing the claim with a patent office;offering a license of the patent property to the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim; andattempting to obtain a monetary settlement from the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim.

(via Jonathan Schwartz)

Free Patents That Will Save Our Galaxy

These kinds of patents I fully approve of.

(via Ze Frank)

Turns out my tumblelog is exactly 3 years older than @ennilaine

Common interest

LinkedIn

Ekaterina Karchmit has sent you a message.

Date: 2/26/2010

Subject: Business Proposal from iTechArt Group

Dear Jarkko,

As we have common interest with your kind permission I would like to take two minutes of your time to discuss a mutual business opportunity please.

That “common interest” sure sounds like something I would base mutual business on.

“ [D]on’t list your weddings or funerals in the paper, unless you want to get robbed…

— Andy Baio regarding the history of predecessors to Please Rob Me.

“ Is your service a green service? Yes, because of the slim profile of the iPad, we have a high density of servers per rack. In addition, we only keep the iPad connected to power until its battery is fully charged. We then detach and let it run from battery power. Because of the 10 hour battery life, it only needs to charge twice per day. (Four hours of charge time. Twenty hours of battery.)

— iPadcolo.net

» MyFonts Creative Characters interviews Tomi Haaparanta, one of the most prolific type designers from Finland

Weird to see so many familiar logos there.