Hacker News

Is this the "install third-party software" checkbox in the Ubuntu installer?

Right, but I thought it matters only if you sell something globally. Linux is distributed for free, so the burden of patent compliance is on the user, isn't it?

The fact that some innovations succeeded despite having to tiptoe around patents is more of an example of survivorship bias.

When we get something working first, there are probably some optimal partial solutions there. Working around the patent means having to do some things inefficiently while being able to provide better efficiency or cost of the overall system.

In my work, I all too often see that the obvious optimal solution we come up with turns out to be patented and we are spending time on finding least bad worse solution. (unless our patent lawywers manage to pussh through a patent for the same thing with different wording, like measuring period instead of measuring frequency)

In some cases it is not possible. For example, 3D printing was held back for 20 years just because of sleeping patents.

The wright brothers patent was not on wing warping, it was on controlling a vehicle in the air. In short the Wright brothers did not invent the aeroplane they invented how to control a aeroplane.

https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Sh...

"We wish it to be understood, however, that our invention is not limited to this particular construction, since any construction whereby the angular relations of the lateral margins of the aeroplanes may be varied in opposite directions with respect to the normal planes of said aeroplanes comes within the scope of our invention."

Some people (Curtis) felt this claim was far too encompassing and should not be enforced. But I don't know, These guys just spent a decade working out an entirely new discipline, aeronautical control. And you don't think they deserve exclusive exploitation rights to that discipline for the next 20 years?

> Cisco's patent on Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol led to the development of the more secure and more capable Common Address Redundancy Protocol

This seems like a success story in spite of software patents, not because of them. Just because they were forced to develop a new protocol in order to avoid getting sued for using Cisco's doesn't mean that they wouldn't still have improved on what Cisco had if they'd been allowed to use and modify it freely. The lack of lawsuits hanging over everyone's head certainly hasn't prevented innovation from happening in FOSS.

This sort of benefit in software can be realized with much shorter terms. A 5 or 10 year term would accomplish pretty much all the same benefits. 25 years is just way too long for software.

Having people create new technology to avoid arbitrary legal hurdles instead of adopting existing and perfectly functional technology doesn't seem particularly efficient.

For every case like this, there's a patent on an optimal method which forces everyone to use suboptimal workarounds.

I’m not sure how you can read that Wright Brothers wiki article and come away thinking patents worked in America’s favor…

Further. In fields like medicine, you have a huge upfront research cost. Patents allow them to recoup that research cost.

Patents (and copyright) aren't bad. It when it becomes too broad. Not reflective of the effort involved, or too long lasting when it becomes an issue.

Fwiw, early steam engines were also patented, and that slowed down development until the patents expired.

Well if the best examples you could come up with are:

* from 100 years ago, one that would happen anyway because tech progresses, patents or not

* one that that wasn't correct one as they didn't patent VRRP (which was another open source competition to it), they tried to patent troll it

and both of them were "proper use", not "we will try to make our patent as wide as possible so we can stifle any competition"...

I think the claim of being entirely useless, at least in most spaces is very valid. There are some techs that take years and millions (medical drugs come into mind), but vast majority of patents are just stifling technical progress, and especially on software side

The Wright brothers sued Curtiss specifically for ailerons, and won. Ailerons were ruled to be a form of wing warping.

Now imagine what would happened if Euclid's books (and Newton's Principia) were Copyrighted until today.

A patent is meant to encourage people and companies to share the details of their inventions, instead of keeping them secret. In return the inventors get protection for a certain number of years.

That, and we're also past the need for geniuses to keep grinding in a cave, in hopes of landing a patent.

People are far more empowered today, many more can work near the bleeding edge, and funding can be arranged in different ways than holding on to a patent.

Solo geniuses don't have the money to operate the patent system, it doesn't work for them. All they can do is sell for cheap or else get bogged down. When they invent as an employee they outright don't own it. That's a moral outrage. And that's what the patent system is to individuals.

Good luck publishing in Costa Rica. When you're not privileged you're likely to be on the losing end. So what use is it? Better keep your invention a secret, like most do, and let the next generation display themselves as the inventors. That's the alternate reality the system actually supports.

The whole system should be scrapped. Publishing is easy nowadays, just do it. Then you'd have the rights of you can prove you're the first. Anyone that wants to use can/must give you a known amount of royalties, depending on whether the invention is a unique enabler of a class of products, or just an optimization. Which it will become over time. If you don't want that, keep it a secret and build company around it.

> the guy in first place has to spend all that time and effort to develop the thing

The problem is that patenting something doesn't require one to put a lot of time and effort - just to produce few pages of text and diagrams. So it might be sufficient for somebody to have a general idea.

Then 25 years is too much.

The problem often stems from the Patent Offices getting caught flat-footed with new tech. When the patent officers don't know enough about the field they are reviewing it is easy for things which are "obvious to experts in the field" or "overly broad" to slip thru and cause major headaches for everyone.

> It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second

Sometimes it is significantly harder. Often it's just a matter of luck

> But The basic idea is sound. If you invent a novel mechanism and publish it the government will grant you exclusive economic exploitation rights to that mechanism for the next 25 years. After that it is now fair game.

No. it is no way shape and form, good. 25 years is eternity in tech. The impact of the tech is not all that much related to investment either. You are just stifling any competition in the market

> It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second, the guy in first place has to spend all that time and effort to develop the thing, and the guy in second just has to copy the guy in first. To rectify this social injustice the patent system was developed, where the government would grant and enforce economic exploitation rights of the mechanism to the inventor.

It has completely wrong structure for that. First, the duration. Second, the way you can patent vague idea, not actual concrete implementation. It is not used to stop competition from just copying your product, it is stopping anyone in market to compete.

Suppose you came up with AI algorithm which is better than transformers and such. Your options are:

1. publish it e.g. as a paper or open source, letting all big AI labs to use it for free

2. keep it secret

Are you saying that it's evil to have a secret third option of making the algorithm public but forcing AI labs to share profit if they use it?

Depends on how they are used.

Let say you come up with a patent. You let open source use the patent, GPL3 ..., for free why charging close source solutions.

That could go to funding the open source development or other gains. FANNG has the money, take it from the them by all means.

It's more like legalized crack, it's almost never used for any remotely positive use

> If I can get one AI to reverse engineer Photoshop, and another to implement the produced spec, I have a copyright-clean version of Photoshop.

You won't get this, otherwise we had tons of LLM written photoshop alternatives already. And if it would work, that would be a good thing.

You don't know what code the A.I has been trained on. It may very well be reproducing actual Copyrighted material it has been trained on.

This is the major reason why most large open-source projects are banning big code contributions made with A.I