Ask HN: As a software developer from the stone ages who’s spent many years in the field of intellectual property (IP), I’m truly curious why Silicon Valley is so down on patents. This is especially true for software patents, and the sentiment is at least tenfold greater here than anywhere else I’ve seen.
Forget for a moment which side is right or wrong.<p>The startup community especially in SiVy values the scientific method, a diversity of views, facts over opinions, open-mindedness, objective thinking etc. In fact, I see these important skills, as I think you do, exhibited by all of the successful founders, partners and investors, and even in the YC training.<p>But when it comes to software and patents, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it’s group think: software patents suck, and you suck if you disagree. Believe me, I know there are some truly brilliant folks reading this but I wonder if there’s an understanding about how much marketing and the band-wagon thing has shaped your perceptions.<p>I’d love to hear your genuine thoughts. To be candid with you, it’s an area I’ve been looking to disrupt. Also, I’d love to hear from you whether you’ve personally suffered because of software patents, regardless of how, or whether your opinion is anecdotal from others or what you’ve read. Any other thoughts are welcome!<p>If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer at least some of them. And if you'd like to tell me where to go, that's cool too.
Short & sweet: Software is just lambda calculus, and the USPTO has already decided math cannot be patented. It is bizarre they would make such a gigantic oversight.<p>Longer and more pedestrian: Computers are a sandbox that we've created ourselves. Programs are just a set of instructions to tell the computer what to do, and every possible thing a computer can do is already known and limited by the sandbox we have designed. To claim that a certain set of instructions causes the computer to do something more novel than any other is nonsense. It's all just moving bits around.<p>Down with software patents.
If the USPTO were capable of competently evaluating software patents to determine whether they were actually non-obvious inventions or just taking long-standing practices and appending "on a computer", then the concept might have some merit. But they aren't, so it doesn't.
It's interesting how basically everyone in the thread has an example of a badly awarded or maliciously used software patent and there even existed an entire industry predicated on lawsuits built on the back of portfolios of the things but clearly the community is suffering group think.<p>At this point the burden of proof is on the software patent holders/supporters; provide some examples where software patents have driven innovation done <i>any</i> sort of good. There's nothing to disrupt because the system is completely unequiped to evaluate and award software patents and probably never will be (if you have the skills to evaluate a software patent you could just work in software for a fraction of the schooling and equal or more pay)
> <i>"As a software developer from the stone ages who’s spent many years in the field of intellectual property (IP), I’m truly curious why Silicon Valley is so down on patents."</i><p>Sounds like you've witnessed the rise of the open-source movement.<p>It seems that software development is much more of a distributed effort now, as many companies build proprietary systems <i>on top</i> of open-source frameworks and libraries.<p>So, I put the decline of patents down to the rise of open-source technology. Companies can't patent their ideas due to open-source licensing restrictions.<p>Lastly, there's a lot of horror stories of patent trolls and fraud that discourages a lot of people who probably <i>should</i> patent their ideas, from doing so. Anyway, just my thoughts.
Hi Everyone - I know there's a lot of prose in the responses below, but you may discover a lot about the entire patent system (especially business method and software patents) and the issues startups have to deal with, by checking it out.<p>My responses are not to take sides, but so that you get the challenges in light of the patent system as it really works. Already I've gained a lot of insight from your responses.<p>Please keep your responses coming. I'd love to hear some anecdotal info or studies showing the problems with software patents.
There are a few sides to the story, you are viewing this as a software developer, as you mentioned. You need to put on a different hat, and then decide it patents are valuable, where, and why. As much as there are horribly abused software patents, I assume the same of other patents types as well.<p>A patent is intended to protect an invention. In most cases, that means the intention is for the benefit of a business, even though the patent itself is awarded to individuals.<p>If you ask me as a software engineer, how I feel about patents, I'll say I don't like them. I don't like having to be concerned that the way I implement a certain feature could be limited because somebody else came to the same or similar solution as I did.<p>As a business owner, ask me how I feel about patents, and now the line gets a bit blurrier. I don't like that somebody can sue me for a product I created and am selling, but I do like that I can protect something I created from being nocked off and copied.<p>We're currently building a sleep-tech hardware product (it's pretty cool <a href="https://soundmind.co" rel="nofollow">https://soundmind.co</a>) and in an industrial design meeting, it was suggested that we get our hands on a similar product in the market so we can reverse engineer it. Me and my co-founder both hated that idea. We already have a unique take on the market, and our own method of doing things which we feel is a better way. But apparently, there are many people who think it is just fine to take a product, figure out how to copy it, and do that and try to sell it.<p>This can happen in software or in hardware. Why should it be any different from one to the other?<p>Now the other challenge comes in when you have examples like the x-plane given by @taf2 in the comments, or Amazon's one-click patent. These should have been obvious to the patent office that the inventions either already existed or were obvious, and should not have been given protection in the first place.<p>I hope you are able to disrupt the current state of patents for software as it could be valuable if handled properly. But I wouldn't go around asking software engineers what they would like in a patent protection service, you need to speak to business owners.
I feel like the the x plane story is pretty good place to start to get an good understanding of why software patents are so bad... maybe here <a href="https://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/details/" rel="nofollow">https://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/details/</a><p>To start... and then continue here <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157984" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157984</a>
I don't care for software patents. I feel software is like art (excluded from patents for a very long time) and if I come up with what someone else comes up with that is that.
I worked at a startup that dumped crazy money into patents. They were awarded many that I feel are borderline at best.
Patent system overall sucks, it is capitalism like so much else.<p>Side note: I worked for a guy that was awarded a patent that allows him to be the only person legally able to fill a balloon with ANYTHING but a gas and sell it. He refused to monetize it and went broke.