Comments on: Kodak wins Java patent suit

The case has outraged some opponents of software patents, who claim it is a textbook example of why software should not be patentable.

[David Mohring]

Against Software Patents and full rational

Read "Against Software Patents" By The League for Programming Freedom
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/against-software-patents.html
It explains why software should be treated differently to other technology.

The above paper was refered to by Bill Gates in his 1991 "Challenges and Strategy" Memo
http://discuss.sarahsbookstores.com/Bill_Gates_Challenges_And_Strategy_Memo
[i]PATENTS: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn't done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren't simply problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas. A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the way patents are applied to software.[/i]

Even using patent exchange agreements, Patents are inherently bad for software industy.

Business methord and software patents are detrimental to the software industry as a whole, but it is also one of the major driving forces to an interesting trend amongst most of the major IT vendors.

Applying game theory to long term software industry market, for both open and proprietary vendors, based on software patents...

1) Small software developers are unlikely to benefit from the overall balance of payments from licensing of their own and other vendors software patent portfolios, since other software vendors are just as likely to hold other software patents that the developer uses in his own products.

2) Larger software vendors are unlikely to benefit from payments from licensing of their software patent portfolio, as per above small sofware developers plus the software vendor is likely to hold the lion's share of the sofware target market, profit from software patent licensing will be much smaller in proportion to the overall sales of the vendors own products.

3) Third party intellectual property "holding companies", that do not actively participate in selling actual software, are the only class of organization that can benefit from licensing of their software patent portfolios. In most cases these entities have a very tenuous relationship to the ongoing development of the software methords patented.

In 1981 US courts ruled that software and business methord could, without legislation ot the contrary, be patented. From 1981 to 1989, with a few exceptions the entire IT industry just ignored the issue of software patents.

As Bill Gates rightly stated " If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today". The Silicon valley revolution would not have taken place. From 1991 to 1997, the major software vendors slowly began build software patent portfolios and entering into cross licensing arrangements and most of the smaller vendors still ignored the issue entirely.

From 1997 on, driven by the greed of the Venture capitalists of the DotCom era, vendors and other groups began gobbling up businesses based not upon the current business viability, but the so-called intellectual property the business held. Most in the software industry still ignored these third party parasites, but larger vendor also began expanding their software patent portfolios.

Complex cross licensing arangements are increasingly becoming a legal quagmire. Microsoft is facing a number of lawsuits from companies which Microsoft did enter into a formal relationship, for example Timeline Inc
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html

Kodak had a formal relationship with Sun and the SCO Group is also suing IBM based upon the exact same class of legal cross licensing relationship that Bill Gates suggested as a solution to patents back in 1991.

[b]However[/b]
While software patents remain a threat to the entire software industry, including Linux, the patent issue is pushing many companies, including IBM, HP, SUN, Oracle, SAP and Novell are turning to a simpler form of cross licensing arrangement - the GNU General Public License, or GPL and LGPL.

Only GPL and LGPL like so-called "viral" licenses effectively grants all downstream users the right to freely use the sofware. A license that even the largest of patent portfolio holders, such as IBM, are adopting to collaboratively develop new software. This, along with customer demand, is the major reason that Linux is being widely adopted and not one or more of the BSD based distributions.

[David Arbogast]

Bah

Your logic sounds like communism. If I invent something, I have the right to patent it and make profit from it regardless of whether it is useful to anybody else or not. Removing the right to patent software inventions will simply stifle research and development, as it reduces the profit from licensing technology. If you can't think of a NEW way to build your software, then you should pay dues to the people who invented the methods you are using. Patents encourage people to innovate rather than replicate.

Besides, patented proprietary technology was the base of funding for the world's first private spacecraft that happened to win the X-Prize just today. Nobody ever generated enough revenue from OpenSource to do something like that.

Software is not an endpoint. If profit can be made from software, then technology will have the funding it needs to continually advance. When you remove profits from software, you make software the endpoint. You have it, you can use it, but that's about it. When you can sell and license your software, you can generate revenues to fund countless new endeavors.

By continuing the fight against commercial proprietary software through the restructuring of the patent system, forced acceptance of open-source systems, etc., you reduce the revenue that is generated from software sales and effectivelly kill that commercial market. Without continued revenues, there is no incentive or capital available for innovation. Instead, that money must come from other operations. Bottom line... you eliminate the software market, you eliminate profits. Those who hate Microsoft love the idea because it would spell the end of MS. Those with any economic understanding whatsoever see the destruction of a market as detrimental on a global scale.

Fanatical Microsoft haters love to claim that Microsoft "stole" concepts like the mouse and GUI... yet at the same time they claim patents are unfair. Go figure. When they want to copy your software, patents are evil. When their competitor acquires unpatented technology, they let loose with accusations of theft.

[RFM22]

What about Microsoft?

Would this also mean that Kodak may go after Microsoft for it's .Net use of how applications communicate with one another? Has Kodak had Microsoft on their target list?

[cbazza]

Worthless patents like the Eolas one.

This article didn't provide the full quote from Kodak but here it is :
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"Kodak has and continues to make substantial technology investments to ensure high-quality products. We are pleased that the court has validated Kodak's intellectual property rights protecting these valuable innovations."
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Kodak buys 3 worthless patents they call valuable innovations and uses that to describe their substantial technology investment !!!!!

That explains why they are going down the tubes since digital photography took off. Hey, I am going to sell all my assets to buy Kodak stock.... NOT :) :) :)

[volterwd]

Simple reason why software patents shouldnt be allowed

because these damn companies instead of innovating are spending 3/4 of their resources on lawyers... i agree somethngs should be locked up... but otherwise its hurting everything else