Interesting quote from HPs top Linux Exec:
"'Refusing to patent one's ideas is leaving oneself exposed for absolutely no good reason,' Fink said. 'For some, (getting patents) may seem like selling out. You can comfort yourself that it's what you do with the patent that matters, not the fact that you have one.'"
This makes sense to me. Software patents are here to stay. In many cases, the intellectual property is more valuable than the tangible assets of a company itself (via Salon):
"...What made this fire sale different from most, though, was the power of a single set of assets -- Commerce One's Web services patent portfolio. In a relatively rare decision, the bankruptcy court decided to separate the sale of these patents from the sale of the rest of the company, thereby allowing a separate bidding process to take place exclusively for the patent portfolio.
This decision drew significant attention from the patent community, including companies such as Intellectual Ventures and ThinkFire Inc. that persist solely on the acquisition, licensing and litigation of patents. With these new bidders in the game, the auction became highly competitive, eventually ending with a bid from the mysterious "JGR Acquisitions" for $15.5 million. (The rest of the business was sold for a mere $4.1 million.)..."
"...When faced with two choices -- selling a company's patents as part of its overall assets or selling the patents alone -- the court (and the market) chose the latter. This means that in the eyes of the legal system and the marketplace, the Commerce One patents were more valuable to independent licensing firms as legal threats than they were to an actual company that makes a Web services product."
Although I disagree with the Salon's conclusions, it seems that software patents are here to stay and are quickly becoming more valuable than the software itself.
While I agree with your assessment of the importance of patents, I think it's worth looking at the types of software patents.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, a patent for a unique algorithm is different, in my mind, than a patent for a user interface control. The algorithm is black box technology, and licensable. The user interface control is easily duplicated, and very hard to keep under the direction of a license.
Big picture architecture concepts strike me as another tough sell; again, it's not a black box, it's really just a set of general ideas, potentially not even "original art".
So, what do you view as patent-able? I'm certain you'll recall an exec at a mutual former employer who was attempting to patent a web-based B2B sales concept and implementation. So, maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way.
I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that anything “that can be created by man can be patented” - as long as it is non-obvious, novel and useful.
ReplyDeleteYou can't patent a "for loop", for example - is obvious and not novel.
But, you would be surprised at the body of stuff in the software that has a patent. The most famous of course, being the "one-click" check out from Amazon. Sun Microsystems has several on Java and Java Beans (as well as Solaris). IBM has tons.