Patents Unleashed and the future of Java Programming

G

George Neuner

A really simple way to determine the highest '1' bit in a word is to
keep right-shifting it until it becomes 0. Similarly, a really simple
way to determine the lowest '1' bit is to keep right-shifting the word
until it becomes odd, or 0 (in which case there were no '1' bits).

Are you telling me that if I implemented those algorithms out in actual
code, I would be stealing NEC's intellectual property?

If that's the way NEC did it you absolutely would be violating their
patent. I don't recall exactly what they did now (it has been too
long) but I do remember that it was truly trivial and I was absolutely
stunned that the USPTO would accept it as an "invention".

After reading the patents, I had a number of correnspondences with
members of ACM and IEEE (I belong to both) who were involved in
creating the software prior art database for the PTO. There was a
fair bit of disgust when others found about it.

George
=============================================
Send real email to GNEUNER2 at COMCAST o NET
 
M

Mark Preston

Knute said:
Patents should never have been allowed for algorithms or code. That's
what copyright is for.
Algorithms are quite specifically excluded from patents because they are
methods and not creations.
 
J

Joona I Palaste

If that's the way NEC did it you absolutely would be violating their
patent. I don't recall exactly what they did now (it has been too
long) but I do remember that it was truly trivial and I was absolutely
stunned that the USPTO would accept it as an "invention".
After reading the patents, I had a number of correnspondences with
members of ACM and IEEE (I belong to both) who were involved in
creating the software prior art database for the PTO. There was a
fair bit of disgust when others found about it.

I find the very idea of being accused of stealing intellectual property
I never even saw (or knew existed) insulting. I have never been in *any*
contact with NEC, either with or without their permission. I came up
with those algorithms on my own, and I bet my life I wasn't the first,
actually there must have been thousands before me, all working
independently of each other.
 
M

Michael Borgwardt

Joona said:
I find the very idea of being accused of stealing intellectual property
I never even saw (or knew existed) insulting. I have never been in *any*
contact with NEC, either with or without their permission. I came up
with those algorithms on my own,

You're confusing the concepts of copyright and patents ("intellectual
property" is a damn vague term). Nobody could seriously accuse you of
copyright infringements for the reasons you're giving. But patents
aren't only infringed by direct plagiarism; they represent a
flat-out monopoly on using a technical invention. The institution of
patent protection assumes that such inventions require significant
work and investment and the inventors should therefore be able to
profit from them (while at the same time ensuring that the invention
is published and not kept secret and possibly forgotten).

That this is not the case with (and patents should therefore not apply to)
software development is the whole point here.
and I bet my life I wasn't the first,
actually there must have been thousands before me, all working
independently of each other.

That (insufficient checking of prior art, too high a cost of challenging
a patent even if obviously frivolous) is what's wrong with the way patents
are granted and used today.
 
J

Joona I Palaste

You're confusing the concepts of copyright and patents ("intellectual
property" is a damn vague term). Nobody could seriously accuse you of
copyright infringements for the reasons you're giving. But patents
aren't only infringed by direct plagiarism; they represent a
flat-out monopoly on using a technical invention. The institution of
patent protection assumes that such inventions require significant
work and investment and the inventors should therefore be able to
profit from them (while at the same time ensuring that the invention
is published and not kept secret and possibly forgotten).

Does this mean that NEC has a monopoly on finding the first or last '1'
bit in a byte? If anyone else tries to find the first or last '1' bit in
a byte, NEC can sue them for patent infringement?
If this was a more complex algorithm, such as handwriting recognition,
NEC would obviously deserve a patent for that. But a patent for
something you don't need to even be a college freshman to come up with
on your own? What's next, a patent on addition and substraction?
That this is not the case with (and patents should therefore not apply to)
software development is the whole point here.
That (insufficient checking of prior art, too high a cost of challenging
a patent even if obviously frivolous) is what's wrong with the way patents
are granted and used today.

It sounds like big wealthy corporations are patenting anything they can
think of, and the patent organisations are too stupid to realise the
things the patent applications are for are way too general and trivial
to (1) require any significant work to come up with, or (2) have been
invented by the patent applier. So they, not seeing past the big wad of
cash, grant patents on things like basic bitwise arithmetic.

--
/-- Joona Palaste ([email protected]) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"'So called' means: 'There is a long explanation for this, but I have no
time to explain it here.'"
- JIPsoft
 
R

Roedy Green

I find the very idea of being accused of stealing intellectual property
I never even saw (or knew existed) insulting.

That's the very essence of patent law. Several teams work
independently and the first to the finish line block the others from
using the fruit of their research.
 
J

Joona I Palaste

That's the very essence of patent law. Several teams work
independently and the first to the finish line block the others from
using the fruit of their research.

That's very stupid, then. They've clearly come up with the ideas by
themselves, but then the law retroactively changes that, saying that
no, from now on, you stole it. If such a thing happened with real
property, for example if some big investment company suddenly marched up
to me and said that they've decided I've stolen the money I have worked
hard for, people would think they're crazy. But out here in intellectual
world, anything goes, it's the law of the jungle.
 
A

Andrew Thompson

..What's next, a patent on addition and substraction?

I am preparing the application
papers right now..

Anybody got an application fee?
Split it 50/50. ..wait.
That involves divisision, *damnit*! ;-)
 
R

Roedy Green

That's very stupid, then. They've clearly come up with the ideas by
themselves, but then the law retroactively changes that, saying that
no, from now on, you stole it. If such a thing happened with real
property, for example if some big investment company suddenly marched up
to me and said that they've decided I've stolen the money I have worked
hard for, people would think they're crazy. But out here in intellectual
world, anything goes, it's the law of the jungle.

It is not quite as bad as that. The patent holder must publish how his
invention works. This means EVERYONE understands it now, and everyone
can use it freely in 17 years.

If you did not have patent laws, companies would keep everything they
discovered secret. They have to be bribed into disclosure with the
monopoly. The problem is 17 years in an eternity in the computer
world. A 7 year patent would be much more reasonable.
 
G

George Neuner

Sorry guys, I misremembered. It was *not* Nippon Electric Corp (NEC)
but rather National Semiconductor (NSM). I offer my apologies to NEC
and to anyone else who has suffered trying to locate the patents I
described.

I also thought I still had the correspondences, but they were from
1998 and I apparently purged most of the messages. However I did find
this reference: US #5,831,877 "Bit searching through 8, 16, or 32 bit
operands using a 32 bit data path" - which was the subject of
considerable discussion and animosity at the time it popped out. You
can view it online at www.uspto.gov.

This is an algorithm patent which describes a process which could be
realized in either hardware or software. The "claims" section of the
patent is what the law considers to be the intellectual property - the
"description" covers a particular realizable implementation of the
claimed invention but the description itself is not an enforcable
entity [ you can't patent an abstract idea, the law requires that
there must be a ready implementation].

In the case of this patent, the description covers an implementation
involving both software (x86 compatible) and some hypothetical
hardware, but the claims are very general (ie. just an algorithm) and
could potentially be enforced against any implementation.

This is one of the early (and really blatant) offenders. Later
software patents had to be more creative in slipping algorithms past
the examiners, but in this one they didn't even try.

George
=============================================
Send real email to GNEUNER2 at COMCAST o NET
 
G

George Neuner

I just read that the Electronic Frontier Fonundation (www.eff.org)
will be launching a campaign to review software and web process
patents and to file opposition to those patents which they consider
frivilous and/or contrary to public good.

George
=============================================
Send real email to GNEUNER2 at COMCAST o NET
 

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