skuinders

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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http://web.bryant.edu/~srk2

uman

holy shit

I don't know how many times I have to say it but
you
do
not
want
a
copyright

Oh, and about patents, you have to apply to get one, whereas with a copyright, it is copyrighted the moment you write it down. But that does not help you in this situation.


Hope this clears things up.

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DaWei

To reiterate uman's and my previous posts, IDEAS are protected by patent, not copyright or trademark. It's an expensive process. If you are being paid for your work by someone else, the rights to your idea are theirs unless it's totally divorced from anything they're associated with, EVEN IF YOU DO IT ON YOUR OWN TIME, unless you have previously made a contract precluding their ownership in it. When I got my patent in the mid-80s, they (the people I was contracting for) gave me $100 when they filed and $1000 when it was granted. The patent was mine, the rights were theirs. To be fair, just having the patent was worth at least $10,000 a year to me because, as a credential, it drove my market value up. Incidentally, the patent does not necessarily give you the right to do anything (it might be an illegal thing or process); it gives you the right to prevent others from doing anything with it.

The things I have told you were facts as of that time. If the patent laws have changed substantially, I'm unaware of it. I know the process sucks because a guy sued my company for infringing on his patent for passwords, which had been issued to him in 1984. His suit was tossed out, of course, because it was easy for us to prove that the password predated that time substantially. It still cost a bundle to get it sheetcanned.

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iignotus

Patents on intellectual property are evil, by the way. If you value your soul at all, I would suggest you refrain from filing one. US Patents can not be filed by someone under 18 (afaik), also. They usually cost $300 and up, depending on what you're patenting.

A person puts a program onto a Small Device (like a remote, a toaster, a gameboy, etc.) by transferring it in a process much like USB or Serial connectors, into the ROM of the device. It can then be accessed through the electronics in the system.

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uman

uh, what?

Why are they evil?

Obvious or frivolous ones suck, but why are patents generally bad?

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DaWei

Patents are not bad. Frivolous patents that sneak by the patent office are bad. Patents allow creative persons to reap the rewards of their creativity for a certain period of time before others can cash in at the inventor's expense just because they have more capital available. If you couldn't protect a truly original idea, the incidence of truly original ideas would decline.

At one point, my company has a nice mechanical design based on an original idea. Our end-of-tape detector sucked rocks. A large company wanted to trade the rights to use their EOT detector for rights to use our device. We said, "No". It was a hallmark of our device, instantly recognizable. They said, "Okay, we're gonna use it. You'll be ten years in the courts before you win, and we'll be through with it by that time." And they did. One is powerless enough, even with rights; no need to exacerbate it by making people give their goods and possessions to another just because the other can't hack it.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

iignotus

Certainly not patents in general I mean (almost all) patents on intellectual property, especially within the realm of computer software.
As most IP patents are.
*Patents allow large companies
People who grant patents don't usually understand the concept of "creativity".
That doesn't stop them, since even logical patents take years to grant. They can be filed by other companies and rejected in favor of said other company's filing...
...and that is why.

Nowadays, patents generally have the opposite effect of what they're intended to do -- spur the incentive for creative ideas. IP Patents deter intellectual advancement from another person/company/whatever, even if they have more to contribut than the organisation with the patent.

IMO, the idea of patents was implemented because there was a need to stop people from going out of their way in order to learn the neccesary skills and spending time/money to obtain the neccesary physical materials to compete with another person's product/idea. However, since there is nothing stopping (and never shold there be) anyone from learning a programming language (or a branch of maths, etc.) and coming up with ideas of their own, nearly all IP patents are frivilous. Learning is not an expense. The ability to learn is free to anyone, and granting patents for something that anyone can do is ridiculous.

Now mind you, I do have at the least a fair knowledge of patents, and as such I certainly don't see the idea of patent law as being unneccesary. At least with regard to the USPTO, patents for Intellectual Property are being misguidedly granted due to a lack of knowledge on the behalf of the granter, and the potential grantee should know better. However, a wealth of knowledge does not stop the desire for wealth of another kind, no matter how unneccesary it may be.

Ideas can be patentable and overtly complex ones should be, but far too many people (and companies) believe that their idea is something that has never been thought of before by all of mankind, and they have the tactics and cash to prevent progress by others to secure income -- not to mention that prior art is MUCH harder to prove than it seems.

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DaWei

I grant you that, and I mentioned the problems in my post. Denigrating a concept because its implementation has become flawed is somewhat akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. There is a high probability that if you should bust your ass over a truly new idea that offers rewarding commercial success, you will wish you could patent it.

All good ideas are intellectual property -- what else would they be? I'll give you credit for rational, if perhaps not all-pervasive, thought and expression, at least. Far too many of the detractors are just wind chimes blowing in the breeze of blather.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

iignotus

Much of that is very true (not the blather part ). However, like I said I am refering to the current state of the USPTO's (as that's the only country's patent and tm office I know of) policies on granting intellectual property patents. And, since we are on a programming forum, I reckoned that this patentable idea Solid Snake was wondering about would be related to programming or computers.

Not to detract from his possible discovery of a truely ingenious idea especially since I don't have the slightest what it is, but the likelihood that creating a patent for an idea that not many have the ability to understand or mentally develope themselves is very slim.

The USPTO's current lack of qualification to judge ingenuity of pending IP patents is why, at this moment, people should be very wise and investigate the base of their IP patent before putting restrictions on its development by others. The USPTO needs to become more aware of the complex, yet increasingly accessible world of computer hardware and software (along with a few other related things).

The patent situation with regards to software/IP is more akin to having an unqualified teacher or boss. Patents are generally neccessary to initialise development, be it 'intellectual' or otherwise, but the ability to put a stranglehold on progress within the academia of any given field should be avoided at all costs.

P.S.....My disagreement is not with whether or not good ideas are intellectual property (all ideas are some form of property, in one way or another I'm sure), but with the genuineness of ideas that are filed for patent and subsequently granted.

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stevengs

That is certainly true. Did daVinci leave anything for the rest of us to invent? (People often tend to overrate their uniqueness imho, especially in today's America of sheep. Aside from yer fingerprints and a bit of yer dna... )

A patent search, is a very costly thing in itself, might help ambitious inventors rest more easily, but I am not sure it is binding.

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"Is this a piece of your brain?" - Basil Fawlty