Patents and patent reviews by the scientific community
Cross post from my technical blog
For some time now PeerToPatent ( http://www.peertopatent.org/ ) has been trying to initiate public filtering of patents that individuals and, of course, corporations are trying to get. It is no secret that most of the patents in the software industry are more likely to slow down innovation than to truly protect the rights of inventors. Well, many of them often serve as protection against such “brakes”, again serving completely different purposes than those for which patent laws were created.
The PeerToPatent project is founded by Tim O'Reilly, well known among other things as the founder of O'Reilly, and his idea is that the scientific and programmer community has the ability to block the wildest patents, such as the double-click patent received by British Telecom.
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A recent article in the Communications of ACM, “Peer to Patent Needs Your Expertise” (written by the Public Needs Your Experience), written by Andy Oram promotes this project and encourages experts in the field to participate in the project. In general, the idea sounds like the right one. Indeed, if large corporations try to patent trivialities, and then prevent others from living, including start-ups, then preview experts on a voluntary basis should greatly help in preventing such patents.
True, the same article casually remarks: “Some opponents of software patents believe that preliminary criticism by the public legitimizes patents ...” Oddly enough, I am ready to agree with that. What if a patent is written in such an intricate language that the experts simply won’t understand what it is about? Or what if there is simply no independent expert for a patent? And in general, do software patents have enough sense to be legitimate at all, whether they are reviewed by experts or not? In the end, the cryptographic algorithm used in SSL braked things for more than a decade and, until recently, did not allow the creation of Open Source implementations of https servers, although this was what was called a completely correct bona fide patent.
In general, I do not seem to have strong opinions about software patents, so I'm just talking about the article ... What do you think about it?
[1] Peer to Patent Needs Your Expertise by Andy Oram - Communications of ACM, February 2008 / Vol. 51, No.2, p.19-20
For some time now PeerToPatent ( http://www.peertopatent.org/ ) has been trying to initiate public filtering of patents that individuals and, of course, corporations are trying to get. It is no secret that most of the patents in the software industry are more likely to slow down innovation than to truly protect the rights of inventors. Well, many of them often serve as protection against such “brakes”, again serving completely different purposes than those for which patent laws were created.
The PeerToPatent project is founded by Tim O'Reilly, well known among other things as the founder of O'Reilly, and his idea is that the scientific and programmer community has the ability to block the wildest patents, such as the double-click patent received by British Telecom.
')
A recent article in the Communications of ACM, “Peer to Patent Needs Your Expertise” (written by the Public Needs Your Experience), written by Andy Oram promotes this project and encourages experts in the field to participate in the project. In general, the idea sounds like the right one. Indeed, if large corporations try to patent trivialities, and then prevent others from living, including start-ups, then preview experts on a voluntary basis should greatly help in preventing such patents.
True, the same article casually remarks: “Some opponents of software patents believe that preliminary criticism by the public legitimizes patents ...” Oddly enough, I am ready to agree with that. What if a patent is written in such an intricate language that the experts simply won’t understand what it is about? Or what if there is simply no independent expert for a patent? And in general, do software patents have enough sense to be legitimate at all, whether they are reviewed by experts or not? In the end, the cryptographic algorithm used in SSL braked things for more than a decade and, until recently, did not allow the creation of Open Source implementations of https servers, although this was what was called a completely correct bona fide patent.
In general, I do not seem to have strong opinions about software patents, so I'm just talking about the article ... What do you think about it?
[1] Peer to Patent Needs Your Expertise by Andy Oram - Communications of ACM, February 2008 / Vol. 51, No.2, p.19-20
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/20776/
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