wrote a letter to EFF
May. 29th, 2013 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sab123I've been supporting EFF for a while, and I have an issue with one of the recent campaigns, specifically the campaign about the "patent trolls".
All the EFF postings say that having a legal company that makes money by buing patents and suing the infringers is a bad thing. But is it? Think about it from the perspective of a small inventor. The worst nightmare of a small inventor is a large company copying the invention of his patent without a license. It's very bad in two ways. First, obviously it floods the market with a competing product. Second, the inventor has to sue them or risk losing the patent. And it's very hard for a small inventor to sue a large company about a patent infringement, exactly because the large company is able to protract the case and easily outspend and bankrupt the inventor. So the small inventors have to buy the legal insurance, in case if they have to sue for their inventions, and even that is not a particularly great solution.
On the other hand, being able to sell the patent to a well-financed company that specializes in suing the patent infringers provides a great way for a small inventor to make money from a patent, essentially outsorcing the litigation.
So the real problem is not the patent trolls. The patent trolls are the necessary and useful part of the ecosystem. The real problem is that the patents are granted for the obvious things, that should not be patentable in the first place. Apple, for example, has a lot of patents of this category.
A patent is supposed to be granted for the inventions that are not obvious to anyone skilled in the art. For example, Richard Feynman has a story of how he was working at Los Alamos and the patent department people asked them for ideas about the use of atomic power, and he easily came up with a list "put an atmoic power on a submarine, and you have an atomic submarine, put it on an airplane, and you have an atomic airplane", and so on, and all of them ended up patented. This kind of obvious things should not be patentable. And I know that EFF has been working in this direction too, so I'd like this direction to continue, but the campaign against the "patent trolls" is just outright wrong.
Continuing this theme, I see the campaign against the software patents alotgether. And I think that it's also outright wrong. Basically, think about the alternative: what can a company do in the absence of patents? The only answer is the commercial secrets, with NDAs and DRMs, and persecution of any attempts to circmvent the DRMs, such as the DMCA. Because of this I see the software patents as a good thing, as the only reasonable solution. On the other hand, I feel that the DRM systems are evil and must be fought. Since EFF also opposes DRMs and DMCA, this is the direction I would like it to take, and fighting the software patents contradicts the fight against the DRMs.
All the EFF postings say that having a legal company that makes money by buing patents and suing the infringers is a bad thing. But is it? Think about it from the perspective of a small inventor. The worst nightmare of a small inventor is a large company copying the invention of his patent without a license. It's very bad in two ways. First, obviously it floods the market with a competing product. Second, the inventor has to sue them or risk losing the patent. And it's very hard for a small inventor to sue a large company about a patent infringement, exactly because the large company is able to protract the case and easily outspend and bankrupt the inventor. So the small inventors have to buy the legal insurance, in case if they have to sue for their inventions, and even that is not a particularly great solution.
On the other hand, being able to sell the patent to a well-financed company that specializes in suing the patent infringers provides a great way for a small inventor to make money from a patent, essentially outsorcing the litigation.
So the real problem is not the patent trolls. The patent trolls are the necessary and useful part of the ecosystem. The real problem is that the patents are granted for the obvious things, that should not be patentable in the first place. Apple, for example, has a lot of patents of this category.
A patent is supposed to be granted for the inventions that are not obvious to anyone skilled in the art. For example, Richard Feynman has a story of how he was working at Los Alamos and the patent department people asked them for ideas about the use of atomic power, and he easily came up with a list "put an atmoic power on a submarine, and you have an atomic submarine, put it on an airplane, and you have an atomic airplane", and so on, and all of them ended up patented. This kind of obvious things should not be patentable. And I know that EFF has been working in this direction too, so I'd like this direction to continue, but the campaign against the "patent trolls" is just outright wrong.
Continuing this theme, I see the campaign against the software patents alotgether. And I think that it's also outright wrong. Basically, think about the alternative: what can a company do in the absence of patents? The only answer is the commercial secrets, with NDAs and DRMs, and persecution of any attempts to circmvent the DRMs, such as the DMCA. Because of this I see the software patents as a good thing, as the only reasonable solution. On the other hand, I feel that the DRM systems are evil and must be fought. Since EFF also opposes DRMs and DMCA, this is the direction I would like it to take, and fighting the software patents contradicts the fight against the DRMs.
