I used to think they were entirely useless, but since then I've learned of many instances where a much better technology is developed because the first iteration is patented.<p>For example, the Wright brothers biggest contribution to aviation was suing everyone using wing warping (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war</a>) which greatly advanced the adoption of the much more advanced ailerons.<p>Software patents have a similar effect, for example Cisco's patent on Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol led to the development of the more secure and more capable Common Address Redundancy Protocol (<a href="https://jacobfilipp.com/DrDobbs/articles/SA/v14/i05/a6.htm" rel="nofollow">https://jacobfilipp.com/DrDobbs/articles/SA/v14/i05/a6.htm</a>).<p>We tend to invest heavily in whatever we can get working first, but it's rarely close to an ideal way of doing something. By pushing every developer to find a newer, better way of doing something, patents prevent stagnation and lead to more advanced technologies.
The wright brothers patent was not on wing warping, it was on controlling a vehicle in the air. In short the Wright brothers did not invent the aeroplane they invented how to control a aeroplane.<p><a href="https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Showing_the_World/Politics_&_Patents/Patent_821343.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Sh...</a><p>"We wish it to be understood, however, that our invention is not limited to this particular construction, since any construction whereby the angular relations of the lateral margins of the aeroplanes may be varied in opposite directions with respect to the normal planes of said aeroplanes comes within the scope of our invention."<p>Some people (Curtis) felt this claim was far too encompassing and should not be enforced. But I don't know, These guys just spent a decade working out an entirely new discipline, aeronautical control. And you don't think they deserve exclusive exploitation rights to that discipline for the next 20 years?
For every case like this, there's a patent on an optimal method which forces everyone to use suboptimal workarounds.
This sort of benefit in software can be realized with much shorter terms. A 5 or 10 year term would accomplish pretty much all the same benefits. 25 years is just way too long for software.
Having people create new technology to avoid arbitrary legal hurdles instead of adopting existing and perfectly functional technology doesn't seem particularly efficient.
The intent of the patent system is to encourage publishing innovation in exchange for rights to it for a period of time, and then everyone gets to use it. IMO the biggest problem has been granting patents for inventions that at least in retrospect seem non-novel or obvious. I get that there's a grey area there at some point, but "one click ordering" is one that comes to mind. Just because someone hasn't done it exactly like that before, should not make such a simple idea patentable. And I think patents should be on specific implementations, not general ideas. If I can implement the end-user experience of one-click ordering without substantially copying Amazon's underlying technology, that should be fair to do.
>the biggest problem has been granting patents for inventions that at least in retrospect seem non-novel or obvious.<p>I don't agree that that's the biggest problem. I think the biggest problem is that patents are abused to stifle competition by refusing licenses or putting untenable fees on them. No one would have cared about Nintendo's D-pad patent if they'd just put a reasonable license fee on it. On the other hand, a patent like MP3 I would argue is quite legitimate, but putting a patent on a coded just makes interoperability more difficult. If MPEG had charged licenses for decoding chips and explicitly allowed software implementations, that would have things so much more smoother.
Trying to harp on anyone here about "efficiency" is going to fall on deaf ears.<p>Whether it's single passenger cars or AI, nobody really understands how inefficient they and their lives are.
> Cisco's patent on Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol led to the development of the more secure and more capable Common Address Redundancy Protocol<p>This seems like a success story in spite of software patents, not because of them. Just because they were forced to develop a new protocol in order to avoid getting sued for using Cisco's doesn't mean that they wouldn't still have improved on what Cisco had if they'd been allowed to use and modify it freely. The lack of lawsuits hanging over everyone's head certainly hasn't prevented innovation from happening in FOSS.
I’m not sure how you can read that Wright Brothers wiki article and come away thinking patents worked in America’s favor…
The Wright brothers sued Curtiss specifically for ailerons, and won. Ailerons were ruled to be a form of wing warping.
Now imagine what would happened if Euclid's books (and Newton's Principia) were Copyrighted until today.
A patent was meant to give a solo genius a way to treat their idea as something tangible, at a time when logistics was much slower and the world revolved around the physical.<p>Maybe they try to develop it themselves, maybe they sell the idea to a big corporation that has the resources to implement it. Either way, genius begets profit, and the world gets genius ideas... in theory anyway.<p>But a genuine idea back then needed a long time frame to actually do something with it. 20 years seemed reasonable at the time.<p>The world is less logistically constrained these days. Make it 5 years, no renewals.
I don't think patents are inherently evil, however they certainly can be used for evil.<p>But The basic idea is sound. If you invent a novel mechanism and publish it the government will grant you exclusive economic exploitation rights to that mechanism for the next 25 years. After that it is now fair game.<p>It is an attempt to solve the real problem that it is much harder to be first than second, the guy in first place has to spend all that time and effort to develop the thing, and the guy in second just has to copy the guy in first. To rectify this social injustice the patent system was developed, where the government would grant and enforce economic exploitation rights of the mechanism to the inventor.
Software patents, no. They're just evil.
Depends on how they are used.<p>Let say you come up with a patent. You let open source use the patent, GPL3 ..., for free why charging close source solutions.<p>That could go to funding the open source development or other gains. FANNG has the money, take it from the them by all means.
Software patents may be what saves the field. Currently copyright as an IP protection for software has been rendered near meaningless by AI. If I can get one AI to reverse engineer Photoshop, and another to implement the produced spec, I have a copyright-clean version of Photoshop.<p>Patents protect the <i>idea</i> of a particular program. And in the post-AI world, it's the idea that holds the value, not the implementation. Implementations are cheap now.<p>Another alternative to preventing the entire software market from collapsing is to revive the <i>Whelan v. Jaslow</i> copyright standard, under which the abstract "structure, sequence, and organization" of a program is eligible for copyright. But programmers would bristle at that almost as much as robust patent protection for software. Until, that is, the money comes in with mouths to feed and mortgages to pay...