| Software patents |
I was lucky enough to attend Paul Graham's talk on software patents at Google the other week. It's nice to see that Paul has now written that talk up. I went into the talk expecting the conclusion to be that software patents are evil, and rather surprisingly to me that wasn't the outcome at all. Paul did make a compelling argument though, and I think he has me convinced. Anyway, read the article and decide for yourself.
posted at: 13:03 | path: /patent | permanent link to this entry
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#1
Jason P
How can someone give a talk about software patents in 2006 and not mention NTP/RIM? Paul's stuff is usually on the mark, but I just don't buy his premise that there's no difference between patenting a machine and patenting software.
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#2
Michael Still
Well, I think Paul's point is more that a machine often contains software now, and software is a special case of machine -- it's a thing to do something and is therefore a machine.
The thing with NTP and RIM is that those patents should never have been approved, and the judge shouldn't have refused to reconsider his ruling once they were invalidated. That's judicial stupidity and examiner laziness, not a flaw in the patent system per se.
Let's fix those things, not the patent system.