From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Oct 10 14: 1:47 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.22]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFCAF37B405 for ; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:01:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from blossom.cjclark.org (dialup-209.244.105.118.Dial1.SanJose1.Level3.net [209.244.105.118]) by hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA09320; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:01:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cjc@localhost) by blossom.cjclark.org (8.11.6/8.11.3) id f9AL1UH05222; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:01:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cjc) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:01:26 -0700 From: "Crist J. Clark" To: Salvo Bartolotta Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt , "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011010140126.M387@blossom.cjclark.org> Reply-To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu References: <000601c15084$87edd360$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <1002663600.3bc36eb096ee5@webmail.neomedia.it> <20011009231343.C387@blossom.cjclark.org> <1002731960.3bc479b899603@webmail.neomedia.it> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <1002731960.3bc479b899603@webmail.neomedia.it>; from bartequi@neomedia.it on Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 06:39:20PM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Let me preface with IANAL. On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 06:39:20PM +0200, Salvo Bartolotta wrote: > "Crist J. Clark" wrote: [snip] > > The things mentioned above were new when they were discovered. What if people > had "patented" the [more or less trivial] algorithms mentioned the very same > day they were created? :-) > Solving second degree polynomials was not trivial when it was discovered. Patent protection is a rather recent invention realtive to mathematics. We tend to think of science being a field where everyone is just looking for a chance to share all of their thoughts with everyone else. That's the ideal. This is not how it always worked nor how it has ever worked. Great mathematicians (e.g. Newton) closely guarded their discoveries and methods from the rest of the world until _they_ were ready to release it. You couldn't use Newton's discoveries for quite a while after he discovered them since he didn't let them out right away. Knowing Newton's personality, he might have applied for patents if could have. > Or, to shift the origin of the time axis, what if people patented each and > every new mathematical/informatics/routing/whatever theorem and/or algorithm? There are many motives for patenting or not patenting. There is no point in patenting something that you don't think will ever recover more in license money than it costs to register and maintain the patent. Most discoveries fall into that category. When speaking of "routing," a lot of companies spend lots of money developing technologies and then give away the knowledge in the form of an open standard and an RFC. In that case, it is in their interest for as many people to adopt the standard as possible. For someone like a Cisco, they can spend money on this with no patent return since they plan to make money off of the hardware and support. Although it is perfectly reasonable for them to sometimes patent this kind of work if interoperaility with other products is not something they are after. > Should/would you have to pay each and every time a theoretical paper/book of > yours made [auxiliary] use of a patented theorem/algorithm? No. Just explaining how a patented process works is not using the patented process to produce something. For example, back when RSA was still patented, it was perfectly legal for me to put the algorithm in a book and sell it. > And/or each and > every time a program of yours made use of the patented algorithm(s)? But I could not put a CDROM in my book with a working version of the code without licensing the technology. > How long > [reasonably] for? Patents have always had expirations. There are very good arguments that patents for algorithms should have short lifespans realtive to the current laws. > What impact would this have on the development of _new_ works and/or [better] > programs in the field (or even in other fields)? It depends on the field. Allowing patents can cause a field to boom. If people believe they can make money off of a technology and that they will have patent protection for their discoveries, they may invest great amounts of money and resources into the field. > Incidentally, AFAIK, the development of Mathematics, Logic, Informatics, > Science at large has occurred fast and furious without patents for the last > few centuries[1]. Freedom of development has been (and is) of primal > importance. It is for **this** reason that you are in a position to develop > your new nifty ideas _today_. As I mentioned at the top, it may not be as free as open as you think. If anyone had patented ideas, it wouldn't matter today anyways since the patents would have long ago expired. Anyways, patents _do_ allow information to be "free." If you have a patented device or process you can feel free to share information about how it works, how you discovered it, etc. and not need to worry about people stealing your investment. The alternative is people trying to keep all of their work completely secret to avoid letting other people hear of it and copy it. [snip] > Theorem/algorithm T/Ai (the ith theorem and the associated algorithm, if any) > is a scientific achievement, for i=1,2,...,N. As such, these theorems must > figure in the appropriate book(s). They constitute knowledge and as such they > must be shared. Not sharing knowledge is a dangerous form of obscurantism. > And YES, it should be a national[2] interest to finance researchers rather > then make them attempt to *patent* *knowledge*... They "must be" shared with the world. Hmmm... Again, it is and never really has been this way. Take one of the most interesting scientific and engineering efforts of the century, the Manhattan Project. That research took place amongst a _very_ small but able scientific community sequestered in the desert. It was quite a while for that to be shared with the world at large; we all know why. Same story for the hydrogen bomb or any other technology developments placed under the cover of national security. The idea that all information "needs to be free" is a rather naive one. By the way, I should point out, and this may not be clear to you, that you just cannot patent information. Say that tomorrow you discover a proof that (much to everyone's surprise) NP really does not exist and any mathematical problem can be solved in polynomial time. You cannot patent that fact or that information. However, if you discover a method to actually solve some set of problems once believed to be NP in polynomial time, you can patent that method if you want. If someone else finds a method to solve some other class of NP problems using some method of their own, you cannot claim you own it because you wrote the proof that it could be done. > It is about this point that I disagree. In general, IMO Science should be > patent-free. That's just not a reasonable view of how the world works. For example, the entire field of medicine would come to an almost complete standstill without patents. HUGE amounts of money are spent developing drugs and devices to be patented. Again, drug companies and other research groups freely publish their results in the very rich medical literature due to the fact that they have patents on the technologies. If they didn't have patents, they wouldn't publish the information. (And no, I'm not going to fall into the arguments over patenting genes or organisms. That is a troubling detail of patent law that needs serious consideration, but is no cause to throw the baby out with the bathwater.) > > (Not to say that some people haven't pulled some things off with the > > Patent Office. One of the jokes about a former employer of mine was > > that the company had a patent on least-squares regression. It really > > did.) > > Urk. The patent was for applying least-squares regression to a certain specific type of data in a specific way. It is unlikely it would have stood up to scrutiny, and I think it's expired by now. It's not as outrageous as Amazon's "single-click" patent. No where am I saying patent law is perfect. I don't shop Amazon. > If Numerical Analysis (Numerical Calculus/Methods in English?) were to become > a collection of patents, how [fast] would people go ahead? I am sure that there are some patents on various methods of numerical analysis. > Next, what would prevent all fields of Mathematics from becoming a set of > patents? Would you imagine Functional Analysis (cf Quantum Mechanics) to be a > collection of patents? You are most probably aware that Q.M. will have a > number of consequences for C.S. and computers at large. Again, you cannot patent information. A process you patent can then be freely shared with the world. You really only need to worry about getting a license for a patented algorithm if you are selling the algorithm or using it yourself and selling the products of it. > There has to be a better form of protection, both of the programmer's work as > a form of art and of the programmer's work as science (well, when it is the > case :-)), a form of protection avoiding obscurantism. IMO, FWIW, patenting > algorithms is a dangerous way. But you agree there needs to be protection. If you have a better way, offer it up. I don't think that the patent system is perfect or that it is not frequently abused[0]. I do believe patents are the best fit we have right now for protecting the IP inherent in computer programs. [0] There are some beauties in the computer and Internet industries beside's Amazon, Open Market (5,715,314) owns electronic shopping carts, Priceline.com (5,794,207) owns patents on buyer-driven sales (and has sued M$ and Expedia, I hate to have to cheer for M$, but...), and Sightsound.com (5,191,573) owns music downloads (has sued Time Warner and CDNow, they demand 1% royalties on _all_ online music sellers). -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu cjclark@jhu.edu cjc@freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message