CSC 379:Week 2, Group 6

Software Patents

Discussion Questions

• What are the ethical implications of having businesses devoted solely to acquiring, holding, and enforcing patents through lawsuits? What are the costs and benefits posed by allowing these “cottage industries” to exist?

• Often groups will not enforce patents through lawsuits due to the risk of their patents being found invalid. They have found that it is often more wise to acquire and hold patents as a deterrent to competition. These actions pose a risk to software developers that do not have patents of their own to balance the threats. Examine the ethical considerations of this practice and of the responses to counter patent litigation threats.

Patent Infringemaent:

• Patents on software are there to protect the labor, time, and money invested ny the creator during the developement of the software. However, many people believe that patents become just an obstacle to developing new software. Many people have begun patenting basic ideas that were already commonly in use in the industry. Often patents are intentionaly broad to make them more valuable. These basic patents are beginning to make it very difficult for the developement and distribution of new software. People have patented all simple code and ideas that are essential to developing higher level software. This means a software developer must negotiate with each patent holder he violates to try and obtain a license to use it. This is obviuosly making it much harder for a software developer to produce a legal product.
  • With all these problem created by software patents what ethics are involved in the development of software that likely infringes on existing patents?
    • One of the main criteria for a patent is it be novel and nonobvious, the problem with this is for many the US Patent Office employed no computer science professionals; so they had no idea what ideas and practices were considers basic and obvious and had been in use for years in the software developement field. This means that many of these patents should never been issued in the first place.
    • Software patents do not cover entire programs. Patents only cover the specific algorithms and techniques to carry out a task in a program. All these small bits being patented makes it nearly impossible to use them to develope a large useful program.
    • With the internet and sites like Google Patent Search it is becoming much easier to find and research patents in order to avoind infringement. This has made unintentional infringement a less likely event with patent information more widely available.
    • Patents are however difficult, timely, and very expensive to obtain. This means that no matter how trivial or redundant a patent might be someone has put a great deal of effort into obtaining it and thus have a legitimate claim to ownership of the idea. This should also discourage people from just filing as many patents as possible as a way to make a profit.
• According to the US Constitution the purpose of patent is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." So the question is do software patents promote progress? It is most likely that they don't. Most software patents only hinder the progress of the field by forcing developers to deal with lawsuits, red tape, and licensing issues. Many people feel that patent laws need to be changed and more specific rules for software patents need to be developed.

Links:

• Software Patents