Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!augean!sibyl!ian
From: ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ (Ian Dall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Patents and Architecture
Message-ID: <693@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ>
Date: 28 Jun 90 03:59:05 GMT
References: <62864@sgi.sgi.com>
Reply-To: ian@sibyl.OZ (Ian Dall)
Organization: Engineering, Uni of Adelaide, Australia
Lines: 47

In article <62864@sgi.sgi.com> karsh@trifolium.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:
}There seems to be two related threads going on in this newsgroup.  One
}thread "XOR Cursors" consists largely of patent bashing.  Posters are
}upset about certain patents which they think are for "obvious"
}software.
}
}Another thread (Speed Kills) bemoans the fact that there is very little
}new innovation in software architecture.  The thrust of this thread is
}that software engineers spend their time re-creating the same things
}over and over again and therefore little new innovation is occurring.
}
}These two concepts seem highly related to me....
}The benefits to society are:
}
}    o	There is an economic incentive to invent.  This causes there
}	to be more inventions.
}
}    o	There is an economic disincentive to repeatedly re-implement the
}	same thing.  Hence inventors are constantly forced to find new
}	intellectual areas to invent in.
}
}    o	Since patents require full disclosure of the invention, new ideas
}	need not be kept secret.  Hence inventors can learn from previous
}	inventions and, by this, become more proficient at inventing.

That is how it is supposed to work. However, I don't know that it does
work that way in practice. The problem is that patents force a lot of
effort to be spent doing the same thing in a slightly different way.
I'm not sure that it is the concept of patents which is at fault here
or the actual fine details of how it all works. I think 17 years
(varies a bit from country to country) is too long. The period of
patent protection was set as a compromise between Bruce's first and
last points, but it originated in a time of much slower technical
innovation than we have now. I think maybe 5 years together with a
speeding up of the process of gaining a patent might be an
improvement.

}We need new inventions in software architecture.  Let's stop copying the
}old inventions and start creating new ones.

Unfortunately, patents currently force a lot of effort to be spent working
around them rather than making new inventions.


-- 
Ian Dall     life (n). A sexually transmitted disease which afflicts
                       some people more severely than others.