Xref: utzoo gnu.g++.help:243 comp.lang.c++:10755
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!europa.att.com!ark
From: ark@europa.att.com (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: gnu.g++.help,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Software patents
Message-ID: <9012111808.AA20219@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 14:29:02 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Followup-To: gnu.g++.help
Organization: Gatewayed from the GNU Project mailing list help-g++@prep.ai.mit.edu
Lines: 37

The basis for patents in the US is Section 8, paragraph 8 of the
US constitution:

	Section 8.  The congress shall have power:

		. . .

		(8) To promote the progress of science and useful
		    arts, by securing for limited times to authors
		    and inventors the exclusive right to their
		    respective writings and discoveries;


That is, the legal ability to patent an algorithm stems from the
same part of the constitution as the legal ability for the FSF to
prevent people from selling proprietary extensions to GNU software.
Moreover, there is the same basis for both: to give people an incentive
to develop new ideas instead of keeping them secret.  When you patent
something, you get exclusive rights to it for a while, in exchange for
which you are spared the bother of keeping it secret.  After the patent
expires, everyone gets the benefit of it.

A key phrase is `for limited times,' and it is there that I think the
entire problem lies with software patents.  If I invent a new method
of fastening picture frames to wallboard, the construction industry
would not be seriously impeded if I have exclusive rights to those
fasteners for seventeen years.  People have been building things for
millenia; seventeen years is negligible by comparison.

On the other hand, seventeen years is a substantial fraction of the
total time the software industry has been in existence!  This argues
that software patents should be much shorter-lived than other patents.

I submit that if the duration for software patents were changed to
seventeen months, most practical objections to them would vanish,
especially if that were coupled with the restriction that nothing can
be patented if it is already in widespread use.