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From: geyer@galton.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.misc,comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: hayes lawsuit
Message-ID: <1991May20.032227.20127@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 03:22:27 GMT
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In article <14833@ulysses.att.com> smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin)
writes:

> The fundamental question we have to answer is this:  if software
> patents are to be disallowed, what alternative mechanism would you
> propose to encourage people to publish new algorithms?  (I'd
> rather argue the question using RSA as an example; its originality,
> novelty, and utility are beyond question.  The Hayes patent may
> not qualify as new -- but the very difficulty of resolving that
> issue makes it a bad hook upon which to hang the policy question.)

I see no reason whatsoever to fear that RSA would have been kept as a
trade secret if software patents had not been invented by the courts.
R, S, and A are academics.  They have to publish or perish, not so?
The patents are held by their universities, which are mainly in the
business of free intellectual inquiry the last time I checked.  This
software patent nonsense is just something to keep a few administrators
busy.  It's probably not worth the damage to science that it causes.
If these universities were wholeheartedly supportive of science, they
would relinquish the patents (or put them in the public domain or
whatever one does to make the ``invention'' freely available).

> I'm perfectly serious.  In an industry where fortunes are being
> made, and where many vendors have gone overboard on copy protection
> because of piracy, how are we to encourage publication, if not
> by patents?

This raises two issues (1) do new ideas really come from industry? and
(2) what is the correct answer to copy protection and other "screw the
customer" schemes?

I don't really know the answer to (1), but I have the feeling that the
answer is mostly no, especially if one excludes from the calculations
the pre-divestiture Bell Labs, since AT&T was forbidden by regulatory
control to act in the predatory manner of the current computer biz.

As for (2) the answer is don't use that stuff.  Customer hostility has
reduced the incidence of copy protection.  If customers would really
start looking out for themselves they would avoid most vendors until
they change their behavior.

The real issue is whether the customers will have a chance to teach the
industry some respect or whether the courts will invent enough
protection for the entrenched forces of reaction to give them a
monopoly.  There is a real fear that computers will always be a bad as
they are now or much worse because innovation will be outlawed.

I for one would gladly trade all of the bells and whistles that will be
invented in the next ten or twenty years for computers that work.

Just my 2 cents.

Charles Geyer
Department of Statistics
University of Chicago
geyer@galton.uchicago.edu