Re: Cisco, and software patents.

["Halvar Flake" <HalVar () gmx de>]

Hey Dave, all,

the problem truly seems to be the nonexclusion of "obvious" patents --
the original idea of patents was to patent ingenious ideas that people
who were facing the same problem would not come up with. I spoke to a
patent lawyer a while ago, and he said that "obviously, since nobody has
come up with it yet, it must be a nonobvious solution". This is a broken
concept, because many times when you're building something "new" (e.g. 
something that does not exist yet) you're facing problems nobody else
has faced yet, and then come up with an obvious solutions. In fact, some-
times I would go so far to declare everything obvious that can be under-
stood by reading the source code w/o additional explanation/documentation
(personal opinion though).

The idea behind patents is that there should be a payoff to costs sunk
into invention/innovation. Innovation/invention is not the same as
engineering. 

This entire patent business has run out of hand. It has essentially become
a tax on building software that puts companies that want to grow w/o VC
infusions under stress -- if you can't cough up 8k for a patent lawyer on
every silly idea you have then you might get screwed. 

As if the software business wasn't enough of a natural monopoly already.

For those that wish to support the anti-SWPAT-movement in the EU, visit

http://swpat.ffii.org/

Cheers,
Halvar

-- 
NEU : GMX Internet.FreeDSL
Ab sofort DSL-Tarif ohne Grundgebühr: http://www.gmx.net/dsl

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