The Danger of Software Patents - Talk Tonight

theciscokid

Date:Monday, 24th May 2004
Time:19:30 pm
Location:MacNeill Theatre, Hamilton Building.
Further info: http://netsoc.tcd.ie/events/0304/stallman.php

ok maybe not the right board, but where else would i put it,

some of you might recognise the name, stallman was one of the true TMRC (tech model railroad club) PDP hackers..

also creator of emacs editor + c compiler among other things, anyways the link is above,

P.S. whoever looks after the netsoc mailing list should be shot, sending the email to people 4 hrs before the talk is a bit silly.

trixter

Just to clarify, Stallman did not create the original C compiler, but did do a lot on GCC, the GNU C Compiler.

dogs

Stallman (whether you like him or not) still would've been great to hear. Shame I saw this too late

Anyone here attend ? What was it like ?

trixter

tck said he was gonna go I will have ot talk to him and get him to post here how it went

I think stallman has some ideas on the right track. For the most part only corporations want to be able to patent software, quite often the engineers that work for those companies do not want software patents.

In history patents were hard to get. Diffie Hellman and RSA public key algorithms were patented, LZW (Limpel-Zif-Welsh) compression was patented, but it was rare, and the algorithms were very specific.

Now people are filing for patents on everything. Doubleclick and their patent (from 1996) on tracking people across multiple websites by way of cookies for example) are very generic and can cause many people to be excluded from the technology. Doubleclick did not invent the concepts used either, specifically cookies in the HTTP spec. Doubleclick also lost their patent because it was too generic of a process (woohoo, but it was AFTER a lawsuit over infringing). One company got a patent for 'polugin technology' and sued Microsoft for infringing. Loadable code (dll in windows, libraries in unix) existed WAY before they filed for their patent, yet they wanted to claim ownership mostly due to profit.

This behaviour needs to stop. The patent offices need to get a clue. But now I am just ranting.

whosurpaddy

i went to this last night. was interesting to hear him talk but i wouldve liked a broader subject matter, i thought he came across as slightly arogant in places tbh.

a mate recorded it to mp3 format and i may be able to upload it somewhere if anyone wants to hear the talk, depending on how the audio turned out and also filesize.

theciscokid

The place was filled out, even a few MEP's turned up and gave some quick words.

He really emphasised the fact that patents don't protect your work, they will end up being cross-patented with other companies to be able to continue in the area you are working with..

If you heard of all the examples he was giving, you were wondering how it ever got so bad! He used IBM as an example for a few arguments with their 9,000 + patents on top of all the cross-patents which they can use.

He did mention the LZW compression patent and the gif patent , where they developed the png format to counter act upon that.

Overall a good talk, and was definitely entertaining

skipn_easy

It was an interesting talk, rs was very entertaining, if a little arrogant. That McKenna MEP seemed to actually know a bit about the issue, in comparison to that annoying law professor who turned up 2 minutes before the end to 'lend her support'. Yea right...

trixter

skipn_easy: do you know the law professors name? Or perhaps which school she was from?

tck: yeah lzw was a bad thing in a way. Originally it was totally free. Compuserve used it (LZW is just a compression algorithm) to make the GIF image in 87. Then about 7 years later unisys bought the rights to that patent and decided they wanted to charge for every commerical program that used LZW. GIF was widely used at that point, infact it was the most commonly used image format at that time. Fortunately it ended up that they did not charge (due to large consumer complaint) and the good news is that it spured a few other image formats that are in many ways superior.

This can only occur if specific methods are patented and not general processes. Patent applications are supposed to be specific but often people will do stuff that appears to the patent office to be specific but in reality is quite generic and causes litigation. Had LZW compression been a patent on a class of compression algorithms (there are several main classes of compression, some result in loss (mp3) some are lossless (RLE)) then in theory they would have been able to claim rights to virtually all compression. That would be bad and stunt innovation. Who would want to create something if its going to require litigation to get it to market (loosly defined term, applies to open source/free (the two arent the same) products as well) or you will be forced to pay royalties for work that you did.

This is where consumers loose. They would be offered fewer products, and the products they wuold be offered would quite often have fewer features.

I am going to stop now because I am just ranting :P

http://www.0xdecafbad.com/

skipn_easy

trixter, it was ivana bacik from trinity

whosurpaddy

Originally posted by skipn_easy
in comparison to that annoying law professor who turned up 2 minutes before the end to 'lend her support'. Yea right...

yea that was funny. blatent plugging


one of my mates was talking to him beforehand and was surprised for him to say he wasnt a supporter of open source. i thought that was an eye opener.

didnt like the way he was tapping away at his laptop when others were speaking.


and man did i want a pepsi when i left that talk. best advertising. ever.