"In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion..."
Wow.
He thinks it will invalidate lots of software patents - not by invalidating software patents per se, but the way they have been written to date. I'm not qualified to give an opinion, but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.
Quinn's analysis appears pretty shallow - his discussion of the Watson patentability boils down to "it should be patentable because it's like the star trek computer" and "doing something faster is always patentable".
He also asserts that increased difficulty of getting software patents "means we won’t get disclosures, information will be held as trade secrets, and those who follow will not be able to stand on the shoulders of those who come before them." As I have yet to hear of anyone ever getting a single useful idea from a software patent disclosure, I view this as a completely acceptable consequence.
but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.
Quinn's unique opinions are never the mainstream view. He's an energetic and smart advocate for anything, no matter how extreme, that would make the patent bar more money at the expense of actual innovation.
You can read his blog for a series of crazy overhyped claims for big new ideas in software whenever patents are issued. They're always bad or old or trivial or obvious ideas that some big company has just managed to get a right to monopolize. Canceling all the patents he loves so much would be very, very good for the industry.
As to whether this will affect many patents in the long run, we can only watch what the CAFC does in the next year or two.
Oh my god. I can only hope his views aren't mainstream. Quoting from the link:
"This doesn’t mean that moving forward software won’t be patentable, it just means that getting a software patent will be much more difficult than it ever has been. Software can be described by reference to a series of physical actions operating through gates. This type of micro level description of what happens is going to be required, which means getting a patent for software has just become much more expensive and time consuming."
The disconnect between how he (apparently) thinks software works and what really happens is mind-boggling. He seems to have absolutely no idea that the same program (even down to the same machine code) will create radically different "physical actions operating through gates" on processors with different micro-architectures (or with an emulator or ...). Even if you could get a patent based on a description of these "physical actions" in a specific execution context, such a patent would be practically worthless. It would be like having a patent on implementing your idea on a Pentium. Anyone could trivially get around that by choosing a Pentium Pro (or an Athlon or some random ARM core or whatever).
I'd really like to see him try. Even the most trivial operation will run to a few thousand pages of very fine print. Patent examiners will have a new use for applications: fuel.
Comments
Is Gene Quinn pissed at this: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/06/19/scotus-rules-alice-soft...
"In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion..."
Wow.
He thinks it will invalidate lots of software patents - not by invalidating software patents per se, but the way they have been written to date. I'm not qualified to give an opinion, but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.
Quinn's analysis appears pretty shallow - his discussion of the Watson patentability boils down to "it should be patentable because it's like the star trek computer" and "doing something faster is always patentable".
He also asserts that increased difficulty of getting software patents "means we won’t get disclosures, information will be held as trade secrets, and those who follow will not be able to stand on the shoulders of those who come before them." As I have yet to hear of anyone ever getting a single useful idea from a software patent disclosure, I view this as a completely acceptable consequence.
but I would be interested to know if that is a mainstream view.
Quinn's unique opinions are never the mainstream view. He's an energetic and smart advocate for anything, no matter how extreme, that would make the patent bar more money at the expense of actual innovation.
You can read his blog for a series of crazy overhyped claims for big new ideas in software whenever patents are issued. They're always bad or old or trivial or obvious ideas that some big company has just managed to get a right to monopolize. Canceling all the patents he loves so much would be very, very good for the industry.
As to whether this will affect many patents in the long run, we can only watch what the CAFC does in the next year or two.
Oh my god. I can only hope his views aren't mainstream. Quoting from the link:
"This doesn’t mean that moving forward software won’t be patentable, it just means that getting a software patent will be much more difficult than it ever has been. Software can be described by reference to a series of physical actions operating through gates. This type of micro level description of what happens is going to be required, which means getting a patent for software has just become much more expensive and time consuming."
The disconnect between how he (apparently) thinks software works and what really happens is mind-boggling. He seems to have absolutely no idea that the same program (even down to the same machine code) will create radically different "physical actions operating through gates" on processors with different micro-architectures (or with an emulator or ...). Even if you could get a patent based on a description of these "physical actions" in a specific execution context, such a patent would be practically worthless. It would be like having a patent on implementing your idea on a Pentium. Anyone could trivially get around that by choosing a Pentium Pro (or an Athlon or some random ARM core or whatever).
I'd really like to see him try. Even the most trivial operation will run to a few thousand pages of very fine print. Patent examiners will have a new use for applications: fuel.