Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
Please, please don't post commentary that involves "just reading the patent" and thinking (a) you know what it means, or (b) saying that it's "obvious" from a cursory glance.
All patents need to be interpreted in light of their "file history", which is the correspondence between the Patent Office and the filer during the patent examination. It is literally true that the words in the text may not mean what you think they do.
It is not uncommon for patent claims to be completely changed by the file history, which in complex cases can comprise thousands of pages of back and forth; if you pay the copying costs you can get the patent office to send you the file for any particular patent.
If a patent has been litigated, you may be able to figure out what the court and the original patent examiner thought the patent meant by reading the lawsuit filings and judgement, but just looking at the patent by itself is not necessarily going to help you understand the details.
[IANAL, but I've been to the rodeo before.]
I hope all the patent trolls of the world open the floodgates on Microsoft, Apple, and the other behemoths in the computer industry so that we can finally put the issue to rest.
Software patents are an abuse of the patent system.
MP3.
On the other hand, I've heard some audio people say that MP3 wasn't necessarily anything 'new' to audio engineers/producers. It was just translating into software what people in the business already knew.
But you're still correct.
Read some patents from other fields - they typically protect and disclose stuff that really took some work to figure out. That's the point. One-click ordering, though? That's just plain bullshit. Anybody could implement that.
I think the issue here is a lot of people don't think there is such a thing.
There are some rare exceptions, but continuing to punish the majority for their sake seems silly.
EDIT: It's even less than I thought from the USPTO side; see http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september1...
Regardless, suggesting that it costs $12mn to patent something is ludicrous.
They might not even want to because it will cannibalize their existing business.
There's a reason why small startup can run circles around bigger corporations all the time and it's not legal weaponry.
Getting rid of software patents altogether is quite extreme. You need a mechanism in place to protect the property rights of individuals and corporations. When there's absolutely no sense of preservation of property - whether it be tangible or intangible - innovation and risk taking are going to suffer.
Really? I'd think that most people in software have the opinion that there should be no software patents at all.
It's kind of silly, frankly.
I am all in for banning obvious or bad patents, as well as shortening their duration, but, perhaps, the i4i patents may be really original or innovative.
Microsoft is known for talking partnership, maybe acquisition, learning all they can and then launching a competitor that kills their "partner". Having strategic patents is the only way a small company can defend from this.
Also, I like the way their name sounds. Sounds appropriate.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
It's not really.
Out of curiosity, what do you (and others) think of a patent for something like Google's PageRank?
Copyright already covers specific implementations. That's as far as it needs to go in software.
Of course, apparently Google feels they have more to gain by keeping their algorithm secret than by patenting it.
Look at the patent that caused the injunction against Word ( http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ ); it's rather vague and basically includes anything that uses or modifies XML to create a product for end-user consumption.
The enforcement depends on the judge and the parties to the suit, but it's got a really, really broad potential scope. It's not unique; most software patents are that way. You think that's a good thing?
From the Constitution: "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."
So: some people may create software, incentivized partly by the prospect of patenting it.
Other people will be unable to create or sell software, because of those same patents.
The question is, which factor is larger? If software patents are decreasing the amount of good software being produced for the public benefit, then the public no longer has a reason to grant them.
Has that point been reached? Many say yes. And the same logic may apply to other areas of IP.
There are untold exception to this - It's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Drug Patents, in particular, are incredibly important. Large Pharmaceuticals spent decades and billions of dollars on developing, trialing, and getting their new drugs approved. Why on earth would they have any incentive to do that if, once it was approved, they didn't have a temporary monopoly on it?
Remember - Patents are good for only a short period of time, under twenty years in most countries, and after that it's a free for all - anyone can use the process's and systems that were shared and documented.
With all that said - 90% of the software patents really are nothing more than crap - usually consisting of an engineer having an idea that most of their "skilled and educated in the arts" peers could have come up with in less than a week's worth of work and discussion. Public-Key cryptography class patents are few and far between.
Of course, that kills the generics market, and I suspect it's not such a difficult problem to RE a drug, but... just curious.
My wife did a stint as a student with AstraZeneca (global pharma corp) they were making "new" drugs. One thing they do is take an existing drug and try swapping out different parts for functionally equivalent parts and run tests to see if the drug is effective enough to warrant proper trials and check to see if it circumvents the opposition patents.
Patents, and Supplementary Protection Certs (SPC) which extend drug patents to 25 yrs in the UK IIRC, are temporary.
Also it's always worth remembering that drug companies spend vastly more (3 times, might even be 4) on marketing than on producing drugs and make humongous profits.
Check it out, I just looked up Pfizer's 10k for fun: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials...
If you check out their data from 2006-2008, they spend about 16% of revenue on R&D. They spend about the same on marketing, though in 2007 they spent 23%, which drags the amount up a bit. But...
They spend 30% on SI&A, which stands for "Selling, Information, and Administrative" purposes. This includes "Direct selling expenses are expenses that can be directly linked to the sale of a specific unit such as credit, warranty and advertising expenses. Indirect selling expenses are expenses which cannot be directly linked to the sale of a specific unit, but which are proportionally allocated to all units sold during a certain period, such as telephone, interest and postal charges. General and administrative expenses include salaries of non-sales personnel, rent, heat and lights."
So, you can't _really_ be sure of what they're spending on selling, because it's mixed in with non-sales personell... but bottom line is, they don't spend that much on R&D, not compared with what they're making, anyway.
And they wouldn't have an incentive, but I'd argue that they _shouldn't_. Something as important as drugs should really be one of the legitimate functions of government. If I ran things, I'd be throwing out patents, but turning up NSF funding.
The implementation of that algorithm would be googles trade secret but you or anybody else would be free to come up with their own implementation.
Technically speaking google has patented a number with this (the number required to program a universal Turing machine to exhibit the behavior the algorithm describes).
I don't think they should be able to do that.
The fact that microsoft is now prohibited from selling their flagship software means that some people might wake up to the downside, the one that smaller parties have been aware of for a much longer time.
Of course this will most likely simply end with MS buying up the party that sues or some cross license deal but the better outcome would be a total abolishing of software patents.
They're a plague and a brake on progress.
It's called copyright. Before software patent wars we had software copyright fights
The way things are going we might as well put cooking recipes under patent protection
And PageRank is a trade secret, not IP. There's a reason that Coke hasn't gotten a patent on their forumla, no?
See http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html#recipe
I know there's a rich tradition of objecting to patents on software, but it always strikes me as odd that people think that software is some kind of exception, and that other patents are OK.
What I'm left wondering is, what is it specifically (for people who hold that some patents are OK, while software patents are not) that makes software different?
Edit: I just saw dstorrs comment, and I think what he seems to be implying is that patents on software are not comparable to other industries because of the relatively lower barrier to entry, and the relatively higher cost of enforcement. I think that this is a good argument for holding software patents to different standards (i.e. shorter statute lengths and more specificity in the application) than pharmaceuticals, etc. but I still don't see how patents are entirely misguided in the case of software.
Patents generally cover a whole _invention_, not an implementation, and each implementation requires a license from the patent holder. So, in the case of the web browser, had Mosaic or Netscape patented this concept every competitor would be forced to obtain a license from the patent holder and open-source or free browsers would be impossible. Patents in the case of software therefore have a chilling effect and prevent significant competition for a long time.
Pharmaceuticals only get patented by publicly divulging their significant modes of operation; a software patent outlines only vague processes, like the i4i patent that's brought this whole thing up.
Software is also merely a high-level implementation of an algorithm. Algorithms are non-patentable and all math is discovered, not invented; this has been settled earlier, and is the reason that algorithms alone are not awarded patent protection. Software is no different.
In software, the implementation details are significant enough that patent protection is not only undesirable but in fact crippling to the industry as a whole. Take a look at some software patents; in fact, take a look at i4i's patent specifically. It's applicable to basically that edits XML documents, whether it be a word processor, an IDE, or anything else. These things are way too vague and they encroach on prior and future art in a hugely negative way.
See http://w2.eff.org/patent for a list of some rather absurd software patents granted by the USPTO; even if we ignored everything else and assumed that software patents were OK for things that deserved them, the people in charge of patents don't have anywhere near the kind of knowledge necessary to make intelligent decisions.
Those are my reasons for opposing software patents. It makes development a complete minefield, and only the big guys can afford to wade through that. I just have to hope that I don't do anything too successful until the patent laws are revoked or until I make enough money not to care.
Take the pharmaceutical companies as an example of where patents are perhaps worthwhile:
- It costs a lot of money to produce a new drug; high cost == high risk == unattractive field for investment. Patents lower the risk because the pharmaceutical companies know that they will be able to recoup their investment if they actually produce something useful.
- Likewise, it costs a lot of time to do the research and produce something that works. The 20-year timescale (http://law.jrank.org/pages/9086/Patents-Patent-Duration.html) of the patent is approximately in line with the effort expended.
- It is comparatively easy to tell if a drug works.
- After the patent expires, the drug is probably still useful...e.g. aspirin hasn't stopped being a good painkiller just because it's a commodity.
Compare this to software patents. None of the points match up:
- Production costs are zero == low risk == attractive field for investment.
- Production time is almost zero. You can submit software patents literally as fast as you can write them up.
- Most software patents are completely intangible and have very fuzzy edges. If you're a patent examiner in 1980, how do you verify that this "web browser" idea will in fact work?
- After 20 years, the patent is likely to be worthless. As a trivial example: yes, people still use GIF but JPEG and PNG are far more common.
All of these things encourage the system we have now--"throw it against the wall", patent trolling, etc--instead of what patents were Constitutionally intended to be: an incentive to grow the arts, sciences, and economy.
In the case of drugs, the patent can be chemically specific. It's easy to tell whether another drug infringes.
Software patents are sufficiently vague that it's hard to tell what they cover. Which has a chilling effect on people making software. How do you know whether you'll be sued?
Do you have any evidence for this? I know very intelligent people (both software developers and CS researchers) who think that software patents are not only necessary, but moral.
Trademarks. Copyrights.
Arguably, software is also protected by trade secret, either because it's difficult to decompile object code into anything meaningful or because it's hosted and run on a server that no one else is allowed to see.
Code is nearly as arbitrary as a novel. It expresses an idea in specific terms. There are lots of ways to write the same program, and lots of possible programs to write. There is only one correct way to write e=mc^2.
2. It's merely an application or representation of natural laws to design a steam engine or something too.
This is getting easier and easier with languages like Ruby and Python becoming more mainstream.
You also forget the enormous difficulty for reforming the patent system to the economic benefits of the masses due to regulatory capture by special interest. If you want to reform the system, you have to reform the overlying political system that allow such regulatory capture in the first place.
Secondary, I would like to direct your attention to a book called Against Intellectual Monopoly by two economists, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, who explains the evidence for why patent and copyright monopolies shouldn't exists in the first place.
How about just making your open source alternative to Word and Office that much better and competing with them?
* edit: downmodded without justification. Wonderful. Which just forces the quality of discussion on HN WAY down. Ironically, understanding that concept requires understanding incentives, which are the basis of patents in the first place :)
Complaining about downvoting is itself noise, which will generally only get you downvoted further.
We're talking about _patents_, not copyrights here. Nobody is suggesting that Software Copyrights aren't perfectly valid and an important part of the industry - without even having to Poll, I'm going to guess that 90% of HN residents are strong proponents of Software Copyrights. The Free-Software proponents, even those on the GPL V3 bandwagon, _rely_ on Copyrights to further their aims and ambitions.
Just refuse to ship by mail or retail to any address in the district in order to make sure the trolls can't force you into this venue?
It would be no small measure of poetic justice if in return for making themselves an enormous public nuisance and doing irreparable harm to the patent system, all of their residents had to drive a hundred miles every time they wanted an ipod.
Edit: Moved from the thread about this that didn't take off.
Edit: On downvote: I actually wasn't trying to make a snarky point etc. I really would like to know. Is it possible, if some venues just become too hostile, to simply not sell to them or is it an "anywhere in America = everywhere in America" kind of thing? In other words, is there any way at all to keep patent trolls from dragging you down to their funny little puppet court in nowhere-ville east Texas? Give me my -4, I'm cool with that, but could someone take a moment to answer?
The question is; why do trolls seem to always be able to force the venue to be this tiny court in Marshall Texas where all the cards seem stacked against the defendant? Is there any way to prevent this?
I remain hopeful though that Congress will get lobbied to legislate an end to patents, and the Supreme Court is facing some very interesting cases and seem in favor of the Open crowd.
Personally, I think patent law needs a massive overhaul; but I also think that the lone inventor should be protected - or why would anyone bother doing deep useful work? We would then only get the deep work (of academics) and the user-driven hill-climbing (of open source/big corporations).
I guess startups like Appjet (etherpad) are an exception... but, according to their early webpage, they had a software patent. Which Google may have wanted when it acquired them. I expect that Dropbox, which also has some cool proprietary technology, also sought to patent it, given pg's position http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html
While a startup can protect itself by growing and innovating fast, I have a soft spot for the deep technical innovator. I appreciate those incremental hill-climbing innovations; the cool stuff in the labs that never actually becomes usable; and the clever identification of markets and exploitation thereof. But the revolutionary stuff is what I love.
I'm always surprised that so many developers, who I would think are creative types, don't think deep innovation deserves the encouragement and reward of protection.
Note that Xerox PARC was funded by patents (on xerography); and Bell Labs' origin can be traced to a patent (on telephony).
I wrote a book a few years ago, and the editors used Word. Corresponding with them by using OO.org was not too difficult; all the features were there, although not completely polished. I looked at the features I thought were unpolished a few years ago again recently (I am not a big word processor fan), and they are fine now. OO.org Writer is now basically Word without Exchange integration.
Personally: every time I use OO, I'm reminded of how much better Word is--in interface (the ribbon is GREAT), features (everything you could ever need), compatibility (you can save in PDF), etc.
Sorry, but it's just the reality. Very few people write Free Software out of pure altruism. They write it because they have a problem they need to solve. Often there is personal gain in sharing this solution with the world (reputation, free bugfixes, etc.), so people do. This is the open source / free software movement in a nutshell.
If this attitude drives you away from getting something for free, then I guess that's too bad. The community only benefits marginally from consumers; it benefits from producers. If you are never willing to produce, the community can probably live without you.
I'm fine with being a producer in a few of the fields I care about (I work on one of the few remaining Perl BBSes), when I'm not busy getting paid to write software. I don't want to have to help write my OS, my Office software, my text editor(s), my web browser, my music player, etc. I just want these things to work in (at least) a predictable fashion.
Anyway, I really do think that the open source community needs to lose the attitude if they ever want to gain traction in the wider non-programmer community.
This particular district is famous for being wildly receptive to patent claims and is therefore used routinely by patent trolls searching for large verdicts and, indeed, a $240M verdict (plus add-on items totaling $50M), plus a permanent injunction, is a pretty big prize for "custom XML" technology that constitutes a very minor part of Word's functionality.
Not that there isn't a form of justice in Microsoft being bitten by patent abuses when it has benefited for years from patent abuses that it has heaped upon others.
Edit: Nevermind, someone else already posted a better link. I propose that the item link should be updated though.
"Custom editing xml files." Microsoft is barred from selling versions of word that can open and edit .docx or .xml files.
First of all, i4i is not a patent troll, they are a document management company that actively deploys the technology on which they have a patent. One notable case of such is that they used it to overhaul the USPTO's own internal database.
Microsoft came to i4i and contracted them to help them move Word over to an XML format. They then tried to strong arm i4i into some licensing agreement which they did not accept so Microsoft just decided to willfully infringe. This means they decided they would just ignore the patent and use i4i's patented technology anyway without paying them. Essentially, they stole i4i's work when they refused to sell on Microsoft's terms.
More of the backstory in this article: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/i4i-says-micro...
But their patent is still crap.
The first claim of the '449 patent covers essentially any code that maps external XML data into a document. There is simply too much existing art in the file manipulation and database domains for this to be anything but obvious.
No, the law is broken. What were they supposed to do, sit idle while someone else got the patent instead?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/microsoft_loses_word...
Says it all.
I am touched by Microsoft's concern for public.