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Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Even the companies who file the patents claim they don't want the patents.

No, they have to do it as a defensive measure. It sucks, but companies like RedHat do it all the time.

They don't have to do any such thing. All they have to do is disclose the invention publicly, and no one else can take it from them.

I think it's more meant as a mutually assured destruction strategy.

Actually evgen makes an interesting counterargument to my point below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15291093

Still, the result is an arms race among land-mine manufacturers. Nobody wins but the undertakers and the orthopedic surgeons... or in this case the lawyers.

We really should work on making defensive publication easier and more recognized.

Isn't it enough to publish the patent text such that it can be used as prior art to prevent other companies from patenting the same thing, but in that form can't be used to actively go after other companies from using the same technology?

Not really. If you publish X I can still patent X + Y and probably catch a lot of people doing a derivative of X. If you patent X then my X + Y patent is much less useful and if I become obnoxious about it you can always threaten to destroy my customer base by enforcing X.

It also doesn't help if you are the First Inventor To File.

How about we work on not allowing patents in fields where it's unreasonable to expect the patent office to assess novelty and non-obviousness? Like software?

Or at least making their duration commensurate to the invention itself, and the speed of evolution of the field. 3 years would be more than enough time for the "inventors" to make money off their software patent.

Any or all of these 3 things would help!

Software patents can only be used defensively when you are claiming your source code implements a patient.

In that light, the owner (or even expiration) does not matter. You can claim to implement an expired patent as a defense of a patent lawsuit. You can claim to implement/steal somebody else's patent (but that is unwise at times). This principle is how RISC-V and J-Core have survived. They pointed to expired patents and saying, "we do that, not your thing." (They really did too)

Privately owned patent rights, without rights granted to other entities can only be used offensively. Anyone saying otherwise is wittingly or unwitting supporting the patent system and arguing company line.

Offense is defense. If your competitor has enough patents that they'll find something they can reasonably argue that you infringe on, it's useful to present the same threat to them.

Companies that are serious about only using patents for this purpose can contribute them to open licensing schemes.

(And in the case of specifications that want to be standards, full patent grants should absolutely be included. You want people to use their stuff, make it safe for them to do so)

>Offense is defense

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth leaves us all blind and toothless.

It does, but unfortunately, that's how humans work. We use threats to make cooperation the best choice for all parties, because we can't trust that none of those parties is an asshole.

Yes, but those companies don't use toxic patent licenses like Facebook does.

No false equivalence should be made here. Facebook needs and deserves to be called out over it as much as possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com