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Comment by gmueckl | Hacker News Reader

Hardware patents are by nature more narrow because they have to describe specific solutions to a problem. Software patents are often written as the idea of solving a specific problem using software, completely omitting the how. This makes them overly broad.

At least one of the Sonos patents in question is of that nature: it merely describes a system of distributed loudspeakers where one loudspeaker can set the volume of other speakers in the group remotely. The claims completely omit any actual solution that accomplishes that.

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A patent is required to explain the invention to a level of detail such that those aware of the prior art can implement the same. So the _how_ portion can only be skipped if prior art already describes that.

So while there may be a difference on software and hardware patents in practice, this is not a valid difference in terms of what the legal provisions are.

This may technically be true, but especially the patents that get exploited by trolls are usually very vague. And the system gives too much incentive to write patents as broadly as possible.

To be fair, some of the patents that listed in another comment here as part of the lawsuit are quite precise in their claims. Their claims cover the actual algorithms for integrating another loudspeaker into a secure WLAN and for ensuring exact playback. That's the kind of detail level that I would expect from a patent. As a result, if you solve the same problem using a sufficiently different set of steps, you're fine.

There's a difference between the spirit in which a law or regulation is written and how it is applied in practice over time. In case of patents, this gap has become quite large. I think that this is why so many here want see changes.

This strikes me as an excellent point, how software patents tend to lack any actual solution, unlike traditional patents - I hadn't considered that before.

I think the process of accepting patents is broken, at least with software. If a reasonable practitioner could read some head-line and come up with a few solutions, there is not anything worth protecting. Ideas themselves should not be patentable in software.

On other hand I do think there is still need to protect innovation in more physical things. Like new manufacturing processes or material innovations like using novel chemistry.

I don't really see any fundamental difference between implementing your idea with big pieces of iron and implementing your idea with small pulses of electricity. If either is patentable, both should be.

Question is what sort of ideas deserve patent? Does one-click checkout deserve one? Or system to sell modifications of look of user interface delivered over radio?

I think there should be some line, probably non-obvious implementation.

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