Comment by BubbleRings | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BubbleRings | Hacker News Reader

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Just fyi, (and because I'm showing off), the United States has issued patents on software-based recommending systems. I know because mine was one of the very first ones issued. Maybe the very first, depending on how you look at it.

If you're curious, I understand it can be an okay introduction into the field of music recommending. It as about as easy to read as such patents can be, since I wasn't smart enough to do any work near as complex as the stuff you machine learning folks do these days. A friend of mine called it "toothpick AI" back in the day (it issued in 1995.) Have a look here:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5749081A

Here's my own website about the patent and the adventure. Someday I need to add something there, about how I could do anything as dumb as let Microsoft be the owner of it. It's a long story, which I could elaborate on if anyone is interested. Anyway:

https://www.whiteis.com/patents-overview

I would always enjoy discussing it with anyone, get in touch!

Thanks for taking the risk to share and good luck with the ring box.

Video Gift Box tanked in the end, unfortunately. A really great group of guys gave a good run at it though, and I made a few bucks by licensing the patent to them while they tried. But thanks!

This has got to be the most tone deaf comment I've seen in a while.

Do you mean my post? Can you explain why you feel that way? Thanks.

instead of arguing whether software patents are good or bad, i'd rather hear your story. so please do elaborate.

Software patents are a bad joke, thanks for being one of the pioneers of the worst thing to happen in our field.

Please don't post in the flamewar style, and please don't cross into personal attack. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: although you haven't been posting often, your previous two comments also broke the site guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37714505 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166528 (March 2023)

We have to ban accounts that post like this, and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please fix this that would be good.

Ha, I knew someone would start off by adding a hostile comment of that form. What can I say? If you had been James Marshall, and you noticed the gold that kicked off the California gold rush, do you think you would you have left it there in the water, because you think you would have been able to see into the future, and see the terrible ecological consequences that gold mining sometimes brings? No, you would have picked it up, like anybody else.

Software patents have become an anthithesis to the spirit of adventure. They're more of a joyless bureaucratic drudgery that drips of sadness.

Donald Knuth put it best:

> I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. [...] There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.

The Art of Computer Programming, Volume III ( via https://lwn.net/Articles/132926/ )

Ha, I knew someone who likes/has patents would quickly avoid-justify and deflect the peer pressure and related shame.

What's more important is if you're doing something good with whatever gains a patent may be providing you; but I also what detriment there may be and how much in fact your patent (and others) actually suffocate and slow the advancement of humanity and the quality of life for all.

"I have the same morals as a XIXth-century gold digger" is not the argument that will win you respect.

But if that's your baseline, can I come with a Colt and shoot you in the back? "If I had been Agnus McVee..."

And BTW, James Marshall died penniless in a hut. The gold rush destroyed his business (a mill) and he never found gold again.

But you just mentioned that you had a patent, a thing thing that exists to protect innovators from being copied by competitors to leave a fair time to cash out on your work, but ultimately a large corporation got ownership of it. How is this not a joke?

Not sure what you mean. I have been joking some here in this thread, but overall, the thing was one of the most serious things in my life. As to how MS ended up with it, I probably chose the wrong partners for the startup where we tried to monetize it.

At the end of the startup, there was a 20 minute phone call, where I had to decide to either keep my patent and probably ruin my chances to marry the love of my life, or to sign over the patent, take some cash and stock, start my new life with my fiancé, and hope that I could come up with another patent that good later in my life. I chose wisely.

That’s very beautiful, thanks for sharing and happy to read you have no regrets :)

Then work on changing government, vote accordingly and attempt to lobby

Unfortunately we're not all multi-billionaires.

Don’t hate the player hate the game.

I have room in my heart to hate both.

Hating those who play the game can be an effective deterrent to decreasing the number of people who play the negative sum game.

Has this ever been proven or is there a case study on this? I am genuinely curious.

Why do we always have to prove this in one direction? You could take the opposite stance and say that we don't need any patents because look at open source and how stuff is created without anyone being paid crazy sums of money.

Why do you feel compelled to carry water for the people participating in behaviour detrimental to society?

Software patents are no more of a joke than hardware patents.

To me there seems to be 3 issues.

1. You're basically patenting algorithms, which aren't supposed to be patentable.

2. There seems to be an assumption that anything new is unobvious and therefore patentable. And in computing that isn't really the case.

I have no programming training but still independently invented lz compression. Something that is deemed patent worthy.

3. A patent is supposed to describe how to actually do the thing. Software patents by and large don't do that.

>1. You're basically patenting algorithms, which aren't supposed to be patentable.

Hardware patents just cover algorithms that have steps involving arranging atoms.

>2. There seems to be an assumption that anything new is unobvious and therefore patentable. And in computing that isn't really the case.

It isn't really the case in anything. That no one has bothered to patent yellow wrenches with beveled edges doesn't mean they should be patentable. That the software equivalent is currently more likely to be granted isn't really an issue with the idea of patenting software.

>A patent is supposed to describe how to actually do the thing. Software patents by and large don't do that.

That's an issue with particular software patents, not one particular to patenting software.

>hardware patents just cover algorithms that have steps involving arranging atoms.

Yes. Further steps have been done. Its the difference between copywriting the idea for a book, and copywriting an actual book.

>That the software equivalent is currently more likely to be granted isn't really an issue with the idea of patenting software

It's an issue with the current incarnation of software patents.

That's like saying IC cars aren't bad for the environment because we 'could' fuel them all with biofuels and have a carbon capture thing on the exhaust.

In the real world an IC car can rightfully be criticised for being bad for the environment.

>That's an issue with particular software patents, not one particular to patenting software.

Again, the issue doesn't have to be inherent to be valid.

>Yes. Further steps have been done. Its the difference between copywriting the idea for a book, and copywriting an actual book.

Only if by "idea for a book" you mean "comprehensive description sufficient to exactly reproduce the book".

>It's an issue with the current incarnation of software patents.

No, it's an issue with the patent office's current process for approving patents.

>In the real world an IC car can rightfully be criticised for being bad for the environment.

Yes, but that doesn't mean a car is worse than a truck.

>No, it's an issue with the patent office's current process for approving patents

Potato potahto.

>Yes, but that doesn't mean a car is worse than a truck.

Is the truck a metaphor for hardware patents?

That depends if the trucks actually do run on bio diesel and have a full carbon capture and particulate filter fitted.

1. Why is it any different for hardware? Hardware is nowadays designed on computers too. It's all computers until someone sends it over to Asia where it is then manufactured.

2. Again, why is that different for hardware?

I really wonder why my friends who studied mechanical engineering have the privilege of making money with their inventions, while I cannot ...

That hardware was developed on computer is irrelevant.

A piece of hardware designed with a ruler and protractor is indistinguishable from one designed on a computer.

Re 2. If you 'invented' some trading cards based on HN members. That would be new in the sense that it's never been done before. But that doesn't make it patentable. We all have a sense that that's just an obvious iteration on a theme. But trading cards based on HN members, on a computer somehow becomes patentable.

You can make money from your invention. There's still copyright. If you want to take an algorithm and turn it into an actual product, provide an implementation then I'm not averse to patenting.

Currently we're in a situation where you could come up with the idea of listening to music 'on a computer' patent that very broad, basic thing. Without putting any work into an actual implementation.

That isn't an invention, it's just an idea.

I agree with your basic point, but this has very little to do with the difference between hardware and software, but boils down to the question of whether there is an actual implementation.

Maybe that should be the requirement then, instead of saying "software patents cannot exist, but hardware patents can".

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