From: geoff@flash.bellcore.com (Geoffrey Clemm)
Subject: Re: 200 software patents in two months - what's going on?
Organization: Bellcore
Date: 27 Jul 92 10:37:00

In article <BrwqAA.qE@atherton.com> mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott L. McGregor) writes:
   In article <BrvIqF.9M5@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)  
   writes:
   >      To appreciate the magnitude of the problem of software patents, what
   > follows is a list of about two hundred patents from just TWO months of 1991.
   > The software community should start helping the patent office better manage
   > the process of awarding software patents.

The only way in which the software community can "help" with the current
situation wrt software patents is to do whatever you can to make software
patents illegal.  The *ONLY* effects of software patents will be to effectively
lock anyone other than the mammoth corporations out of the software production
market, and to provide additional job security for thousands of lawyers.

   I read through the list and there were a great many which had titles that  
   suggested that they were not software per se, but hardware 

Yes, most patent applications try to use the terminology of the hardware
world to make their patents sound like something that could sensibly be
patented (i.e. a hardware device that requires manufacturing).

In case anyone has forgotten, the purpose of patents was not to try to maximize
the chance that some individual gets rich, but rather to encourage invention.
And in case any programmers out there are hoping that your software patent
might make you rich, pinch yourself hard, because you are dreaming.  The
folks that might get rich from software patents are lawyers, and executives
from large corporations.

   Anyway, I'm curious as to that  
   person's selection criteria. How is this list built?  How is it decided whether  
   or not to include a patent which includes a digital or analog electronic  
   component or process?  How is it decided what to exclude?

More to the point, who cares ?  The point is that thousands of patent
applications for simple software techniques are being filed *and* being awarded
by the US Patent Office.

For example, US Patent #4992971 was awarded for the "Method and Apparatus for
an Automatic Check of Whether or Not Calling Parameters Correspond to
Called Parameters During Linkage Operation".  "Apparatus" in this case
turns out to be a computer program ... one of those "hard to manufacture"
physical devices that require patent protection.  So the next time you
write a loader that verifies that the number and types of your routines
match across separate compilation boundaries, better start negotiating
with NEC for how much you owe them for royalties.

No problem, you say, we'll just prove prior art for this case.  Well,
better break open that piggybank, because it's not cheap fighting big
corporation lawyers.  And while you're at it, get ready to work on the
thousands of other "methods" and "apparatuses" that you've inadvertently
infringed upon.

So if you think you might want to produce software in a company with
less than 10,000 employees (and 500 laywers on staff), you might want
to get active in fighting against software patents.

Cheers,

Geoff

--
geoff@bellcore.com
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.object