From: mcgregor@netcom.com (Scott Mcgregor)
Subject: Re: Patents:  What they are.  What they aren't.  Other factors.
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 07:52:45 GMT

In article <1aq5jlINNm5v@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
> It's obvious to
>everyone in the industry that any potential patents on them have expired.

Peter claims that patents on threading are still common. In any case,
a patent could be on the combination of the non patented companents or
even on a process which they might be made to perform but which is not
a necessary result of their combination.

> Thus, every software developer is
>in the position of having to deal with licensing issues.

Not really, only every software distributor. And in any cases less
onerous licensing mechanisms such as clearinghouses are possible.

>Scott MacGregor has posted that he's been involved in software licensing
>issues for many years.  I suspect most of this has involved licensing large
>packages: specialized software libraries and self-contained application
>programs.  

Also individual widgets, objects and the like.

>But in software it's practical, and extremely common, to manufacture your
>own "nuts and bolts".  There's no need to encourage an industry that
>manufactures objects at this level.  It's easier to write a factorial
>subroutine than it is to look it up in a catalog and purchase it.  In
>software, if you can think it you can do it;

From a societal standpoint there is a reasonable question to raise
about whether is really desirable from the respect of industry
maturity  that so many people DO remanufacture there own base objects
which not only require the re-invention time, but testing, etc.  Some
have made arguments about societal value to be had from encouraging
more re-use of higher granularity objects.  This is probably more
appropriately discussed in comp.object or comp.software-eng where such
adherents may be found. Some might think patents beneficial in
preserving society's resources if they
lead to more re-use and less re-manufacture and re-invention.



 in hardware, you can only do
>it if you can find the appropriate components (unless you have the capital
>to manufacture those components -- I've posted before on the difference in
>capital costs between the software and hardware industries, and this is
>also a major theme in the LPF's paper against software patents).
>
>The stated purpose of patents is to encourage inventors to publish things
>that would otherwise remain secret (presumably depriving other inventors of
>the ability to license or build upon thme).

Not just this but to encourage their commericalization. An award for
published inventions might be sufficient to encourage their
publication without commercialization, but the value of a limited
monopoly can only be reaped by commericalizing.

>  And many of the larger algorithms (backing store, XOR
>cursors, natural-order recalc) can be deduced simply by observing the
>behavior of the program and making educated guesses.

Most devices outside the hardware area can be deduced simply by
observing their behavior.  It is precisely the simplicity of
re-eingineering in such areas that causes investors to want
manufacturers to seek patents in those areas, so that the investors
won't have to pay for the costs of creating a market which other
larger but less inventive competitors can steal by reverse engineering
once success of market creation has been proven.  In my experience
this investor need is just as common in the software arena as in
other industries.




-- 

Scott L. McGregor		mcgregor@netcom.com
President			tel: 408-985-1824
Prescient Software, Inc.	fax: 408-985-1936
3494 Yuba Avenue
San Jose, CA 95117