Ionrock Dot Org

Traditionally, I try not to speak politically. Basically, my view is that unless I plan on alienating someone, it makes more sense to keep things to myself. There are exceptions of course, in a nutshell, I avoid political conversations. While this post is not very political, it could come across that way, hence this short intro.

I read on /. that Amazon managed to get a patent via changing a few words. The patents had to do with "One Click", which is ridiculous. The problem with this kind of patent is that it does not reflect any actual work. It would be unfair to not allow protecting ideas had on a whim, but the patent system does state the idea has to be novel so in theory things should work.

The patent system should add another vector to their qualifications based on the relative impact of the patent as a function of the amount of work. In medicine, a new patent for a drug is obviously helpful. In software often times patents are little more than stating the obvious. One Click is a great example of a silly patent that lets someone buy something with one click. This is ridiculous because the patent is not a technical feat or consistent. Implementing the patent has no technical consequences whatsoever and having the patent on the books only hinders competitors from providing better services. Conceptually, you could consider the gas station speedpass or pay at the pump, more or less, the same thing.

Hopefully, in the case of software, by analyzing the amount of work that was required to come up with the patent it could be possible to claim that a patent like One Click is bogus. Amazon could obviously reveal that it took X years to develop the One Click technology, but that being the case, then their implementation should be what's patented.

The problem here is patenting an idea in software usually means a patent on small detail. Computers and software are still very low level when it comes to degrees of complexity. Even with better languages and more powerful systems hiding complexity, software still deals in 1s and 0s. There is no way around this fact, but if the patent office acknowledged that within the realm of software new ideas come with algorithms and research, it could potentially be better.

The best option is most likely to hold off on issuing software patents. That campaign has not been very fruitful, which means other options are critical in helping the situation.