"Updating" Patents

To turn a page of a book is no longer free, because Apple owns it. Patent office gave Apple an exclusive privilege for turning a page on a scree. That is right, now you have to pay for the activity we have been doing since the very beginning of the existence of book, and only this is on your digital devices.  May soon we have to pay to have any thing on a screen?

A patent on such broad idea does not only fail to serve its original purpose of protecting intellectual properties, but also limits development on both technology and economy in the field of Information Technology.  Patent law needs to be reformed, and “software patent” should be the first to be eliminated.

Software patents, as indicated on words, are patents for programs that run on an electronic device.  But it is different from most of other patents that issued for hardware innovations.  Software patents often cover not the actual programs (there is something called copyright), but the general ideas behind the programs. For example, the famous Siri patent 8,086,604 from Apple.  Instead of granting patent for Siri program, it covered any “universal interface” that people can use to search across varieties of medium, such as Internet, without going through multiple search engines.  Then, as ridiculous as it can be, the famous “Google quick search box,” a function that has been in use for years, became a violation to Apple’s patent.  

Patent is now guns for those software gangsters.  Nancy R. Heinen said, “attitude was that if someone at Apple can dream it up, then we should apply for a patent, because even if we never build it, it’s a defensive tool." Just to show how software patent can be used as a weapon. Patent 5,715,314 excluded all “network-based sakes systems.” Patent 5,797,127is on the whole Priceline.com, and blocks any competitor in the field.  The ridiculous of all, Patent 4,949,257covers all purchase of software over a network. Software patents have become pistols for software monopolies, and serve none of patent’s original purpose.

For the patent’s purpose of serving as public recourse in order to help later inventors, software patent results in a completely opposite reaction. A single search interface may be great idea, but it covers so broad that it restricts all other Apple competitor from farther developing a better or different program of the same idea.  Now, for an inelegant programmer, instead of spending passion in developing a great program that would benefit many, he or she has to pay Apple or any other big software giants couple million dollars to gain access for patents, which do not even help or have anything to do with the development at all.

Moreover, software patents like the Siri patent also fail to serve the very basic purpose of patent.  That is to protect one’s intellectual works. But there is not intellectual work to protect.  Such ideas that are being “protected” can come up by anyone, who is frustrated after searching multiple search engines, or known by everyone who can turn a page. The only different between those people and Apple is couple expensive patent attorneys. 

In addition, software patent results in mass financial damages for innovators, especially individual programmers.  First, to file a patent in US, it takes about $40,000.  It is not affordable for many poor little individual software developers.  If that do not stop them, then, potential lawsuits from big lawyer-ed up software giants for sure will destroy the rest.  Keith Bergelt estimates, “win, lose or draw, it costs $3 to $ 5 million dollars to defend against a patent lawsuits.”  It is not the amount of money ordinary entrepreneurs can afford.  MichaelPhillips is one of the many victims lost his company not to patentedtechnology, but to a patent lawsuit. 

It is not even talking about patent lawsuits that are outside of courts. After Google bought Motorola, it demanded Apple to pay 2.25% of all its sells on devices that uses Wi-Fi for Google’s patent on the ideal of Wi-Fi.  On the same week, Apple’s $368 million went to VirnetX for the idea of having a camera filming the person while calling (FaceTime).  Software giant Apple may be able to afford this, but what about smaller companies and ordinary consumers? 

If the patent system stays where it is, it is not so long until the end of software development.  Then, only chaos of patent war will remain.  Software patents need to be eliminated before not turning a page, but even the idea of having software becomes a patent.