Comment by Ekaros
24 days ago
Do software patents only exist for rich players to build a moat against poorer players? At this point with patents of this quality only reason for them to exist seems to be to cross-license them for extra revenue and to possibly block anyone too poor to fight for themselves...
Software patents are probably unenforceable in most cases, at least in the US and Europe, are essentially unenforceable. The European Patent Office, very sensibly, denies software patents.
The USPTO has a strange insistence on granting them even though they aren't legally valid. Therefore, if you have a lot of money, you might file a software patent for one of four reasons:
1) You hope that the US courts might one day change their minds and start enforcing software patents.
2) You hope that you might scare people in to giving you licensing fees even though you know the patent won't be enforced.
3) You want to prevent others from scaring you in to giving them licensing fees.
4) You want to get a patent because it's impressive/looks good on your resume.
> The USPTO has a strange insistence on granting them even though they aren't legally valid
I recently learned [0] that the USPTO makes it money from patents, its not government funded. Not only that but checking patents loses them net money while maintenance fees are the real cash cow.
The whole system is similar to the revenue model of a shitty journal that just publishes whatever research as long as the author pays. Except the office doesn't even need to care about their reputation in granting dubious patents because they have legal backing.
[0] It was a comment on hacker news, that I checked.
> its not government funded
It's not the user fee model that's broken, it's the revenue basis. Maybe it would be more effective if they tripled the filing cost and if you successfully obtain the patent (it's rejected by the patent officers), you get half back.
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I filled a patent in France. That was denied by the French office as being a conceptual method More than an invention. I accepted that decision. But there is a completely unexpected side effect, explained to me by a patent advisor. I probably now can oppose that nullified patent to any patent that would implement a version of that conceptual method. Not sure of the reality of that statement, but that’s a funny backfire.
it makes perfect sense. inventions implementing some abstract concept thats already known with prior art (like your rejected patent) cant really count as novel.
otherwise an evil law firm could spam adaptations of your idea to every relevant industry and get rights over your invention without your consent. that would be a complete perversion of what the patent system is supposed to do.
Also, corollary from the above: you want to make lawyers happy in an acquisition because of the above, which allows you to sell for more $
Almost all these patents exist as a war chest and a deterrent against other companies. Everyone theoretically perpetually infringes on each other's obscure patents all the time, but there is a detente between the big players because they hold the gun to each other's heads. If you as a small guy enter the game, you're just shot.
That is why all patents exist. It's ridiculously time consuming and expensive to get a utility patent for anything. I invented something at my old company 5 years ago and the patent process is still ongoing, should hopefully get awarded this year. It costs tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and you need to actively litigate infringements if you want to keep it. 99% of patents exist just for legal bullying and the other 1% are actually novel, useful inventions.
Patents also exist for defensive purposes e.g. if you go after us for x, we will countersue for y.
Google + Motorola aquisition vs Apple is a prime example.
> you need to actively litigate infringements if you want to keep it.
No you don't. That being said, what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants as to the invention?
> what is the point of a patent if not to enforce the right of exclusivity it grants
Usually it's to defend against another company using a "blocking patent" by pursuing you for infringing their patent which is built upon the thing you patented, doing the next step which was always obvious to you.
So that you can continue building what you started in the first place, instead of being shut down while someone else takes your idea forward.
Not for exclusivity.
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Yeah you're right, I was thinking of trademarks. I just think the system is very cumbersome and antiquated, these days it mostly serves to benefit patent lawyers rather than inventors and small businesses, aside from highly regulated fields where things move slower.
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That poster mixed it up with trademarks, for which enforcement is required to maintain its validity.
It builds corporate value. If you end up with a portfolio of patents that someone might want to acquire, you've just created a new market for your company. Individual software patents of common quality probably don't matter.
In theory patents are also to protect smaller players (though not dirt poor), from getting their work ripped off by bigger players after demonstrating feasibility. The idea of being an "inventor" professionally only really works with patents. Software patents pushes this model to logical extremes though. I run a small startup that trains models for medical devices and the only way to get any of the large players to care about implementing improvements you make (and not rip you off) seems to be to have some patent protection. They are mostly interested in the patents as assets to prevent their competitors from acquiring. In all honesty I'm not completely convinced on software patents either but we've had to adapt.
> The idea of being an "inventor" professionally only really works with patents.
Well, trade secrets could also do the trick?
Economically, it’s to avoid free-rider effects. This benefit largely seems alien to tech people because the industry inherently has other moats: network effects, data and code in a server instead of a product sold to consumers that competitors can easily disassemble and reverse engineer, etc.
Is that a stated purpose or a POSIWID purpose?
The real truth is that's how Edison used them and they've been the primary use of patents since inception.
Precisely the reason is to give breathing room for big players to invest in development of technology so they can capitalise exclusively for a period
They exist so you can not be forbidden to do what you invented.. but there might be unintended correlation ;)
Mistral is not a rich player in the context of AI. It is minor smaller company, basically.
I don't disagree, but Mistral is hardly a "rich player" in the current AI bubble.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and X are each valued at a trillion or more. Mistral is valued at $20B, 50x less. Even Deepseek is several times bigger than Mistral.
What a time we live in when 20 billion is considered poor... I would consider companies in sub million range to be poor and that is charitable already...
The time we live in is a bubble. Cursor, a company that developed a fork of VSCode that uses AI models they don't own on hardware they don't own got bought for $60B, compare with JetBrains, a company that actually makes some of the best if not the best IDEs in several languages is "only" worth $7B.
$20B is certainly not poor, but in the world of AI and overinflated valuations, it almost is.
The big one believes themselves ready to rival "government power"
Btw, OpenAI words, not mine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232778
in what world is mistral a big player?