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Bloviating: to you, from me. Chide me if you will. algot@runeman.org

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Wed, 03 Jun 2009

Patents for Processes and Software - Madness

There is a patent assigned to Apple Computer, Inc. which, using many words (reading all of them may be instructive), describes making a pop up menu whose choices allow display of information about an object when it is clicked with the pointer of a mouse on the screen of a computer. The menu that appears is appropriate to the context of the object or something like that. I am NOT a patent attorney and cannot claim any profound programming skill, either. Read on at your own risk!

I picked U.S. Patent 6005566 -Aspect and style elements of an improved graphical user interface, more or less at random from the set of four which have the same author listed, Neil L. Mayle, because he has another patent being considered in a case going to the Supreme Court which is about putting photos on the Internet and making it possible to have other people get email notification so the original posted photo can be shared with some text added as if it actually were a postcard in the regular mail delivery. I am staying away from that discussion and patent. Link As I said, I am not a lawyer and don't intend to send this post as a "amicus brief" to the court. (I like to keep my briefs to myself, thank you very much.)

Software and "business process" patents make me think about farmers who once used a patented device called a plow. I actually don't have too much trouble with the idea of making the physical plow have a patent. It probably took some clear thinking to determine the location of the parts like the length of the handles, the size of the blade, its angle and curve so that a horse could pull the darn thing and be kept in a reasonably straight line by the farmer. What troubles me is that this software menu patent seems to represent a style-of-use patent.

The farmer has a style-of-use for the plow. The farmer behind the plow makes it go straight. The design of the plow only helps the farmer do the work. The farmer does not have to pay the patent holder of the plow on a daily basis (royalty) when the plow does go straight. The farmer could equally well perform a gentle wavy pattern in his field, one that would minimize the straight line runoff from his land. With extreme effort, a farmer might even guide his horse and plow into a square cornered spiral...not that I can imagine a more foolhardy field pattern. Are these style-of-use modifications novel and patentable?

In U.S. Patent 6005566, we aren't talking about the screen being patented or the mouse being patented or the button on the mouse. No, if I read it right, this patent is about writing a program that allows the mouse button pusher of the computer (you) to select a picture or text and get a menu of options that "pops up" instead of always being there.

Should making menus pop up be patentable? Isn't the ability to accomplish this skillful use of a computer really a mildly simple extension of the fundamental capabilities of the whole "object oriented programming" embodied in C++ or Lisp, or other OOP programming languages?

Should every programmer need to give money to Apple Computer, Inc. when they implement a pop up menu? If I program the menu to appear in blue letters on a yellow background with a rust colored border, have I created something radical and patentable on top of the patents for the menu itself?

How about the tapping of a key to produce a letter on the screen which can subsequently be mixed with dots and lines to make the lyrics of music appear under the music score? Should that be a structural mixing of words and music notation that deserves new patents? What if I make my program able to change the size of the font in addition to mixing the words with the music notes. What if I...well, let it end!

Patents for software process or business ideas are simply crazy. They go too far. They mostly enrich patent trolls and lawyers.

Patents were designed to help prevent people from creating and selling knockoff copies of the original physical objects.

With software and "business process" patents, the product being patented and "sold" is the expression of an idea. It isn't a physical object to be knocked off. It is more like these words, which being strung together in a particular pattern, represent the expression of my idea.

Hey! My idea isn't original. Other people also think that software patents are a foolish idea. Would it make any sense if somebody else who wrote about disliking software patents could sue me just because I agree with him in print using words as he/she did to express his/her displeasure? (Notice how I am trying to avoid displeasure of some people who don't cotton to standard pronoun usage of English?)

If I had directly copied his words and distributed them as if they were my own original idea expressed using his exact sequence of words, I would be a plagiarist and subject to "copyright" violation. Maybe, only maybe, there might be an argument for copyright on software ideas, but no real logic I can pull together justifies attaching a patent to the software expression of an idea.

The stretch of patent logic that has apparently been applied is that the software modifies the physical computer so it can do something it couldn't before the software was installed.

End software patent madness, please.