Editorials
By SD Times News Team
August 1, 2006 —
(Page 1 of 2)
Patent law, at least as it applies to software, is broken. There is a difference between patent law and copyright law, the type of issue that SCO is suing everyone over. Copyright law involves the protection of a specific product or creation, and regulates who can copy or reproduce it. Mickey Mouse is copyrighted. Britney Spears’ latest song is copyrighted. Source code can be copyrighted. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is not copyrighted, but a modern musician’s specific arrangement of it might be copyrighted. Copyright law is reasonably clear, and generally well understood.
By contrast, patent law is baffling and complex. Patents are applied to inventions—that is, a unique method of doing something. A patent must be new, practical, but non-obvious. A patent must be explicitly applied for by the inventor, and the patent must clearly explain exactly how the invention works. During a fixed period of time, the inventor has exclusive rights to use or license the patented invention; after that period of time, anyone can use it.
When the patent system works properly, inventors can prosper, investors can profit, and technology can advance. When the patent system works improperly—as with software patents—everyone lives in a world of uncertainty, because you never know when someone will claim that you’ve violated a poorly defined, poorly documented, poorly researched patent, and thus you either have to pay a tremendous licensing fee, stop distributing your product or fight it out in court.
One challenge with software patents is determining whether the alleged invention actually is new or not. This is at the crux of the lawsuit filed by FireStar Software against Red Hat, regarding a method for mapping objects to a database. FireStar believes that the patent, which it purchased, represents a genuine innovation. Others believe that prior art shows that the patented technique is not new at all, and thus the patent is invalid. The burden of proof is now on Red Hat to challenge the patent or show that it didn’t infringe on it.
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