[Discuss] The America Invents Act

[Hsuan-Yeh Chang]

Thanks for challenging my point of view by attacking my profession.  I am only trying to help the open source community to fight against the biggies.  If you believe that RMS in his lifetime can convince the Congress to abolish software patents, please do so.  It's your freedom guaranteed by the US constitution.  


How much money do you think M$ and others have spent on filing software patent applications in the Patent Office?  How much money do you think M$ has spent on lobbying your representative elected by your votes?  For at least this very reason, I don't believe Congress will abolish software patents any time sooner.  


This country protects independent inventors more than most other countries in the world.  If anyone has a good idea, regardless of whether the person is poor or rich, and regardless of whether the person is opening source code or not, the person is equally capable of seeking patent protection than anyone else.  If you choose to donate your invention to the public and give up your rights, that's again your freedom.  But if you exercise your freedom by giving up your legal rights, how can you ask the Congress to change the law simply because of your generosity?

Not all lawyers are necessarily bad lawyers.  President Lincoln was a lawyer and he ended slavery.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a lawyer and he ended segregation in the United States.  There are countless number of lawyers who have contributed to the advances of this country...


HYC




________________________________
From: Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org>
To: Hsuan-Yeh Chang <hsuanyeh at yahoo.com>
Cc: "discuss at blu.org" <discuss at blu.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Discuss] The America Invents Act

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 08:07:43AM -0700, Hsuan-Yeh Chang wrote:
> This has been changed by AIA and recent court decisions.  See, for example, http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/02/patent-reform-act-of-2011-an-overview.html
> 
> Below are some quotes from above link:
[...]
> What you said has been out dated by Obama's signature of AIA...

You're overlooking some pretty glaring practical issues with your
argument.  You're quoting a summary of the act written by patent
lawyers.  They have every incentive to try to make you think that
patents are good for you: patents are good for THEM.  You're also
failing to recognize that what the law literally states is subject to
interpretation by lawyers, judges, and often jurors, who are fallible
and may also have their own agenda.  Any law suit that happens in
practice will usually be won by the guy with the best lawyers, which
usually means the guy with the most money, i.e.  not the OSS software
developer.  Or, actually, it usually comes down to who has the deepest
pockets, because patent trials are EXPENSIVE.  Microsoft has vastly
more resources than you do, and can litigate a suit against you until
you no longer have the funds to defend yourself, or until you can't
afford to miss any more work, at which point, YOU LOSE, regardless of
whose side the law is actually on.  The law is a tool best leveraged
by those with lots of money. 

RMS addressed most of this in his video also, again in much better
terms that I have.

I'm starting to think that you are yourself a patent lawyer or
employee of the SBA.  If you're not, then YOU represent the biggest
challenge to making REAL software patent reform happen:  If we can't
get people who actually understand software to agree that they are bad
for us (and in fact everyone), we'll never convince people who
understand software much less well.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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