Defining the boundaries of (Software) Patents

Results from UK patent office workshops (spotted on the register) show just how tricky it actually is to define exactly what may or may not be patentable. Especially interesting are the attempted definitions put forward.

I can't help thinking that part of the differentiator between "valid patent" and "invalid patent" should be based on the generality or level of abstraction of a result: a new type of coffee machine has a pretty well defined, circumscribed use - furthermore someone else can come along and adapt the coffee machine to a substantially different field (and if there was an inventive step - get another patent). This is a world away however, from patenting particular types of data representations, search algorithms or standard business workflows - the more abstract a "contribution" is the more likelyhood there is that it might have a chilling effect on development of solutions in a wide range of application areas.

Furthermore, it's often easier to come up with the detailed, domain specific application of a method than the abstract method itself. If a patent has already been issued in an area, large classes of desirable solutions might be unimplementable without consent of the patent holder. Unless we're promoting innovation on how to "implement solutions whilst avoiding previous patents" this can't be a good thing.

Semantic Web experiments...

Nice to see some more mainstream coverage of semantic web research (well slashdot mainstream :).

Class materials and copyright.

Some interesting points raised here and here on the legality of making course materials copied from university library stocks to students taking courses.

Making course materials available online (in a password protected area) for a course clearly saves everybody time and effort - as well as arguably increasing the amount of students that will actually access the material. However, its understandable that publishers are concerned that they may be loosing revenues in the long run - how many copies should a library have to hold before this is legitimate? 1 per student? Also restricting the practice seems to fly in the face of exploiting the potential good 24hour online access can do (going to the library is worthwhile - qeueing for half an hour to photocopy course materials probably isn't).

Unfortunately the answer is that coying materials in this way en-masse probably isn't legal. However beyond this interestign questions are:

• If the current licensing model publishers are using won't allow this type of
  use (even though its clearly desirable) - what licensing models will? shouldn't
  the existing ones be changed?
  
  
• Isn't this likely to create pressure which favours course materials published under
  open licenses such as those provided by
  creative commons. if i have competing
  materials under standard licenses and under a CC license and i want to give
  students electronic access the choice is a no-brainer. [sidenote: the amount
  of stuff out there is growing]
  
  
• Where is the balance between these two?
  

Seems like an interesting possible consequence of cracking down on use of materials in this way (if that indeed were to happen) might be to force educators to A) seek alternatives and B) consider publishing their own materials in less restrictive ways. A loose loose for publishers if a reasonably attractive alternative is not found.

Thanks peter for the tip!

Isolated Social Networkers

On the sometimes unfortunate effect of leaping between fields (I could not resist stealing the title) - thanks to Peter for sending me this - can't help but suspect there's an awful lot of this in some of the Agent, Semantic Web and Web Services research which is now going on.

Most of the respondees to the crooked timber post interestingly focus on wasted effort or the lost craft of looking up references. However, as one person points out, sometimes the route to innovation is to try to tackle a problem without checking out what was done before - without getting into the rut of previous approaches. Of course the problem arises when:

• Once solution in hand one doesn't check back to see if the "new idea" really is new.
  
• Academic plaudits (or even minor brownie points) are accumulated in one community on
  the basis of something well established in another.
  

Of course the later, if unchecked, might have a long run detrimental effect on the scientific community involved. I wonder if we're always as good at policing ourselves as we should be?

UPDATE: reading the excellent comments it seems that agent researchers are already popular with socilogists to "However, there is still a plague of mediocre physicists reinventing the wheel (and now, god help us, they have been joined by mediocre computer scientists producing “agent based simulations”)."

Software patents...

Good to sntach some time to post again - just to furher lawrence lessig's call to comment on the IIPI's site on software patents.