Real innovations in software
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 9:40 am
Apple and Samsung patents are, like many other patents on software and business methods, controversial. The problem is that many ideas are not patentable and yet they are patented. Let's make an analogy with food preparation. Many patents are at the level: "Make lemon tea from tea and lemon". Anyone can figure out how to do that. It only gets clever when you can make lemon tea using apples and coffee: this is an interesting challenge, of which it is not immediately clear whether this is possible and how to do it.
If a company like Apple has found a recipe for this, I immediately believe that this requires research effort and I grant them a patent. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the idea that one wants to protect does not go deeper than “making lemon tea”. This may be a good idea commercially, but is not worth a patent. Somehow, the companies still manage to get the idea through by means of many difficult words and complicated diagrams.
So what is a patentable idea? Let’s continue with the idea “Make lemon tea”. As with most problems in software, there is an obvious standard method that anyone can think of. A patent should be slovenia phone data granted on a solution that is different and better than the standard solution (making lemon tea from coffee, petroleum, rapeseed or strawberries). Then anyone can continue to use the standard solution, or license the better solution. That’s how it should be, but it rarely is in the software world.
ivacy & Commerce
I am not referring to the riots in Haren, Groningen (and the discussion that has flared up again about Facebook privacy settings because of it), but to more fundamental developments. In the article below I will explain why the love for Facebook is cooling off among early adaptors in my opinion.
Of course , Facebook has been criticized many times before . For example, this week I published an article about the difficult settings Facebook has when you want to create an event, following the riots surrounding ProjectXHaren. The rapid growth of commercial messages and the way privacy is handled have also cast a shadow over the use of Facebook for some time now . But why does the love now seem to be cooling off.
If a company like Apple has found a recipe for this, I immediately believe that this requires research effort and I grant them a patent. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the idea that one wants to protect does not go deeper than “making lemon tea”. This may be a good idea commercially, but is not worth a patent. Somehow, the companies still manage to get the idea through by means of many difficult words and complicated diagrams.
So what is a patentable idea? Let’s continue with the idea “Make lemon tea”. As with most problems in software, there is an obvious standard method that anyone can think of. A patent should be slovenia phone data granted on a solution that is different and better than the standard solution (making lemon tea from coffee, petroleum, rapeseed or strawberries). Then anyone can continue to use the standard solution, or license the better solution. That’s how it should be, but it rarely is in the software world.
ivacy & Commerce
I am not referring to the riots in Haren, Groningen (and the discussion that has flared up again about Facebook privacy settings because of it), but to more fundamental developments. In the article below I will explain why the love for Facebook is cooling off among early adaptors in my opinion.
Of course , Facebook has been criticized many times before . For example, this week I published an article about the difficult settings Facebook has when you want to create an event, following the riots surrounding ProjectXHaren. The rapid growth of commercial messages and the way privacy is handled have also cast a shadow over the use of Facebook for some time now . But why does the love now seem to be cooling off.