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Oracle's policy statement on software patents 45

Posted by Hemos from the giving-weight-to-the-lobby dept.
Sanity writes "Oracle has an interesting policy statement in which they explain that while they think software patents are wrong, they are forced to apply for patents as a defensive measure. As the world's third largest independent software producer Oracle's position gives a significant boost to the anti-patent lobby. "
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Oracle's policy statement on software patents More

Oracle's policy statement on software patents

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  • Oracle make a pretty good RDBMS, but bringing them into an organisation requires spending even more than you would with all Microsoft software. Their product prices are outrageous, their support model even more expensive than Microsoft. If you REALLY want to throw money away, contract their consulting services ...

    And they make what are IMHO the worst application development tools on the planet (Designer/2000 in particular, whose code generator regularly pumps out code that Developer/2000 can't compile).

    Releasing a Linux version of your product doesn't make you a friend of free software.

    I DO like their RDBMS - I just wish that the small company I work for could justify the expense.
  • *laugh*

    I left Oracle a few months ago. There's an intranet site describing how much money you get if you earn a patent, and the developers are definitely working towards it. In fact, working there as a developer, I had never heard of this policy. As another poster pointed out, it looks to be pretty old (Oracle is #2, not #3, and has a lot more than 8,000 employees now, more like 30,000).


  • They do. If a patent gets issued that shouldn't there are lawsuits to determine the rightful owner.
  • thats a great .sig ! ...if only mine were so humorous

  • Free software patent defenses (Score:3)

    by KMSelf ( 361 ) <karsten@linuxmafia.com> on Thursday September 23, 1999 @08:10AM (#1665180) Homepage

    An Anti-Patent Patent League -- usually conceived as a patent pool, has been suggested by John Walker of Autodesk, L. Peter Deutsch of Alladin Software, Richard M. Stallman of FSF and LPF, and is now part of a proposal floated by Eric S. Raymond.

    While theoretically workable, the obvious problem with the idea is that it hasn't been made to work yet -- though circumstances are changing. Patent pools have some serious organizational and logistical problems. Essentially it puts free software in the position of relying on the kindness of strangers, and patents are still expensive to aquire, maintain, use, and defend.

    An alternative I proposed in several areas a few weeks ago is to try to extend the already significant power of copyright as used in free software licenses such as the GNU GPL, NPL, and IBM Public License. Copyright is easily aquired, already held by free software developers and interests, fairly easily defended and asserted, and lasts for fscking ever (life plus 70 years).

    The mechanism is to add a termination clause to a software license which says words to the effect "this license terminates, and the rights granted, but not the obligations required, if you initiate patent infringement actions on any licensee of a class of software". The definition of the class is key -- it could be a list of important programs (say gcc, glibc, Linux, bind), a list of projects (say, any GNU project), or all programs covered under a particular license or set of licenses. This is similar in almost all respects to existing software licenses except that terminating actions are extended to a class of software rather than the immediately covered work.

    I've outlined the idea a bit more fully at Infoworld Electric's Forums [infoworld.com].

    There are a number of problems identified -- businesses may be deterred from using software with such a poison pill, a company which seperates its patent holdings from its main operations may thwart the intent, penalizing beneficiaries of abusers of the license may be necessary but difficult, the clause might be considered a "patent grab" (I think it is, but there's a strong quid pro quo).

    Still, if I may say so, it's an interesting and novel approach.

  • Figure a new examiner has about 4 cases to do a week, and 40 hours in that week. 10 hours to do a search, write a summary of findings, and understand an application is not always engough. Some applications are only a few pages, while some are over 100 page applications. Not only do they have to understand the application, but they must also make sure that they are correct. Drawings and all. There is much work involved. Maybe a system that was designed on a case by case basis. Ie each case was given a level of difficulty, before it was examined, base on many factors, from size, and comlexity, as well as abstractness. Ie if you can physically see something it would be easier, where as if it was something like cache hit/miss improvements or improving cacheing over a network or someting was given a harder degree of complexity, and allowed more time.

    There is also much law involved and law is abstract and subjective.

  • Pre-emptive patenting? (Score:4)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Wednesday September 22, 1999 @11:51PM (#1665184)
    This was a pleasant surprise; I tend to think of any corporation as faceless and populated with bastards.
    One point, though: they say that they applied for their first software patent in 1991 as a pre-emptive measure; sort of like the germans copyrighting 'Linux'.
    Is this the best way of going about it? Even though they may have an enlightened policy on patent enforcement, they're still perpetuating the myth of the efficacy of software patents.
    An alternative strategy (not necessarily better) is to publish widely without patenting, while stating (very) publicly that that's what they're doing. Anyone who subsequently applied for a patent on (whatever) would be doing so on verrrrrry dodgy legal ground; there's no way they could claim with a straight face that they deserved the patent.
    Of course, legal battles are expensive, more so than patent applications...
  • ....coming from a commercial organization.

    It illustrates the biggest problem with software patents - that companies feel obliged to take out patents merely in order to protect themselves from litigation, making the entire patent system a self-perpetuating (and self-evident!) farce. Not least since so much (if not all?) software out there is based on _somebody's_ prior work; very little if any represents a great leap in technology, and much of it is a rehash or combination of someone else's idea(s). (From the article: "Software, especially a complex program, seldom includes substantial leaps in technology, but rather consists of adept combinations of many ideas." I agree.)

    I also agree that if we must have patent law for software, it must be global. It is ludicrous in today's global market to have to file seventeen different patents if your target market is in seventeen different countries.

    They also raised a good point about the monopoly issue - how many people are still using 17-year-old software that isn't "in-house" (and therefore doesn't need to worry about pesky patent law anyway)?

    Of course, a lot of readers may argue that any monopoly at all is a Bad Thing, but I guess commercial software houses have to worry about return on investment, and a monopoly is usually a fairly effective way of protecting that ;)

    One can be cynical about Oracle's motives for this policy, but then, it doesn't matter why you do the Right Thing, as long as you do it. :)

    The question then is: can we expect to see some movement on the part of corporates to lobby governments to do something about patent law?

    --
    This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.

  • The Anti-Patent Patent League (Score:5)

    by Paul Crowley ( 837 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @12:04AM (#1665187) Homepage Journal
    I don't see any problem with "defensive patents". In fact, I think we should start taking out a few of our own!

    Here's the scheme: we all set up and join the Anti-Patent Patent League. The only condition for membership is that you license all your patents to all other members - you can charge what you like or impose what restrictions you like on non-members. You don't have to have any patents to join: indeed, you can join simply by agreeing to the Patent Sharing Pledge.

    Then the FSF allow you to use such patents in GPL v3, and hey presto! Disavow the patenting system, or be locked out of the biggest patent block in history.

    There are some tricky technicalities, but it seems like the free software community's answer to defensive patents to me. Maybe Oracle would join...
    --

  • Hey, this is five years old! (Score:3)

    by Paul Crowley ( 837 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @04:27AM (#1665188) Homepage Journal
    A little URL editing gives us the containing directory [base.com], with lots of statements about patents from lots of major companies (Autodesk's seems good, there's also IBM, Borland...) - and the last modified date is 29 May 1994. There's more material on patents in the parent directory - have a poke around.

    Sorry to post thrice in one thread, but I thought it was worthy of note...
    --

  • Far as I can see, base.com can not talk by the mouth of Oracle, can it?

    I hope this gets noted by the company in question and that they'll clarify their attitude toward this statement.

    Stay calm... It might even turn out to be true. But don't praise the company just yet.
  • Of course they could GPL it. Or any number of free measures that would allow them to make money off it and not have to worry about a patent(BSD style?).

  • More companies' statements on software patents (Score:4)

    by hobbit ( 5915 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @04:30AM (#1665191)

    In the same directory:

    Adobe [base.com]
    Autodesk [base.com]
    Borland [base.com]
    IBM [base.com]
    Intel [base.com]
    Microsoft [base.com]
    SGI [base.com]
    Sun [base.com]
    Synopsis [base.com]
    Taligent [base.com]
    Time Warner [base.com]
    Windriver [base.com]

    Some pro, some anti, as you might expect.

  • It's good to hear anonther big company coming out against the patently wrong Way Things Are.

    But maybe it might have more impact if they allowed free software authors run of their patents (through the FSF?)

    I'd personally like to see a clause granting free use of software patents to any organisations who do not themselves hold software patents.

    Not that I'm planning to write a free RDBMS, but still...


    --
  • Patents are used a bit like cards in a poker game in the technology field. This goes for both hardware and software patents. The company I work for (I do hardware) encourages patent applications with perks. A patent itself is usually a worthless thing to have but they offer protection against lawsuits. A lot of patent related law suits are resolved outside of the courtroom. Company A takes legal action against company B for patent infringement. There may or may not be actual patent infringement (its sometimes hard to tell without going into microscopic details into the particular producs). Company B takes a look at Company A's product line and looks for any relavent patents it holds. If it finds some they play their hand, or packet of patents, against Company A. Often this results in a cross licensing agreement or a settlement outside of court.

    Whenever you see a company suing somebody then do an about face and reach a cross licensing agreement remember the above. There's a good chance that was what happened.

    Some patents are valuable: those that represent improvements over the state of the art that get around an otherwise (apparently) insurmountable problem. Almost all of the 'bad' software patents don't fall into that category though, they are just ways of doing things.
  • I have seen at least once that legal depts will piss on the GPL as long as the GPL is untested (untested my ass, it has never gotten to court, companies often turn around).

    So how do we do this?

  • I wonder how many software companies have the same view as Oracle? It's not really something I've followed up on because most companies seem to be rather self-serving, and I only know of a few companies (Oracle, Red Hat) and non-profit organizations (Free Software Foundation) who appear strongly against patents.. Unfortunately, any one of them by themselves isn't likely to change a whole lot (because I doubt Microsoft really wants to abolish software patents :).. Have these different companies ever tried working together on applying pressure on this issue, or even talked with each other about doing so? It seems like that's what is really needed: a concentrated effort by several companies working together to lobby against these silly patent laws.

  • They don't primarily need the patents to protect themselves from others patenting their technologies, but as a bargaining point when trying to get access to patents held by others. The software industry in the US (and probably other industries too) is rife with patent cross-licensing agreements, which are often necessary to operate. Without a patent portfolio of your own, you will be forced to pay license fees for these patents, which gets expensive, compared to the cost of applying for a patent.
    At least that's my understanding of the situation.
  • I believe that the problem with pre-emptive patenting is that there is no such legal concept. In other words, a company might claim to be filing a patent pre-emptively, but the law doesn't care. There's nothing that prevents that company, possibly under new management with different ideas, from attempting to enforce the patent.

    And, without naming names, this does happen. Even if a company doesn't feel that they can really afford the cost of litigation to enforce a patent, they can still use the patent as a threat (because the other company probably can't afford the lawyers either).

  • I noticed the page was not at the oracle site. A little probe shows that this is one of several
    statements by various companies.

    The directory listing [base.com] reveals the date:

    oracle.html 30-May-1994 02:36

    and the IBM (and others) testimony reveals more:
    Public Hearing on Use of the Patent System to Protect Software Related Inventions
    Transcript of Proceedings Wednesday, January 26, 1994 San Jose Convention Center

    The statement itself is old news but does anyone know if anything was done about more and better trained patent examiners?
  • Sometimes that would work, but a lot of times it won't. Dealing out too much information prior to having a product out can be self defeating. You've payed a handful of principle scientists hundreds of thousands per year each to solve problems faced by the whole industry in order to give you a jump start on the competition. Now you're publishing it.

    The competition may not be able to directly make use of the technique or principle but can probably get away with altering it. Look at all the circuit designs that build on previous circuit designs in the IEEE Journal of Circuits and Systems for instance. You can of course make incremental improvements to a patent as well but its more convoluted to do since your invention won't be publicly available for 12 to 24 months (the length of time it takes to push through a patent application).

  • I agree.. (Score:3)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @12:03AM (#1665201) Journal

    Being a former patent examiner I'd have to agree that the patent system needs to be redone.

    As a former examiner I can say that it is not the examiers fault, as patent examiners have quotas to meet. These quotas prevent many new examiers from doing a proper search. Meny of the topics that are sent to the patent office are not easily understood either. I had to deal with patents on many different topics, from input devices to display adapters.

    It was difficult to even attempt to become an expert in the field. In programming you usually concentrate on one or two languages, or a efw related languages. In patents you have a lot of informnation that you have to deal with and much of the time it is info that you may never have heard of.

    I did have some friends that were dealing with researching patents that delt with software, and it is very hard to reject these patents. There are no good sources of information for them, and many of then do not have programming backgrounds.

  • Bear in mind that Oracle will pursue patents for their expressed purpose; namely to build up a portfolio.

    It's the same principle as the nuclear deterrent. Such a portfolio is usually used as a defence, rather than to generate revenue. If one large company tried to attack another for a specific infringement, the ensuing war would cost both a fortune!

    Hamish
  • richer and more relevant database of prior art.

  • Before you read me wrong, consider this:

    I do like the look of base.com and its sw-patents section. It's just that rather than linking to a statement at oracle.com, having the text on their own site does not count as proof on its origin.
  • Figures I've seen (IIRC, from Gregory Aharonian) are that pre-trial costs average US$100k, a case taken to trial average US$1m. Bogus patents are effective because they're too expensive to fight.
  • " richer and more relevant database of prior art. "

  • Definition of "Patent Flooding" (Score:5)

    by Paul Crowley ( 837 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @12:14AM (#1665207) Homepage Journal
    I didn't know what this term meant, so I did a Google search [google.com] which turned up these definitions:
    [...] "patent flooding," the practice of filing large numbers of patents with narrow claims and utility models to "surround" a rival's basic patent on a core technology. (
    BRIE Working Paper 89 [berkeley.edu])
    In Japan, filing would expose them to patent piracy of their technology through "patent flooding," i.e., inundating the Japanese Patent Office with hundreds of unworthy patent applications using minuscule modifications of the American invention, followed by bullying tactics to get cross-licensing agreements. (
    The Patent Fight Gets Ugly [eagleforum.org])
    and this extended article: Technology Transfers to Japan: Legal and Cultural Frameworks [lawinfo.com] (search for "flooding").

    Just Another Patent System Stupidity, it seems.
    --

  • 1) ...when software is distributed without source code, especially if it was never patented or copyrighted. This leaves little that the examiner can systematically search, except prior patents.

    2) ...when over-general patents have been issued, which can then be argued to include almost anything related to the topic. I'm thinking of some of the howlers cited on /. this past year, like the "system to distribute information consisting of a remotely located storage means, a communication channel connected thereto, and a filing means by which particular stored records can be specifically selected for transmission from the storage means through the communication channel to the user". Such a patent would never stand up in court, but still acts as an impediment to others because of the cost of litigation to get it invalidated. (Wait- with a sufficiently clueless judge, it might just be upheld).

    3) ...if the software was part of a hardware patent, filed under some obscure category related to the purpose of the overall invention. (In the past, algorithms were patentable only as part of a hardware device). How could the examiner find such imbedded software unless he/she fortuitously stumbled across it?


    The purpose and justification of the patent system is to promote technological progress by showing everyone how things work. The modern practice of issuing over-general patents, and patents for which prior art exists, but is impossible to cite, is just a way to paralyze technical innovation through bogus lawsuits and the threat of them. The patent system was never intended to get your foot in the courthouse door with a nuisance suit. With hardware inventions, it's much easier to see what's out there as prior art. In the case of software, it's often impossible for even the most diligent examiner to find the information on prior art that he/she needs to make a correct ruling on a patent. (Not to mention the overworked, underinformed examiner, or the examiner nibbling away toward a law degree, for whom a backlog of questionable patents requiring subsequent litigation guarantees future employment and is thus not a bad thing). It's a PERVERSION of the patent system to issue sloppy patents, and thus pass the buck, as a matter of routine, to the courts.


  • Re:I agree.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    [...] not the examiers fault, as patent examiners have quotas to meet. These quotas prevent many new examiers from doing a proper search.

    This is hardly a defense. Patent examiners are civil servants who have a duty to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. If doing their job well is hard or impossible, that doesn't permit them to go on doing their job badly. Issuing patents without proper searches is unethical, and IMHO we ought to be able to raise a class action against the shysters who have thus crippled our industry.

  • There's a lot of people in the Free Software community who want to abolish patents entirely. Although I understand and agree with their sentiments, I don't think it has to go this far. Some very simple, basic reforms would eliminate 95% of the problems. The other 5% we can live with.

    The way patents work (in the US at least) is that a patent is filed, a non-expert lawyer in the patent office grants it, and it's then up to third parties to bring it to court to repeal it. It's backwards!

    Granting patents to software is not bad in and of itself. But what makes it so onerous is that most of the software patents being granted are silly. In regards to traditional (non-software) inventions, one can patent a new type of mousetrap, but one is not allowed to patent mousetraps per se.

    The basic criteria of patents used to "novel and unintuitive to an expert in the field". Furthermore, it must be no prior use. The US Patent Office employs zero experts in the software field. They are unqualified to determine if an algorithm is novel or unintuitive. They are also incapable of determining if an algorithm has been used before.

    There are two simple reforms that I think would make a big difference. First of all, the filers should demonstrate that the algorithm is novel and unintuitive, and it not prior art. During the patent process they would have to submit reports from experts saying so, and others in the industry could do this as well, for or against. I know that proving a negative is impossible, but one can still provide evidence of it. Second, the algorithm must be described in detail so that it is distinguishable from all other algorithms. It is the algorithm that is being patented, not the results. This would eliminate patents on "a method to locate data across a network" (mousetraps in general), and instead the patent would have to be "a method to route search requests using a xxx protocal over a yyy network which is 33% faster than the zzz method" (a specific mousetrap).

    The exact details would have to be hashed out by the lawyers, of course. But the stupid process of file, grant and only then challenge must stop.

  • Mutual Defense Against Software Patents (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The League for Programming Freedom has written just such a proposal [mit.edu].

    Their point is that no one company can build up a strong enough patent portfolio to defend itself.

  • Yeah, I think ESR and some of his cohorts have been looking into the idea for a while (RMS referred me to ESR when I suggested the idea to him a few weeks ago).

    --

  • ... there is a bunch of "technology" companies, that have nothing but lfucking lawers on stuff, who own a few patents, and just sue. They do not produce anything, so they are not interested in cross licensing at all.
    ... They should be publicly hanged.
  • The new omnibus patent bill does provide the ability for the patent office to keep all its user fees. It was crippled, but hopefully, it will be passed in the next month or two

  • Re:Pre-emptive patenting? (Score:4)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Thursday September 23, 1999 @04:27AM (#1665217)
    Publishing results (often anonymously) to exclude the possibility of future patents is a valid and frequently practiced methodology. There are even anonymous journals in some scientific areas established for exactly this purpose. The reason for anonymity is that you often do not want to tip off your competition as to what areas you are working in, or what technologies you might be using. Another technique is to file the patent, pay to have it issue, then don't pay the maintenance fees - then the patent will lapse into the public domain.

    As others have said, a big benefit of patents in the TechBiz is cross-licensing.

    The problem with Oracle's stance is that for a patent to be worth anything, it has to be enforced, too. If you don't enforce it it becomes worthless. Slashdot readers might be familiar with Xerox's lawsuit against Apple where they claimed infringement on several software patents having to do with GUIs, laser printing on networks, etc. The suit was thrown out of court because Xerox had waited too long (the Lisa went on the market in 1982, and the suit was brought in 1989).

    Personally I am not against software patents per se, but I think that the patent office has not been properly applying the law (novelty, unobviousness, etc.) to most software patent applications. If somebody comes up with something really worthwhile, say a debugging method that can reliably find and fix program logic errors he deserves to get a patent. This crap about business models, XOR screen hiding etc. is not what the basic idea of promoting technological advancement by encouraging R&D and the publication of results is all about.

    The problem that the former patent examiner here cited is quite true. Patent examiners do not have the resources needed to really examine patents in depth. If you are smart you can get almost any invention issued as a patent - but the value of the patent is nill because it will never hold up in court. Part of the reson for the lack of resources in the Patent Office is a severe political mistake made by the Clinton regime. A few years ago the patent office raised it's fees to become self-sufficient. A good move IMHO. The problem is that it's been so succesful that the government is now draining funds from the patent office to pay for other programs. Very bad; these funds should be used to improve the patent system in the US.

  • If you read through the statements made by the various companies, you'll see that the three pro-patenting of software ideas are all presented by lawyers, while the anti-patenting are all presented by innovators and creators...

    Now, tell me again who it that benifits from patent protection of software..

    LetterRip
  • A quick glance at Paul Crowley's link "containing directory" shows that Oracle, Adobe and IBM have the same position: no patents use copyrights instead.

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