Nobody is independently inventing the OFDM patent I linked to, at least not within the patent term. You're taking an edge case and making the debate all about that edge case. I think it's quite reasonable to have genuine independent invention as a defense to patent infringement, FWIW.
> You can write a contract for anything.
You can contract for anything, but you can't enforce the contract against anyone not in contractual privity.
> That may be true. If you have made inventions such as these, you should protect them with trade secret because chat availability status patents are far more excessively damaging than strong signal processing patents are valuable.
As I described above, trade secrets don't allow the crucial feature of being easy to transact in. And you have absolutely no basis for your claim that "chat availability" patents are more damaging than signal processing patents are valuable. You can point to the Apple litigation on one side, and I can point to ARM, Ltd. on the other, etc.
You're taking an edge case and making the debate all about that edge case.
Sadly, I see this the opposite way. Quantity-wise good, innovative architecture patents are in the vast minority. If we are to deal with software patents one at a time, the combined effort dealing with bad ones far outweighs good ones.
You can contract for anything, but you can't enforce the contract against anyone not in contractual privity.
Hah, I already updated my comment based on your updated comment! HN isn't the best for these kinds of discussions.
Nobody is independently inventing the OFDM patent I linked to, at least not within the patent term.
I have been thinking for some time that we need a collection of good software patents. Not having read the OFDM or ARM patents (for which I'm not qualified anyway), I don't know if they are "good". But I do know that one day we're going to invalidate a large percentage of software patents or watch innovation happen elsewhere. When that day comes, it will be important to have a list of things that are valuable, or else we'll end up with the bar that I described (anything computable is not patentable).
Unfortunately, I don't know of enough of them to seed such a database. Maybe fast square root or some of Carmack's graphics work. And as such I'm okay with seeing them 100% invalid. If you disagree, perhaps we can chat about it (email's in my profile).
Nobody is independently inventing the OFDM patent I linked to, at least not within the patent term. You're taking an edge case and making the debate all about that edge case. I think it's quite reasonable to have genuine independent invention as a defense to patent infringement, FWIW.
> You can write a contract for anything.
You can contract for anything, but you can't enforce the contract against anyone not in contractual privity.
> That may be true. If you have made inventions such as these, you should protect them with trade secret because chat availability status patents are far more excessively damaging than strong signal processing patents are valuable.
As I described above, trade secrets don't allow the crucial feature of being easy to transact in. And you have absolutely no basis for your claim that "chat availability" patents are more damaging than signal processing patents are valuable. You can point to the Apple litigation on one side, and I can point to ARM, Ltd. on the other, etc.