Programming Freedom
Number 10
July 1994
The League For Programming Freedom
One Kendall Square #143
PO Box 9171
Cambridge, MA 02139
Table of Contents
Software Adventure By Gordon Irlam & Ross Williams
Goodbye & Goodluck
Another Annoying Patent By Greg Ahronian
The LPF on the WWW
Petition to Oppose Clipper
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Software Adventure
We can best illustrate some of the problems that software patents
cause, through the use of an imaginative scenario written in the style
of the well-known computer exploration game "Adventure":
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Welcome to Patent Adventure V3.4. - All Rights Reserved 1994.
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You are the CEO of AcmeSoft - a fairly successful software company.
You are at your desk. Suddenly the fax machine rumbles...
Command> READ FAX
It's from SharkTech! They're claiming that your company's product
"Acme Professional" violates their software patent "Distinguishing
Nested Structures by Color". They want 1% of your wholesale price
in royalties.
Command> GIVE ROYALTIES
Now they want 5%.
Command> GIVE ROYALTIES
That satisfied them. Hmmm, the fax machine is humming again.
It's from ParaTech! They're claiming your company's product "Acme
Professional" assigns clients to whichever server process is least
busy, and as a result want 3% of your wholesale price in
royalties.
Command> IGNORE THEM
ParaTech have decided to take you to court. Do you want to settle
for 10%, pay $800,000 in legal fees, or circumvent the patent?
Command> CIRCUMVENT
Your programmers say they can't circumvent the patent without
hurting performance --- causing you to lose you 30% of your
customer base. Do you want to circumvent?
Command> CIRCUMVENT
You've lost 30% of your customers! The fax machine is going
again. This time it's from MeanTech. They're claiming your
company's product "Acme Professional" violates their software
patent on storing document images on a CD ROM along with an
automatically generated index, and because they are a competitor,
they do not want a royalty. They want you to remove the violating
code or stop shipping the product. What do you wish to do:
1) Ship 400 floppy disks instead of one CD ROM.
2) Go to court.
3) Stop shipping the product.
COMMAND> GO TO COURT
Legal fees are $600,000. Current funds are $400,000.
You've gone broke!
Do you want to play Patent Adventure again?> DEFINITELY NOT
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While the above scenario is fictional, it is far closer to the current
situation than many in the software industry realize. In reality:
* IBM holds patent #4,965,765 which covers the use of different
colors to distinguish the nesting level of nested expressions.
* Patent #5,249,290 covers assignment of client requests to the
server process having the least load.
* Patent #4,941,125 covers using a digital camera in conjunction
with character recognition software to store and index documents
on a CD ROM.
* And IBM really does charge small companies 1% of royalties to
license a single software patent, and 5% for its entire portfolio.
The software patent system is clearly out of control and if not caught
soon will change the face of the software industry forever. Two
thousand new software patents are granted each year. They are being
granted on software technologies as diverse and mundane as file
servers and word processors. It is already dangerous to create
products containing data compression or public key encryption, and
recently major inroads were made in the field of multimedia. Here are
some more examples to help give you a feel for the scope of the
problem:
* A spreadsheet in which each cell has a "next cell" attribute
defining the next cell to advance to after having entering data
into the current cell. [#5,121,499].
* A spreadsheet in which a single cell can contain multiple
(possibly optional) fields. [#5,247,611].
* A word processor that has a feature that allows you to specify
that a portion of the text should be shaded - such as may be
useful when revising a manual - by enclosing the relevant text
within commands that turn shading on and off. [#4,924,411].
* Use of a host independent network byte ordering. [#4,956,809].
* A parallelizing compiler that estimates the execution time for
each of a number of different parallelization conversions and then
selects the one that it thinks will be the fastest. [#5,151,991].
* Simulating the access times associated with a CD ROM by slowing
down a hard disk. [#5,121,492].
These are just a few of hundreds of software patents that pose a
critical threat to all software developers, large and small. Many
more examples are contained in Appendix C. The fact that these
patents all cover trivial ideas is significant, but not the only
reason for the difficulties. In this document, we argue that the
nature of the software industry makes it an inappropriate subject for
the granting of patents.
Software Adventure was written by Ross Williams and Gordon Irlam, and
is is portion of the LPF's tetimony at the Patent Office hearings in San
Jose. To request a copy in its entirity send email to sjm@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
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Goodbye & Goodluck
At the end of this month longtime LPF volunteer Noah Friedman will be
leaving. For over the past two and a half years Noah has been a
godsend to the LPF, answering all email requests, working with the
membership database, and helping out with whatever has been needed, all
in addition to his full time job with the FSF. His "future plans include
finishing school and several programs I haven't had time to hack on
for ages".
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Another Annoying Patent!
OH NO!!!
Just when you thought that telephone calling couldn't get any worse
(due to annoying phone mail systems, and other such "breakthroughs"), along
comes some technology that automatically switches your phone call, when it
encounters a busy signal, to a node that provides advertising to listen to
until the person you are calling is through, when it completes the connection.
Having to listen to phone Muzak is bad enough while waiting, but now we have
to listen to advertising?
OH NO!!!
Greg Aharonian, Internet Patent News Service
(for subscription info, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com)
Vital Information
US PAT NO: 5,321,740 [IMAGE AVAILABLE] ANS: 1
DATE ISSUED: Jun. 14, 1994
TITLE: Telephone marketing system
INVENTOR: Mark R. Gregorek, Mahwah, NJ, Jeffrey C. Dillow, Sparta, NJ
ASSIGNEE: Quantum Systems, Inc., Mahwah, NJ (U.S. corp.)
APPL-NO: 07/718,080
DATE FILED: Jun. 20, 1991
ART-UNIT: 261
PRIM-EXMR: Thomas W. Brown
LEGAL-REP: Panitch, Schwarze, Jacobs & Nadel
Submitted by Greg Aharonian, Internet Patent News Service
(srctran@world.std.com)
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The LPF on the WWW
A group of hardworking volunteers has been busy setting up the League
on the World Wide Web. They report that they recently got the lpf.org
domain registered (so the LPF now has an official domain). The machine
for the site should be set up in the near future, and then the volunteers
will get working on designing and writing the LPF's pages. The site
should be up and running by the middle of August. At that point they will
need more volunteers, so if you have an interest, and would like to help
drop me a note (sjm@gnu.ai.mit.edu). Thank you Marianne Mueller, Lile
Elam, Gordon Irlam and Wendell Craig Baker for all of your hard work!
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Petition to Oppose Clipper
On January 24, many of the nation's leading experts in cryptography
and computer security wrote President Clinton and asked him to
withdraw the Clipper proposal.
The public response to the letter has been extremely favorable,
including coverage in the New York Times and numerous computer and
security trade magazines.
Many people have expressed interest in adding their names to the
letter. In response to these requests, CPSR is organizing an
Internet petition drive to oppose the Clipper proposal. We will
deliver the signed petition to the White House, complete with the
names of all the people who oppose Clipper.
To sign on to the letter, send a message to:
Clipper.petition@cpsr.org
with the message "I oppose Clipper" (no quotes)
You will receive a return message confirming your vote.
For more information about Clipper, please consult the CPSR Internet Library -
FTP/WAIS/Gopher CPSR.ORG /cpsr/privacy/crypto/clipper
This was passed along by longtime activist L. Peter Deusch (lpd@aladdin.com)
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LPF Boutique:
Materials Available from the League
Please send orders to: League for Programming Freedom One Kendall Square
#143/PO Box 9171 Cambridge MA 02139. Please send check or money order
(US funds only)for full amount including shipping charges. All shipping
charges listed are for US domestic mail; for international mail, please
add $2/item ground or send email (lpf@uunet.uu.net ) to get air rates.
Buttons: The famous "fanged apple" buttons with the slogan "Keep your
Lawyers Off My Computer" are available by mail for $6/three, $2 each
additional, domestic shipping included.
Liberty Stickers and Postcards: We also have stickers showing Liberty
Empowering the Programmer, with the League's name and address. Price $5
for 10 stickers; domestic shipping included. (note: the stickers are not
made to survive rain.) We also have glossy Liberty postcards-- same price
as stickers.
Large Liberty Posters: We have a few posters with the same image as the
stickers, approximately 2.5 ft by 1.5 ft. They are $4 each and $4 total
shipping and handling in the US for the first one to four posters, and
$2 shipping/handling for each additional two. We also have a Postscript
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/pub/lpf/articles/liberty.ps.Z for you to download; it's a 100k file.
Coffee Mugs: Our 12-oz., microwave-safe coffee mugs have the Fanged Apple
design in full color on one side and "League for Programming Freedom" on
the other. Price $15, plus $4.00 shipping and handling.
T-Shirts: All T-shirts have Liberty and "League for Programming Freedom"
on the front. New shipment has "Innovate, Don't Litigate" on the back;
Sizes M,L,XL are available in Yellow, Light Blue or Natural. Price $10,
plus $3/shirt for shipping and handling. Please specify size and color;
note alternate color in case we are out of first choice.
Position Papers: We will send anyone a copy of the League position papers.
If you want copies to hand out at an event give us 4 weeks notice and we'll
send you as many as you need.
League Papers On-line: You can retrieve LPF written materials in TeXinfo
format by anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu in the directory /pub/lpf.
These include the position papers, all back issues of our newsletter
Programming Freedom, membership forms, handouts, friends of the court
briefs, and articles about the LPF's issues of concern. In addition to
the above, Joe Wells has PostScript, DVI, plain text, and Info format
versions of the papers "Against User Interface Copyright" (look-and-feel)
and "Against Software Patents" (patents) available for FTP from the
location: cs.bu.edu:pub/jbw/lpf/
League Video Cassettes: We have a four-hour video tape of two of
Richard Stallman's speeches for the LPF for $20 each, including shipping
and handling. (VHS/NTSC format only.)