ross@spam.ua.oz.au (Ross Williams) (06/27/91)
> Having doodled with compression algorithms for the last two years, >I have come up with a few ideas which I thought were original, and at least >one still is (to my knowledge). Now I'm no expert on legal matters, but >quite often I seem to be hitting this brick wall of people saying "But that's >already been patented". I sympathize. Certainly the LZW patent has put me off investigating the whole class of LZ78 algorithms. I have recently concentrated on LZ77 algorithms instead which seem to be clear of patent problems. It's no fun inventing a data compression algorithm if you can't give it to the world to really be used. >Patents are an ugly slug, especially when they inhibit experimental research. In line with what Dan Bernstein said, patents do not inhibit experimental research at all. In fact they actually HELP it. One of the big motivations for having a patent system is to encourage inventors in the commercial world to disclose their inventions so that other inventors can work on improving them. That is one of the reasons why patent offices make very public any patent that they grant. The patent system is designed to encourage the sharing of technology by providing inventors with protection in exchange for disclosing the inventions. What software patents DO inhibit is small scale commerical software development and production, as one will soon need an army of lawyers to fend off all the lawsuits that one will accumulate from having re-invented dozens of software tricks during one's software development. For more information on the problem with software patents, contact: The League for Prgramming Freedom league@prep.ai.mit.edu Ph: +1(617) 243-4091 1 Kendall Square, No.143 PO Box 9171 Cambridge MA 02139 Ross Williams ross@spam.ua.oz.au PS: I am not against hardware patenting as the problems of scale do not occur as sharply. I am even currently pursuing a hardware patent myself.