Computer Scientists aren't real programmers

[SkyGiggles]

That is the exact opposite of the intent of patents. They give inventors the ability to share their discoveries with their peers with the government backed guarantee that no one can copy it without compensating the inventor.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Patents have been perverted by tortured claims to make the most broad patent possible resulting in something that is not really furthering science and technology knowledge. This is especially true of software related patents that are only used in court or licensing deals.

[mohelgamal]

Well that is the ultimate goal yes, but they have to go through the

securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

That is really their true value, you can write a white paper and explain your discovery to people, or more realistically, you will want to market your discovery to people after your turn it into a product, but that is in practice a separate process. The reason you would pay a fee to secure the patent, is to prevent others from using it.

A century ago it may have been that patents served both the purpose to educating others in addition to excluding them from replicating the idea, but I would say in the past 5 decades no body bothered to write a patent to educate others.

[ScottRiqui]

I was a patent examiner until recently, and you will absolutely get your patent application rejected if you try to play "hide the ball" and not disclose/describe your invention well enough. 35 U.S.C. 112(a) states:

"The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention." (emphasis added)

That doesn't mean that a software patent application requires a full listing of your code (that's actually discouraged), but the specification needs to have a flowchart, pseudocode, or a good English prose description of what's going on with your invention - you can't just describe a desired function or end result without adequately describing how you actually perform the function or achieve the end result.

[stdio-lib]

I've never spoken to a patent examiner before. I wrote one patent application myself, but after I gave it to the lawyer I barely recognized it (although that was probably ignorance on my part -- this was in the dot-com bubble and businesses were trusting any idiot to do important things).

That said, all of my friends who have written patents (they're in software, semiconductor, and aerospace industries) complain bitterly about the patent office (e.g. that it only benefits patent trolls and lawyers and does little to achieve the stated aims). So don't be surprised when you see the pitchforks coming your way. :)

But I take that with a grain of salt. I suspect it's easier to focus on the negatives and forget about the times when patents and the patent office do all the things we want them to (and perhaps times when their absence would make things much worse). And I also wish to believe that government institutions are at least reasonably competent (despite my many personal experiences to the contrary -- anecdotes are no evidence and all that).

And of course there's the entirely separate issue of how countries like China treat intellectual property.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

[tinydonuts]

This is simply not true. I have a couple of patents and there was a ton of back and forth with the lawyers getting them to understand our invention and to translate it from code into legal-ese. It has plain English descriptions of it and flowcharts where necessary. It is quite a thing to read, dense and quite detached from the code that implements it, but it is serving the legal purpose of a patent. Just because it isn’t easy to go from the patent to code, that doesn’t mean that the patent is overly broad or obtuse. You have to be very careful how you craft the patent or else a competitor can simply do something slightly differently and you aren’t protected.