[speps]

And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it.

EDIT: and for some other methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29, particularly the latest one being the Posit method: http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232

EDIT2: of course other people can license it, but the other way to bring a new floating point to the scene would be through the same process that happened with IEEE 754. There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause.

[turc1656]

He's an inventor. Inventors usually work towards patents. Also, it's not so "no one else can use it". It's so that he can license out his work to a company like Intel. The patent is to protect him from a company like Intel going "sweet, thanks for the fix." And then profiting off his work. Or do you expect this guy to work for free?

[vec]

I don't expect him to work for free, but I do want Intel (and AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, TI, and anyone else who makes a floating point module) to go "sweet, thanks for the fix" as quickly and, almost more importantly, as collectively as possible.

I want this guy to be compensated, but I'd prefer this guy be compensated in a manner that doesn't prevent third parties from fixing their hardware. In general, I think bounties are a good solution to this. Failing that, there are plenty of trade groups and nonprofits and regulatory bodies that could be tasked (and funded) with acquiring and freely redistributing this class of innovation if we wanted to.

[sirclueless]

You're living in a fantasy world. You're looking at the status quo: some guy has invented a better floating point circuit, and you think there are two options. 1) The guy releases it to the public for general use, or 2) the guy patents it and holds a monopoly over its use.

Obviously 1) is a greater public good than 2), but in reality these are not the only options.

Here's some other realistic situations: 3) With no incentives to make things public, this guy either stops working on this much earlier, doesn't tell anyone, or throws it in the garbage. 4) This guy goes and talks to Intel about his design. They quietly pay him some money or hire him and implement it in secret. Two years from now they launch a processor with this feature and for the indefinite future, until their competitors spend costly time reverse engineering the secret hardware, only Intel processors have this circuit. 5) Same as 4) except Intel says, "Haha, thanks for being a sucker" and doesn't pay anyone.

This is the patent system at its best: incentivizing some guy to work on this invention, then publish his work and describe it in detail. For the next 20 years, he can license it to anyone he wants and profit from his work. After that point everyone can implement it as a public good.

[ad_hominem]

The fantasy world is thinking that plucky little inventors creating something is the status quo. You think big companies like Intel don't have hundreds of people working on research full-time? That they freely lease all fruits of their research out to their competition rather than keeping a 20-year monopoly?

Patents, like any monopoly-granting device, benefit market incumbents much more than encourage new entrants

[sharemywin]

maybe large companies shouldn't be able to own patents.

[oh_sigh]

Okay, so now we will have a bunch of 1 person in-name-only companies which hold patents, which offer exclusive licenses to big companies for $1 per 1000 years.

[sbuttgereit]

This. I know of someone that invented what appears to be useful medical technology; certain trusted professionals in the field that reviewed the work agreed.

However, some of the case law around what they'd need to patent the turned unfavorable around the time they were pursuing this and looking to turn it into a business. For your reasons 3) and 5), they've shelved it. This was an individual, not a large company, and without sufficient legal protection to reasonably hold large companies at bay, there simply was not sufficient reason to pursue this effort given how questionable the return would be.

[SiempreViernes]

Since it means getting less bits to store numbers in while also having to buy new hardware it doesn't seem like a very good solution though... and this is the patent system at its best apparently.

[Eyas]

Patents are the way the government allows the inventor to require compensation.

Ideally, that would be how patents are "supposed" to be use: An idea you patent can be used by others in exchange for a royalty fee. In reality, that happens quite a bit, but we also get anti-competitive tech companies who wish to keep advances to themselves, and patent trolls who wait on violations to sue.

[Joe-Z]

>Or do you expect this guy to work for free?

Apparently he did up until now, didn't he?

I agree he should get a percentage of the profits other companies make off of his invention, but it's not like he's entitled to any payments just because he liked to tinker around. Inventor's not a real profession.

[macintux]

> I agree he should get a percentage of the profits other companies make off of his invention, but it's not like he's entitled to any payments just because he liked to tinker around.

The first clause in your sentence is exactly what patents are for; the second clause is...tangential at best.

[Retra]

Everything is done for free up until it is paid for. That doesn't mean that it is fair to not pay for any work done in advance of payment. Not sure what kind of thought process led you say this, but it is not a productive one.

[Chaebixi]

> There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause.

Then that's their loss. This seems like the ideal scenario for patent protections: small inventor developing a genuinely novel and useful invention that big, rich companies would otherwise shamelessly copy.

[RaleyField]

Ideal scenario are inventions that _require_ billion dollar investments to be discovered (aka big pharma). Anything that can be reinvented by chance independently without much effort if there is demand for it shouldn't be patentable. Probably everything concerning representation of floating point numbers should fall in this category.

[dekhn]

Patents don't necessarily mean nobody else can use it. For example, he could license the technology which means people have to pay to use it.

[wyldfire]

He's even able to make more creative licensing terms: royalty free license or "royalty free if you use the BFPF trade organization logo."

[wolfgke]

And what about programmers that care about free as freedom?

[dekhn]

What about them? You're free to discover new things, and not patent them, instead publishing them. If you have a problem with patents, take it up with the legislature and the judicial system, but there's no reason to attack inventors for using a common legal system for protecting their intellectual property.

[wolfgke]

> If you have a problem with patents, take it up with the legislature and the judicial system, but there's no reason to attack inventors for using a common legal system for protecting their intellectual property.

Many people attack companies that use tax loopholes even though the government does "allow" these loopholes. So if one is opposed to something, but it is formally allowed, one should attack both sides: The people doing it and the government.

[dekhn]

OK it sounds like you just want to have an internet argument to win internet points.

[SiempreViernes]

Don't be grumpy, the "it is technically allowed, therefore morally good"-argument is exceedingly weak, you shoudn't rely on it.

[MadcapJake]

> but it is formally allowed

Your correlation doesn't hold up because tax loopholes are not formally allowed. You call that out in your previous sentence by scare-quoting "allow". The inventor uses a formal system (patents). The company uses an informal system (tax loopholes). In the case of a formal system, you do not attack the inventor because he is just using the proper channel. In the case of an informal system, you do attack the company because the company is unethically taking advantage of a channel that shouldn't be there in the first place.

[matt4077]

They're "free as in freedom"[0] to publish their inventions without applying for a patent, or to license their patents in any way they see fit, including free-as-in-everything.

[0]: The original "Free as in speech" seems to be a much better way to express your sentiment.

[sharemywin]

doubt it effects programmers, just chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...

[wolfgke]

> doubt it effects programmers, just chips.

The boundaries are fluent (FPGAs).

[msla]

Also, keep in mind that patents don't mean the invention works, and they certainly don't mean the invention is useful for anything.

https://ploum.net/working-with-patents/

> Note that by « valid », I mean that the Patent Office didn’t found a trivial prior art for this. It doesn’t mean that there is no prior art or that I’m the real inventor or that my invention works.

An example of an insane patent:

https://www.google.com/patents/US6960975

> Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state US 6960975 B1

(via https://www.metabunk.org/do-patents-mean-the-invention-works... )

[dmm]

At least patents expire someday.

[DoofusOfDeath]

So far. That statement used to be true of U.S. copyrights as well.

[dekhn]

I don't think this is going to change any time soon. the last time patent lifetime was changed, it was to make it consistent with the rest of the world (20 years). It's unlikely we (US) would change that; it would be a huge international battle for something that people have more or less accepted.

[koliber]

You don't patent things so that no one can use them. You patent things so that others have to pay you for using them. Patent holders often want others to use their inventions, and pay them money.

[api]

I understand the downside, but how else would he ever get paid for this?

[HarryHirsch]

They could have used trade secrets. Konrad Zuse tells the story that back then, optical equipment manufacturers used to contract him for computations. Instead of rooms full of mechanical calculators operated by humans (the original "computers") they would supply his company with data and algorithms and he would reply back with results.

Apparently, there were design reasons why for electronic calculations a different mathematical formulation was more efficient. The competing manufacturers would discover this fact one by one, and Zuse was worried that someone may question his integriry, thinking he was the source of the leak. But no one did.

Michael Hanack (the materials chemist) used a different strategy: he would not patent anything so his inventions could be used my any market participant, and he would consult for all of them.

On the other hand, everyone is looking forward to the day the aptamer patent runs out. Uptake is limited (and you'd think that CRISPR/CAS9 has the same problem) because of unreasonableness (in case of CRISPR uncertainty) around licensing.

[Chaebixi]

Trade secrets are worse because then the design never gets disclosed, and has to be rediscovered. Time limited patents are a good and explicit trade off between the personal benefit of the inventor and the benefit of society.

> Michael Hanack (the materials chemist) used a different strategy: he would not patent anything so his inventions could be used my any market participant, and he would consult for all of them.

That won't work if the invention is easily copied. Chemistry is tricky and there's probably plenty of money to be made in consulting in it. A lot of industries aren't like that.

[HarryHirsch]

Trade secrets are worse because then the design never gets disclosed, and has to be rediscovered

In the sciences you'll notice that simultaneous discoveries are nothing unusual, once the groundwork is laid the idea hangs in the air, you do nothing but reach out and catch it. The Zuse example is just another instance.

In the case of mathematics and computing, the invention can be copied easily by development costs are minimal as well. These is no compelling reason why someone should reap disproportionate rewards from a government-supported artificial monopoly. Progress suffers and the economy as well.

[Chaebixi]

> In the case of mathematics and computing, the invention can be copied easily by development costs are minimal as well. These is no compelling reason why someone should reap disproportionate rewards from a government-supported artificial monopoly. Progress suffers and the economy as well.

Yes there is: because of the effort of invention. The effort required to copy is irrelevant. Also, by arguing against patents, you're basically arguing that Intel and the like should get a huge payday at the expense of this guy's efforts.

Patents only last for 20 years [1], and it's not like progress stops when they're in force. Have some patience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent

[api]

That's much worse for tons of reasons. The extreme version of that is a guild system and a bunch of secret societies, which is basically why the ancient world never industrialized. Egypt, Greece, and Rome had the basic knowledge for the industrial revolution (including maybe even electricity, search for Baghdad battery) but it was locked up in cloistered priesthoods who kept it very close to their vest. In many cases leaking such knowledge was punishable by gruesome death.

Offering an alternative to that is why the patent system was created. The idea is you publish and in return get a monopoly for a short period of time. Of course the system is abused (all systems are abused), but the reasons for its creation were actually quite "liberal."

[kbenson]

This is meant to be implemented in a processor. I'm not sure how you would keep it secret from end users, much less from the company tasked with implementing it at the chip level, and their engineers, which might find employment at different companies in the future. This seems like a very poor for for a trade secret if you ask me.

[TallGuyShort]

He could use trade secrets and still have people on HN bitch about not liking what he did with his own idea.

[Tenobrus]

Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment.

There's a reason Linux and GNU utilities are so massively widely used, and overall they've probably provided billions in economic value. They do that freely, for any human to use, and in fact that's part of their main value proposition. Both were born out of the legal nightmare that was UNIX at the time.

How should he get paid for this? In a very-ideal world, people and corporations that used his idea and had spare capital would voluntarily give him donations. In a better-than-this world, governments (or some other entity) would pay bounties to inventories out of a pool of tax money, based on both perceived usefulness of the invention and how widespread its use came to be.

[Chaebixi]

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment.

Patents were explicitly created to avoid, "incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment." The other realistic alternative is keeping the invention a trade secret, which is much worse for progress.

> How should he get paid for this? In a very-ideal world, people and corporations that used his idea and had spare capital would voluntarily give him donations.

That sounds exactly like how patents work except with no protections for the inventor. With a patents, the corporations that use the idea do give the inventor donations called license fees, but they can't screw him over and pay him less than he's worth (which they would otherwise do so they can keep the profits for themselves).

Basically, it sounds like you're proposing worse, more awkward systems because you irrationally hate the concept of patents for some reason.

[indubitable]

A few things in no particular order.

1 - It's not holding back anything. If this invention has any merit, it will be licensed and society at large will benefit from it.

2 - Incentive. If this inventor could not make a guaranteed profit from this idea, I imagine he could have found more interesting ways to spend his time than playing with floating point numeric representations. It's not like he stumbled upon this on the road and then hid it from society. He set out to create things like this as a means of sustaining himself and improving the world at the same time.

3 - The reason markets are useful is because they work phenomenally well at determining value. As we swapped to currency operated markets over barter, nobody ruled a chicken was worth 3 coins, a pig 10, and a cow 25. Instead market forces decided, and tend to do better than any other means of measuring value. Donations, let alone bureaucracy, are extremely poor substitutes in determining the value of anything. Their ideal would be to approach market force level efficiency. This isn't to say markets are flawless, but rather they're a whole let less flawed than any alternative.

[dfox]

Motivation for patent system is that it incentivizes inventors to publish they inventions in exchange for time-limited exclusivity on it, which is certainly better for progress than inventions that are unpublished trade secrets.

Issue with patent system is that it's real implementations are gameable, not with the idea itself.

[api]

I agree with the sentiment but unfortunately we've never found a way to implement real socialism without creating a massive permanent welfare underclass that does nothing and a sclerotic self-serving bureaucracy to support them.

Most people are not little philosopher kings who work to advance a grand vision of life's unfolding in the universe. Most people just want to do the minimum to get by until they can get their next dose of entertainment. I hate to be such a cynic, but I have eyes.

Social democracy (Europe, USA to a lesser extent) is a hybrid that basically works but you still have to make money in that system.

[kbenson]

> Social democracy (Europe, USA to a lesser extent) is a hybrid that basically works but you still have to make money in that system.

Whether it's capitalism with a large dose of socialism of socialism or socialism with a large dose of capitalism, neither extreme seems to work as well as approaches that adopt portions of both.

> Most people are not little philosopher kings who work to advance a grand vision of life's unfolding in the universe. Most people just want to do the minimum to get by until they can get their next dose of entertainment. I hate to be such a cynic, but I have eyes.

I think the only people that actually work to advance understanding of the universe do so for selfish reasons, and we all just get to benefit from the byproduct of their self interest. If I had to guess whether Einstein of Newton did what they did because they wanted every human to be better of, or if it was primarily because that's what they enjoyed doing and they were lucky enough to be in circumstances that allowed them to live doing that (and become famous as well), I know where I'd place my bet.

It's the same for child rearing. There's a sense of happiness and contentment when your children are happy and safe (or at a minimum there's usually uneasiness and dread when your children are unhappy or unsafe), so you try to make that the situation the one that makes you the most comfortable happy. It's an instinctual and emotional response, but doesn't necessarily make sense from a purely rational self-interest point of view.

We aren't saints, we're machines with wacky firmware that imparts interesting and had to evaluate value functions.

[wizzard]

So he should have either hoped that corporations would feel charitable, or submitted himself as a guinea pig to a system that doesn't exist. Got it.

[kbenson]

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment.

Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it.

The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the patent system, people are incentivized to keep their inventions secret, and hide how they work, but patents require publishing the details. Some companies don't patent some things just so they can keep it secret.

The problem with the patent system is not the concept of patents, but what they've been allowed to apply to and how long the terms have increased.

Him patenting the idea meanshe has control over his options. It also prevents another entity, such as Intel or AMD discovering it and patenting it. If he wants, he can make it free to use for non-profiting or open source entities.

Edit: The capitalism / poverty comparison is meant to infer communism, as the alternative to a competition and financially motivated system. I don't think it's contentious to say capitalism ended up being the better system for getting people's standard of living raised, even is communism sounds good on paper. I don't think the relation to the patent system in comparison to some ideal sounding solution where people get some money somehow for giving their ideas to the world immediately is all that strained.

[JackFr]

> The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation

And if it seems like the patent system is being gamed to hinder innovation (not really in this case, but yes absolutely in the case of pharma) it should be revisited. Intellectual property laws are based in pragmatism, not natural law. If the costs begin to outweigh the benefits, they should be changed.

[Chaebixi]

There are areas of the patent system that are legitimately in need of reform, but that doesn't mean the underlying concept is not sound. Many people seem to be looking at the areas where reform is needed and erroneously concluding that the whole thing needs to be burned down. That's a shame, since the core idea of patents seems like a very good trade-off to me.

[Spivak]

You can hate the patent system all you want but this specific case, assuming that his invention works, is a case where patents are being used correctly.

[casiotone]

> Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty.

Thanks. I was worried I would go the whole day without spitting out my drink.

[Spivak]

Ignoring the weird comparison, he's right. Patents, as bad as the system is, are an improvement on no patents.

[kbenson]

When people start talking about ideal and better-than-idea worlds and voluntary payments or government disbursements, my mind goes to communism. While communism sounds like it provides a better outcome on paper, capitalism (with constraints) has shown it's a much better system for raising the living standard of everyone, even if there is quite a disparity between the lowest and the highest.

Would some ideal-world type situation for patents work? I doubt it. We have patents, and there are some upsides to that system, even if it has been abused recently. I think people have transferred a lot of their anger at the abuses to the concept of patents themselves. Here we have someone that patented something, and people are upset that he did that before knowing how he intends to use the patent. The patent could be free for non-commercial use. It could be free for many things. Or it could be that it's most likely to be used in hardware by a large corporation that prints chips and not individuals, and he'll license it to them and the most anyone will see of it is a few cents added to the production cost of each chip (not that anyone even knows what that is, since retail chip pricing is so crazy).

How we measure a system shouldn't be based on just the biggest successes and biggest problems (but those should be looked at), but on the long track record of what it does and how it performs. In that light, I think capitalism has shown itself a better system in the long run, and I think patents have shown their merit in the long run as well.

[dahauns]

Why going back a few hundred years? Even a few decades ago the idea of patenting mathematics was still mostly considered absurd. Imagine a world where people like e.g. Dijkstra and Lamport patented all their concurrency algorithms. Hoare patented quicksort. And so on.

[kbenson]

It looks to my like it's a process to be carried out in hardware which is patented, and not the mathematics in question. It's a physical apparatus.

Even if it was purely mathematics, I think I would rather have someone patent it if possible and make it freely available than to leave it out and have someone else take a stab at patenting it, have the underfunded patent office fail to realize there is prior art, and grant the patent. Sure, you could effectively fight it, but until the system gets reformed enough to prevent most these abused, that's a lot of wasted resources (and having the patent lets them threaten others with it without actually bringing a case that could invalidate it).

[Chaebixi]

> The problem with the patent system is not the concept of patents, but what they've been allowed to apply to and how long the terms have increased.

Patents aren't copyrights. The term for patents is only about 20 years.

[kbenson]

You're right, I was conflating the two issues somewhat. I do think patent terms should be be somewhat different for different classes of patents, or industries they are used in. If patents for software is to be allowed, I'm not sure why it needs to have a term of more than 3-5 years from issuance. Any industry moving at a similar clip could also benefit from reduced terms. 20 years isn't forever, but depending on industry momentum and advance rate, it ends up retarding innovation instead of helping it.

In any case, I don't think we should immediately vilify someone for using the patent system (and using it as originally intended, IMO), just because we are unhappy with the way it's been abused recently, as I think it has provided us great benefit over it's existence.

[neilsimp1]

I mean, it's unfortunate, but can you blame him?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Here's how I'm inclined to reason about it:

It depends on whether he would consider the filing's "invention" to be within a reasonable definition of what should be patentable.

If yes, then he's just playing his part in our society's overall machinations for technical progress, and there's nothing really blameworthy about the filing.

If no, then he's being deeply selfish: He's capitalizing on the government's unjustified encroachment on our individual liberties, via the patent system, for his own personal gain.

[InclinedPlane]

Yes.

[turc1656]

Why? I'm genuinely curious why you blame him for patenting his work.

[bringtheaction]

Because the whole patent system is broken and everyone who partakes in it shares blame.

[dekhn]

This is an absolutist position that permits no subtlety. But the patent system is a subtle incentivization which seeks to balance a number of forces (in particular, it incentivizes people to invent new things that they can profit from, while also avoiding trade secrets).

[wolfgke]

> This is an absolutist position that permits no subtlety.

Where is the problem with such positions?

[Spivak]

If he didn't patent his work someone else will and collect the royalties resulting in 0 additional freedom. There is nothing gained by not playing.

[mrob]

If he publicly discloses it then (theoretically) nobody else can patent it.

[dboreham]

Because it would be nice if someone, somewhere would do the right thing rather than whatever stupid nonsense benefits them personally the most.

[Spivak]

Why is the right thing to do work for no compensation?

[dboreham]

It is the right thing when you know that mathematics isn't patentable.

[bg4]

Someone like Nils Bohlin and Volvo for the three-point seatbelt patent?

[pduszak]

It's a dog eat dog world.

[coding123]

Would you still feel this way if this was just a run of the mill patent by intel?

[Nullabillity]

Of course.

[rocqua]

If you want to keep others from patenting you work, you need to patent it yourself.

[simonh]

No you just need to publish it, then it becomes prior art.

[golergka]

It's fortunate and we should praise him. I understand backlash against patent trolls, but this is pure bullshit.