"Because getting a patent means accepting a time-limited monopoly on your invention, anyone will be able to use this specification to build their own search engine when the patent expires in 2018."
This paragraph from the article points out one of the larger issues I have with patents in high-tech, which is the length of the grant. Even ignoring the fact that simply reading patent claims is a VERY long way away from working code and related infrastructure, the lapse of the patent plus the knowledge from the patent would only be good for helping you to implement Google's algorithm as it existed in 1998(!). Forget about 2018, Google's algorithms (while still built on similar concepts) are known to be very different today or even 4 years ago than they were in 1998.
By granting such a long term to patents you are not just blocking competitors from the core claim, but also any innovations you make while the patent is active, assuming enough of the original invention remains that anything else that uses your non-filed tweaks would still be in violation of the original process.
Result? You could (assuming reading a patent magically allowed you to actually recreate the system) recreate 1998 Google in 2018. Approximate value of that 'knowledge gift to society' IN 2018? $0! You're 2 decades behind where you need to be if you're starting at the original core invention.
BTW, I don't mean for any of this to be a knock on Google, PageRank is simply the example the original article decided to use. Google remains one of the only big software-related corporations whose patent usage/enforcement hasn't yet been destructive to the industry as a whole.
This paragraph from the article points out one of the larger issues I have with patents in high-tech, which is the length of the grant. Even ignoring the fact that simply reading patent claims is a VERY long way away from working code and related infrastructure, the lapse of the patent plus the knowledge from the patent would only be good for helping you to implement Google's algorithm as it existed in 1998(!). Forget about 2018, Google's algorithms (while still built on similar concepts) are known to be very different today or even 4 years ago than they were in 1998.
By granting such a long term to patents you are not just blocking competitors from the core claim, but also any innovations you make while the patent is active, assuming enough of the original invention remains that anything else that uses your non-filed tweaks would still be in violation of the original process.
Result? You could (assuming reading a patent magically allowed you to actually recreate the system) recreate 1998 Google in 2018. Approximate value of that 'knowledge gift to society' IN 2018? $0! You're 2 decades behind where you need to be if you're starting at the original core invention.
BTW, I don't mean for any of this to be a knock on Google, PageRank is simply the example the original article decided to use. Google remains one of the only big software-related corporations whose patent usage/enforcement hasn't yet been destructive to the industry as a whole.