Does Online Document Writer Have Patents on PDFs Which Prevent Other?

Does Online Document Writer have patents on PDFs which prevent other companies from offering competing programs?

Allow me to re-phrase your question.If the US government created an office in which thousands of bureaucrats assigned tens of thousands of monopolies on abstract algorithms to private interests each year, would that help innovation ? No, it's insane. Consider.Examiners cannot possibly judge what's "non-obvious" in countless specialized algorithmic subjects and application domains. You cannot write any significant commercial software today without violating many patents. Nor can you even know which ones; patents are written in an intentionally vague and legalistic manner, making them difficult to find and understand. And over 50,000 new software patents are issued each year by the USPTO alone. In 2011 Apple and Google spent more on patents and patent litigation than on designing products [New York Times technology section, Oct 7 2012] Most software professionals would like to see software patents abolished (94% in the case of a 2012 New Zealand IIT survey). But don't software patents encourage innovation ? No. T add financial risk to the creation of any new product or feature. Massive financial risk if you are a small company; a typical patent lawsuit costs millions of dollars - regardless of merit. T do of course encourage patenting, but the most effective strategy is a land-grab of trivial incremental ideas. But without software patents, can't someone just copy your software product ? No. Software is protected by copyright. Any company that literally copies your software and tries to sell it as their own can be sued. This almost never happens among law-abiding companies. Further, software is usually distributed in 'compiled' form, meaning that it's very difficult to reverse engineer complex algorithms. In almost all cases a competitor will find it cheaper and better to design their own algorithms and source code from scratch rather than reverse engineer a competitor's product. This point is usually not understood by non-programmers who think software patents are a good idea. What do you care ? I started a small company which develops algorithms and software which are then licensed to other, larger, firms. In other words we’re ‘inventors’, something the patent system purports to help. By far the biggest threat to our existence is software patents. If one of our large customers is sued for infringement (related to our tech), t will immediately attempt to push costs back to us and I’ll lose my investment of life savings and many years. Regardless of the merits of the patent. And of the various threats we’ve had, the patents in question have all been merit-less; trivial, not novel, and in one case not even intelligible. Nor have we applied for patents. For the reasons described above, t are not necessary in software. And even if we did want to block competitors instead of creating a better product, this would require millions in legal fees. Because of software patents, I would never start another business based on this ‘software invention’ model and would advise anyone else to avoid it as well. And yes, I am a software patent ‘inventor’ from work for a previous employer. What's the evidence ? There is lots of evidence. Here are a few links.A study showing that software patents reduce R&D.Page on researchoninnovation.org A paper showing that NPE (companies of lawyers with no product who just sue others for patent infringement) lawsuits over 20 years cost the tech industry $500 billion, with almost no money going to "inventors" (62% of the suits were software patents).The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls A paper showing that most patent licenses involve no technology transfer - merely permission to be allowed to continue selling a product.Does Patent Licensing Mean Innovation? Books on the subject.Steal This Idea - Intellectual Property and the | M. Perelman | Palgrave Macmillan Bessen, J. and Meurer, M.J..Patent Failure.How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk. (eBook and Paperback) Who else shares this view ? This view is widely shared, and not just by software developers.Software Patents vs. Free Software How big companies are stopping Congress from fixing the patent system To be clear; software patents are bullshit. T are written (at least in part) by lawyers, examined by people with no real experience developing algorithms, adjudicated by judges who have their secretaries print out their email, and occasionally decided by juries of citizens, most of whom couldn't pass a middle school math test. Franz Kafka eat your heart out. For more information, and to see how you can help defend the right to innovate.Defend Innovation Stop Software Patents Petition End Software Patents But aren't patents in general a good thing ? Probably not.A question of utility (The Economist) The Wright Brothers.Pioneers of Patent Trolling 100 Years of Turbulence (Idle Words)