
Software Patents > Players > KONNO Hiroshi
Michel VIVANT	Jean-Paul SMETS	KONNO Hiroshi	Donald KNUTH	Bernd LUTTERBECK

KONNO Hiroshi and Software Patents

A professor of mathematics, specialising in operations research, at Tokyo University. Wrote a very readable book about his experience with the Karmarkar patent in which he points out the inconsistencies and harmful effects of patenting math and software. Has tried to resist software patentability in Japan by filing a lawsuit against the Karmarkar patent. Although, after spending an equivalent of 1 mn usd, he finally won the lawsuit, he did not achieve his aim of making japanese courts rethink their drive to patent software and mathematics against the letter and spirit of the Japanese law. In recent years, Konno has himself been in the role of struggling to patent many business methods in order to preempt US companies. This made part of the japanese press erroneously hype him as a promoter of business method patents in Japan. In 2002, Konno published another japanese book, titled "Patents for just anything? Where is the patent business heading?"

Konno 1995: Karmarkar Patent & Software: In this book which received great public attention in Japan, Prof. Konno, a famous specialist of operations research (applied mathematics) from Tokyo University, explains what is behind the recent drive to extend the scope of patentability to software and mathematics. The book starts from a few fascinating examples of real advances in mathematical research, namely Narendra Karmarkar's interior point method of linear programming. This method was a truly rare achievement of ingenuity with great value for large-scale industrial planning. If any mathematical achievement could be suitable for patenting, then it was this method. The AT&T laboratories did receive a patent for this method in 1988. However the Karmarkar patent did not create very significant revenues for AT&T while causing significant inconvenience to the industry and destroying much of the positive interaction cycles that had previously characterised the cooperation between linear programming research and industry in the US. The AT&T Laboratories no longer produced any Nobel Prize winners after they became patent-oriented, and Karmarkar himself was isolated from the network of mathematic researchers, who soon left him lagging far behind. Konno captures the reader with a fascinating introduction to linear programming, interwoven with a dramatic account of the battles that accompanied the Karmarkar patent within the mathematics community and the patent system. Konno was on the podium or in the first row during the conferences where the drama around Karmarkar, linear programming and mathematical patents evolved. Moreover it was Konno who filed an opposition to the Karmarkar patent in Japan. He shows that the Japanese Ministery of Trade and Industry (MITI) pushed the Japanese patent office to bend Japanese patent law in an inconsistent direction. Lawyers at the time explained that it was not necessary to be consistent but to go with the tide, which was inevitably pro software patents. The MITI acted under the pressure from these lawyers and from the US government. Konno's vivid examples suggest however that software patents are not here to stay. They do not correspond to any need of the software industry. They have stifled innovation and resulted in a massive blood transfer from the software industry to the litigation business. They created a new market of about 2 billion USD per year for the patent law professionals. 'You needn't be named Hercule Poirot to see who is the driving force behind all this', Konno remarks. But there is hope, because the young generation has not lost sight of the problems.
KONNO Hiroshi: Japanese account of his writings: mostly mathematics and operations research, some on patent problems.