Erudition and Inanity

So you advocate that there should be no software patents? Or that software patents shouldn’t be enforceable? Or that just because I stole somebody else’s work a long time ago that I should get away with it? Or that because so many people are conspiring in the infringement, that it should be ignored?

Software companies need IP protection or they go out of business … or they turn into companies like the ones cited as defending against Microsoft, like IBM and Novell, that no longer have a software business, and make money by giving you free software, and then charge you for modifying and fixing it.

I advocate that there should be no software patents, for several reasons.

One, the patent office has a habit of granting overly broad or overly narrow patents, for “inventions” that could have been invented by anyone or that other programmers reinvent on a daily basis. See Amazon’s one-click patent for an example of a particularly egregious patent.

Two, twenty-year durations for the protection of IP is an eternity in the software business, and much too long to be reasonable.

Three, many software patents are essentially mathematical algorithms, and traditionally those have been unpatentable under IP laws.

Four, I’m not at all convinced that software patents “need IP protection or they go out of business.” Software companies were in business just fine before they had IP protection in the form of patents. If they really do need IP protection for software let’s devise a new, more suitable mechanism rather than trying to shoehorn an older form of protection-patents-onto a type of technology which isn’t really a very good fit for them.