Subj : Re: Software Patents
To   : comp.programming
From : Peter Ammon
Date : Fri Jul 08 2005 12:58 am

CBFalconer wrote:
> There is hope yet.  Somebody did the right thing.  See:
> 
>   <http://swpat.ffii.org/log/05/ep0706/>
> 

Can someone please explain to me why people get so riled up about 
software patents?  From my perspective, patents are an incentive to 
research and invest in novel approaches to problems.  Why spend any 
effort researching the best approach if competitors can copy it immediately?

I agree that software patents are abused in the United States, and 
companies that do nothing save accumulate IP for litigation are legal 
and economic parasites.  But this seems to me to be a symptom of a 
patent office that grants overly broad or obvious patents.  If patents 
were confined to legitimately original inventions that took significant 
work to develop, I think they'd be a positive thing.

But this is just a naive outsider's point of view.  I'd very much like 
to hear a deeper analysis of why software should not be patentable.

-Peter

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