Subj : Re: Software Patents
To   : comp.programming
From : Sc0rpi0
Date : Fri Jul 08 2005 05:55 pm

Peter Ammon:

> 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?

My opinion is maybe extremal but it looks: If you see no effort in such 
research then don't do it and think of another business, why bother ?
There are another people around the world, someone will invent it sooner
or later, believe me. You got time to be the first in the field, and 
competitors can't just copy implementation, they have to create their own.
That give you the time even to establish a standard if users like your
way to solve certain problem and your implementation. Blocking some idea
in software for years is just stupid and IF any soft patents ever be
in UE then I hope their lifetime be no longer than a year.

> If patents
> were confined to legitimately original inventions that took significant
> work to develop, I think they'd be a positive thing.

How you define legitimately original invention ? And who decide if
invention pass this term ? Some clerk from the patent bureau ?

> 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.

Because examples from U.S. show us where it's going to.


-- 
Sc0rpi0
I hated going to weddings.
All the grandmas would poke me saying "You're next".
They stopped that when I started doing it to them at funerals.

.