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What's wrong with software patents?
Ah, software patents. They're not the hot topic they were a year ago, but that doesn't mean they've gone away. Free Software Magazine's Pieter Hintjens has penned an editorial titled What's wrong with software patents? "from a different angle, one based more on economics and less on emotions." It won't surprise you that Hintjens' conclusion, based on economics though it may be, still does not favor software patents. "The conclusions are clear," he writes. "Copyright, trademark, and trade secret are good forms of property for the software business, though copyright terms are a problem. Patents are a bad form of property for the software business, because they amplify the general weaknesses of the patent system." The article is fairly well thought-out, though I'm not entirely Hintjens succeeds in the economic-not-emotional thing.What do you make of all this? Software patents: Good or bad? Is there a happy medium? Is there a solution?
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsDavid ConklinNov 1st 2006 10:45AM
I have studied the issue of plagiarism for the past three years and these kinds of argument have been made about copyrights on books, magazines, newspapers, and music.
If you really wish to do away with copyrights and patents then why should anyone who produces anything get paid? After all, you can't tell if they copied it or not.
Some people who have no talent want to be able to freely exploit the works of those who did have the talent. As the Bible says: every laborer is worthy of his hire -- pay those who produce and stop whining.
JamesNov 2nd 2006 6:32PM
The problem is, with patents specifically it's really, really hard to get somebody with enough expertise in the field to know if it's something that one brilliant mind plucked from the ether, or whether it's just something any competent person would arrive at on their own. I once saw a "valid" patent for what was basically "Downloading an MP3". Seriously. People write these things to be so obtuse yet so broad, and when they get through the review, they can cover ten times more stuff than the original "innovation". There was a time when patents were usually good -- I think they were first applied to drugs ("Patent Medicine") -- but at this point, most seem to be a way for big companies with deep pockts to play "Patent Troll" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll).