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The best argument against software patents is this: Patents exist to encourage and reward innovation and invention, by granting 20-year monopolies on new ideas

by marze 17y ago

The best argument against software patents is this: Patents exist to encourage and reward innovation and invention, by granting 20-year monopolies on new ideas. Software does not need additional motivation for innovation because there is and was tremendous innovation and invention, and would be without patents. 20-year patents on software concepts reduce the rate of innovation in software.

philh 17y ago
"Patents encourage X; software is good at X, and would be without patents; [therefore?] patents actually harm X in software." I can't work out whether the third paragraph is intended to follow from the second (non sequitur), or stand by itself (unsupported claim). But it's not a good argument either way.
- jcl 17y ago
  He's assuming that the 20-year monopoly discourages innovation. Perhaps a better phrasing is: "In granting a 20-year monopoly, patents can have good and bad effects; they can encourage invention by appealing to inventors who desire a limited-time monopoly, but they can discourage invention by scaring away inventors who don't want to run afoul of patents already held by others. In the field of software, which already had a high rate of invention without the encouragement of patents, the benefits of patents are marginal and are likely outweighed by their drawbacks." Of course, the challenge is to quantify the argument and back it up with facts.
- marze 17y ago
  It is impossible to know for certainty if innovation would be faster or slower if patents were not given for software, but I feel it is a key question. You see well known problems discussed, such as prior art being buried in compiled code and the lack of awareness in general of the prior art the examiners have (usually they just do searches on the patent archive). However, I haven't seen as much discussion of the problem that software patents are just not needed to spur innovation in the software arena in the first place, since rapid innovation would occur anyway. (Not to mention granting a 20-year monopoly in regular years is like granting a 100-year monopoly in software years.)

by marze 17y ago

philh 17y ago

"Patents encourage X; software is good at X, and would be without patents; [therefore?] patents actually harm X in software." I can't work out whether the third paragraph is intended to follow from the second (non sequitur), or stand by itself (unsupported claim). But it's not a good argument either way.

jcl 17y ago
He's assuming that the 20-year monopoly discourages innovation. Perhaps a better phrasing is: "In granting a 20-year monopoly, patents can have good and bad effects; they can encourage invention by appealing to inventors who desire a limited-time monopoly, but they can discourage invention by scaring away inventors who don't want to run afoul of patents already held by others. In the field of software, which already had a high rate of invention without the encouragement of patents, the benefits of patents are marginal and are likely outweighed by their drawbacks." Of course, the challenge is to quantify the argument and back it up with facts.
marze 17y ago
It is impossible to know for certainty if innovation would be faster or slower if patents were not given for software, but I feel it is a key question. You see well known problems discussed, such as prior art being buried in compiled code and the lack of awareness in general of the prior art the examiners have (usually they just do searches on the patent archive). However, I haven't seen as much discussion of the problem that software patents are just not needed to spur innovation in the software arena in the first place, since rapid innovation would occur anyway. (Not to mention granting a 20-year monopoly in regular years is like granting a 100-year monopoly in software years.)