5 ms·

How have software patents helped any of the big growing companies over the last 10 years? Maybe explain it using the various startups which are quite a success

• timwaagh 10y ago
  For one thing those are/were based in America and china, not Europe. If anything the cases of startups with European founders moving to the USA to found their companies helps my argument. As for companies which have benefitted: microsoft gets paid for android. because of stuff they invested in a long time ago. Motorola getting bought by Google because they invented a lot of things. oracle is of course a very big company and the only thing that keeps it alive is their IP. All those big companies rely on the patent system to make investment decicions. to put someone on a project which takes a long time before it will yield results. If there are no patents, you will not have these kinds of R&D based corporations. And that is a big loss for Europe. As for whether this particular dichotomy is false, it may be so but i doubt it. history has more or less already spoken.