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>It sounds like you are supporting expanded software patents. No, I'm not for "expanding", I'm for fixing. The idea of patents was to give the little guy a ch
by danssig 15y ago
>It sounds like you are supporting expanded software patents.
No, I'm not for "expanding", I'm for fixing. The idea of patents was to give the little guy a chance to compete with the bigger players. It has been corrupted into being the exact opposite. I would like a solution to be found that accomplishes the original goal. And no, I don't know how to do it but I'm not convinced that it's impossible.
>if they are able to get an injunction and tie up the courts that would be pretty much the death sentence to any "little guy".
This strikes me as largely a US problem, not a fundamental one.
- esrauch 15y agoOther countries don't have injunctions? Even if the time to court isn't too long, it'll still be on the order of months which is enough to destroy most small companies. I think the court costs should really be a footnote in this line of discussion though; I think the amount of R&D that big companies do combined with the nature of software patents would make it impossible for any start up to avoid actually infringing on multiple patents. So you could have some great idea for a startup that does something innovative in the social arena; that's not going to help you very much if some big company has patents on things like friend lists or settable profile photos are patented. I'm honestly don't even think that is a "big vs little" company issue; what if Google had patented search engine results weighted by links? What if Twitter had patented broadcast status updates when it was a start up?