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Ask 10 people this question and you'll get 11 different answers, but IMO the practical impact will be the lawyers will make less money and there will be less mu

Ask 10 people this question and you'll get 11 different answers, but IMO the practical impact will be the lawyers will make less money and there will be less multi-billion dollar lawsuits, but the industry will keep trucking on as always. The idea of software being patentable is actually a very new concept. Though there are some rare examples of software systems being patented back in the 1980s, it wasn't until the late 1990s that software patentablity was a widely accepted concept, prior to then software was seen as a mathematical construct and thus explicitly excluded from patents. The industry got along fine back then on copyright laws alone and will get along fine with or without patents in the future.

danielweber 13y ago
Worrying about the giant lawsuits is the wrong angle. Any time MegaCorp 1 accuses MegaCorp 2 of stealing its stuff, it's going to be expensive to resolve. Even if you draw the line at "copyright, not patent" MegaCorp 2 is just going to push the line that much further in how closely they can copy MegaCorp 1.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  It is way easier to avoid committing a copyright violation than a patent one because the USPTO has let way too many fundamental and obvious ideas be patented. As a developer, if I write 100 lines of code I have probably violated at least one active patent and probably more like 3, completely unknowingly. Copyright violations require a much more willful sort of of idea "theft".
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I agree with both of you. On one hand, when you have a personal pissing match like Apple v. Samsung, if it wasn't about patents it'd be about something else. On the other hand, requiring a showing of willful violation would cut down on patent suits against smaller companies.
    - belorn 13y ago
      Also, a larger part of the Apple v. Samsung cases was about design patents rather than software patents.
  - brianpgordon 13y ago
    It's so easy to accidentally violate a software patent. It's a two-character difference in this case: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerAbs http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerA...

danielweber 13y ago

Worrying about the giant lawsuits is the wrong angle. Any time MegaCorp 1 accuses MegaCorp 2 of stealing its stuff, it's going to be expensive to resolve. Even if you draw the line at "copyright, not patent" MegaCorp 2 is just going to push the line that much further in how closely they can copy MegaCorp 1.

georgemcbay 13y ago
It is way easier to avoid committing a copyright violation than a patent one because the USPTO has let way too many fundamental and obvious ideas be patented. As a developer, if I write 100 lines of code I have probably violated at least one active patent and probably more like 3, completely unknowingly. Copyright violations require a much more willful sort of of idea "theft".
- rayiner 13y ago
  I agree with both of you. On one hand, when you have a personal pissing match like Apple v. Samsung, if it wasn't about patents it'd be about something else. On the other hand, requiring a showing of willful violation would cut down on patent suits against smaller companies.
  - belorn 13y ago
    Also, a larger part of the Apple v. Samsung cases was about design patents rather than software patents.
- brianpgordon 13y ago
  It's so easy to accidentally violate a software patent. It's a two-character difference in this case: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerAbs http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerA...