SoftwarePatents
Patents on software stifle innovation!
For example we all are using the world wide web. The only reason why we can not have efficient codecs for audio and video as standard supported by all browsers is because of software patents. All free codecs like Ogg or WebM/WebP have to code around efficient and sometimes obvious solutions in order not to infringe a patent. This way software patents massively block the progress of the web.
Also Google is getting trouble with Android because there are tons of patents for software on smart-phones.
Patents in pharmacy or chemistry can make sense as innovation is expensive and re-production is extremely cheap. But this is totally different in software-engineering. For source-code already the copyright applies. This is fine and sufficient as it prevents others to steal your work. If you have a really great and innovative idea, you will need time to implement it. When you reach the market, others might want to copy your idea. But then they will need also time to implement it from scratch. In the meantime you can improve and stay ahead. Further the market notices who comes up with the idea first. If your idea can be re-implemented in a few days or weeks then it is trivial and not worth being protected. Even if there might arise unfair situations without software patents in special cases this is not comparable to the harm caused by software patents. One would also expect software patents to help smaller companies to protect their ideas against larger companies that have more power and speed to follow up. However the opposite case applies:
The only ones that benefit from software-patents are large enterprises that have many patents and use them to squeeze competitors out of the market. And of course lawyers benefit who earn from the massive claims.
There are even companies with the business-case of buying software patents and then earn money with claims. They have no interest in the actual ideas behind the software patents and just use them as weapon.
software patents are evil! Copyright enables intellectual property. Software patents enable intellectual dispossession.
This documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International).
