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Report Says Patents Threaten Software Innovation
GORby_ writes "According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, software patents are 'a particular threat to the European ICT Industry.' Quote from the report: 'There are particular threats to the European ICT industry such as the current discussion on the patent on software. The mild regime of IP protection in the past has led to a very innovative and competitive software industry with low entry barriers. A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.' The full report (pdf) discusses Europe's ICT strategy."
So does anybody else think that it's time for software engineers to step up to the plate and take a serious look at software patents? I believe that if you were to look at the sort of things that are patented in software and non-software fields, you'd see that a similar level of complexity/obviousness is involved. What harm is there in allowing someone who is clever enough to come up with something new, that other people can use, to profit from his or her discovery? We can only stay bearded terminal hackers for so long before we have to wake up, smell the koffee, and realize that our work has real value for society. Certainly software patents such as the ones on the rpm binary formats are beneficial to the companies and individuals who own them. Helping the people who make their living on IT and software engineering can help the industry as a whole. I'm not sure if you can grep this through your pipes or not, but if you take a step back from your editors/compilers/shells for a while, it starts to make sense.