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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."
Slashdot users say.. "Well, DUUUUHhhhh.."
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
There's a report that favors one side of a heated debate. Who thought we'd see the day.
Software patents are a reality, whether you and me want them or not. There is too much money on the pro side for software patents to go away, so stop dreaming. Better start thinking of ways to deal with the situation.
Smoking causes cancer!
Have a look at the link in the story: www.pwc.com.nyud.net:8090...
This will have no impact on PWC's servers. Then again, I would have thought that they could afford to buy enough bandwidth to keep up.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
This is pretty interesting. PWC was purchased by IBM, one of the largest patent holders, many of which are software patents.
Here is the real link
Although the preceeding comments have been largely on the order of "duh, /. users knew this for years!", we need to make sure this oppurtunity doesn't go to waste. If you've known it for years, then make sure other people know it as well. This is a good oppurtunity to spread the word. As the issue gets more press, it's going to be important to make sure it's given the gravity that it deserves.
It's not the first time we read such reports on slashdot...
:)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...
Now, with whatever threatens innovation, we guess if these reports were true, it should Darwinianly be extinct by now.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
There are two opportunities left. The Council of Ministers has already voted in favour of a pro-swpat text, but this has yet to be confirmed, and while uncommon, it is still possible for countries to change their vote. Given the extremely suspect way the original decision was reached (which would be scarily familiar to fans of "Yes Minister"), this could happen, but national governments must be lobbied, particularly the Netherlands and Germany.
If this fails, then the European Parliament gets to amend the Council's text, however this is much more difficult than that first time around, and so all Europeans that care about this issue must lobby their MEPs to ensure that they vote in the correct way.
We have made a difference, we can still make a difference, but only by engaging with the political process. If anyone would like to learn more, please visit the FFII website.
Will this be enforced on existing software or is it just new software? All those applications that steal the outlook look and feel (or the components that mimic outlook) could mean Microsoft rake in a fortune.
Nothing costs nothing
It really is sad for IP and science in general when we have to go to court for a while to find out if we can make a garage door opener remote. The DMCA is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to science in general. It lets companies be anti-competitive legally under a shroud of "protecting their intellectual property".
We all(I already have) should be going to the EFF's DMCA Action Page.
Contact your senators and representatives.(USA).
Chris
The point is that they, unlike for example Richard Stallman, most surely have no axe to grind when they talk about software patents stifling innovation. When they complain about the effects of software patents, they are complaining only about their effect on the bottom line - and every informed analyst will know that. So their stance against software patents will carry a lot more weight than that of the people who've been crying out in the wilderness for all these years.
It's strange the friends we seem to be making these days ... First IBM, now PWC.
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
...that this is just the fault of the patent system, it is a flaw in the legal system, and it is a flaw in the community. Where patents are demonstratedly wrong, it should be easier for small companies or individuals to challenge that bad patent. Bad patents shouldn't just stand becasue one party has deeper pockets. And parties who are in thei right shouldn't be so cowardly as to run from these fights, if they want to change the system, they must work at it. It's all very well bitching about C&D and takedown notices, but you Americans meekly agree to do whatever they say anyway, grow some backbone.
I feel sorry for the USPTO. They obviously lack technical expertise, and can't afford the salaries to attain it. If they were getting feedback on what patents were downright bad from the court system, they could train and evolve to start granting more deserved patents.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
http://www.ecp.nl/dossier_files/pwc_rethinking_eur opean_ict_agenda.pdf/
The dutch ministery of economic affairs.
Sig? What's this sig thing I hear people talking about?
...is that the large software companies have patented so much of the fundamental building blocks of software engineering that even if you do come up with something truly "new and innovative" they can still get you on the sub-component functionality.
This means they can effectively hold to ransome any new software venture that turns out to be succesful, regardless of what they do.
Funny.. the preface is written by Brinkhorst, Who voted FOR software patents.(Against the will of the Netherlands Parlement)
Most interesting is the fact that the Dutch parlement is trying to force Minister Brinkhorst to change his vote and that he continues to refuse to do so. The only reason he seems to be able to get away with this is that it is not a political issue, because the Dutch media not understanding software patents is not giving it any attention. The infection in the feet of our prime minister is far more interesting. (The latest rumours are that it was a rather serious infection, which might have killed him.)
I don't think anyone here is surprised. And I'm glad to see a report that supports what has been a rather undereported debate.
/.ers seen or thought of a solution to this problem? I'm all for making software as "free" as possible, but I'm also of the mind that there would have to be some kind of IP structure in place.
What concerns me though is: if we do away with patents what will replace them? Have any
My thinking has always been that too much control of too much information has been in the hands of too few individuals. Software patents, as they're presently implimented, worsen this problem by allowing exclusivity and ownership of ideas that are otherwise easy to disribute. What concerns me is that those ideas don't come from nowhere; creativity is required at some stage. Even if the originator of an idea doesn't own it, (s)he was still presumably paid for it. Do we, the geeks, beleive that total freedom of information will leave an incentive to actually invent anything new? I've seen the argument that the benefit will come from somewhere else, like geeks supporting the software, bands getting paid by touring, etc. Ultimately you can't get something for nothing, though, and unless I'm mistaken the above shift would have us bitching about ludicrous ticket prices and support charges.
Has anyone run into an IP scheme that would balance the creator/user relationship? Our present system is skewed and prone to monopolism, and a total absence of ownership would entail its own set of problems. We have to pay for something, somewhere (not that I'm a free market capitalist, but when the flow of money stops people starve).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
duh? Well, how about CUSTOMS TARIFFS designed to bring the price of low wages countries products more in line with those in the high wages coutries??? If a country pays jack shit to it's workers, the tarrifs go back in the importing country's government's pockets who can then use it to help increase that country's competitivity. But if it pays it's workers better, in turn, THEY BECOME MORE COMPETITIVE, because the receiving countries' tarrifs drop, and the extra price they are able to get for their products stays in the exporting country as profits, instead of tariffs in the importing country!!!
Geee whizz, in the last century, Henry Ford generated quite a commotion when he raised his worker's pay; that enabled them to BUY automobiles, which propelled Ford at the forefront of the industry!
But nowadays, bourgeois have no more foresight, and the swarms of MBAs they fatly pay have no more common-sense than a brain-dead sponge (with or without square pants), so they keep doing everything in the name of ultra-myopic short-sight. Free-trade only benefits the company owners, for the rest of the population, it means a steady decrease in the standard of living!Is this the same Price Waterhouse Coopers that recently changed their name to Monday and registered introducingmonday.com forgetting to register the .co.uk domain? :D
Should check out the "Best Deals: Patents" link under "Related Links". Clicking on it allows you to Comparison shop for patents. Thank God the slashdot devs decided to implement this fantastic functionality rather than making Slashdot W3C compliant!
Thank you for your letter of 28 September 2004, the contents of which I note. :D
:D
In it, you are asserting that $FEATURE of my software product is infringing upon your $PATENT.
What is interesting, is that we recently received a similar letter from another company claiming that $FEATURE is infact an infringement of their $PATENT.
On further examination, it would appear that the USPTO has awarded you both a patent for the same thing ROAFLOL
If you chose to take this action no further we shall also consider this matter closed. If, however you wish to continue with a claim for breach of patent infringement our first line of defence shall be to have your patent annulled on the grounds of duplication. You may wish to consider this seriously if you are already receiving royalties from $PATENT from other parties.
Yours,
PHB.
Well, if profits are your motivation, then all patents, copyright laws, trademarks and registered designs are a good thing.
If, on the other hand, you're trying to write some decent software, patents are a very bad thing. What's more productive, coding, or running patent searches to see if you're allowed to use what you just wrote?
In fact, software patents and "real things" patents are very different beasts. Note the number of "RL activity... but on the Internet!" patents awarded. I couldn't patent, say, putting an index to a large document in the margin of each page. For some reason, though, a patent examiner awarded a patent on browser frames.
In any case, patent law was designed for the benefit of society, not the inventor. The aim was (and should be) to maximise the pool of useful innovations available, not maximise profits.
But, companies don't have ideas, people do. If we take away patents, some companies might get mad, but new software ideas will still appear. And FLOSS coders will be able to act on them.
A good number of times, patents don't do any good anyway, if you plan on producing products. Anything you do will infringe on somebody's patent, so they sue, and either you lose your profits, or cross-license, and gain competitors until the market is similar to one without patents. Except, of course, the non-patenters aren't in the market at all. And less competition = bad for the end users. And if you don't produce a product, merely patents, your company is a worthless leech on society.
There may be a few pieces of true innovation which deserve a good reward. This can be achieved, if desired, by selling the program at a reasonable price and being nice to your customers. Patents not required.
You can listen to it if you want to. But I think that if it's getting time on a mid-morning general interest program then people must be becoming more aware of software patents and the problems they might cause.
You can patent a music box. If you record the sounds coming out of the music box and make copies on CDs of those recordings and sell them, can you get sued for patent infringement for making "a software implementation of a music box"?
If yes, then we can patent music and movies and books and everything else that's under the domain of copyright because it IS possible to make a piece of hardware that has only one book or movie or song on it. If no, then software patents don't make sense either.
And, I WILL support software patents strongly if they allow me to get patents on music and movies and books and so forth, because then I will know that the courts understand that they're allowing patents on expressions of abstract thought.
And if that's how they want to roll, that's fine by me. I just don't like it when I see them making an arbitrary distinction between code and data, because I see a CD as a set of instructions that causes a CD player to carry out a process, just as a computer carries out a process by running software. And, I believe that a new piece of music is in fact novel, nonobvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art of making music, and it's useful as it bring enjoyment or other emotions to people.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
This may seem obvious, but legislators seem to forget (boy do they ever!) that the rationale for IP protections (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) has nothing to do with who deserves compensation for their work, and everything to do with guaranteeing that markets provide certain types of innovative goods for consumers. This is even codified in the US constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Of course, the "limited Times" phrase is there because protections prevent other types of innovation (based on immitation) from taking place. It is there so that (sadly) politicians can decide where to strike that balance for each market.
So the main question about software patents should be: to what extent has the absence of software patents negatively impacted the pace of software innovation? As far as I can tell, copyrights have been more than sufficient to strike the balance I talked about earlier, and patents would simply tilt the balance and harm innovation. European legislators should understand this and avoid going down the misguided path of the US congress in their counterproductive copyright extension route.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
A recent study shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population!
I believe that if you were to look at...
Have you looked?
Until you do, your belief is nothing more than that. Your faith in the patent system is touching, but in this case it's misdirected.
Software is inherently more complex than just about anything else that individuals are able to build and expected to understand. Any non-trivial program involves hundreds of techniques that are potentially patentable under the current regime. Most programs people would consider trivial are going to contain dozens. This means that, first, determining if a program violates any patents requires first a detailed analysis by an expert in software patents to determine what potentially patented techniques are used, then hundreds to thousands of patent searches to determine if any of these techniques are patented. After this, you need to arrange licensing for the dozens of actual patented techniques that are used, and given the investment you have already made it would only be prudent to apply for patent protection on the remainder.
And that's for a program like, say, "Minesweeper".
Either that, or you just ignore the whole problem and hope for the best. Since even a company like Microsoft can't afford to hire an expert patent lawyer who is also a software developer and half a dozen paralegals for each programmer, this is all you can do.
So, since most people who develop potentially patentable techniques can't even tell if they're patentable or already patented, and a reasonably talented programmer would probably be doing so several times a week, software patents do not provide any useful protection for most inventors of potentially patentable software. They just provide a chilling effect on the development of publicly documented interfaces and protocols.
How about "Information and Communication Technology"
Of course large companies are in favor of software patents because patents protect the status quo. Large companies can file absurd software patents, e.g., one click shopping, to keep smaller companies from competing.
Once all software patents are enforced throughout the world, innovation will come to a standstill. It will be impossible for any new company to create anything. And large companies will rest on their laurels.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Patenting of software is the same as patenting musical progressions (or riffs). Imagine where music would be if the riffs were patented. Imagine if authors could patent unique expressions that convey meaning more effectively than other expressions. Imagine if artists could patent color combinations that more effectively conveyed an image.
Hopefully, by thinking outside the cubicle for a moment, you may see the ramifications of this. The music industry would starve with patents on music like software patents. The writing industry would starve with patents on writing like software patents. All art and engineering would evolve much more slowly and be much^2 more expensive with the patent system that software enjoys.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.
What high innovation rate? Software is doing the same shit today that it was doing back in '95, we just have prettier interfaces now. I'd hardly call that innovation.
I keep hearing that the computer world is special because of the high turnover rate of products, but outside of the hardware world I really don't see it. Most people I know have been using the same basic software since at least 2000 but have upgraded their mobo/proc at least twice during that period of time.
The only "innovation" I have seen out of software is various bug fixes which shouldn't be there in the first place, but since the software writers are held to ridiculously low standards for quality control they can release the same piece of software 5 times and say: "Look at our high rate of innovation". Perhaps someone can point out all the great software innovations that have occured over the last 10 years. Since there is such a high rate of innovation it should be a trivial excersize for the typical slashdot reader.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
RMS gives very interesting and informative talks on software patents from time to time. Recently I went to such a speech and discovered how rewarding it can be for people who want to understand better the problem with patents. (I wrote some info on my blog). People who are interested on these subjects should have a look at FSF website.
EU should never allow any kind of software patents. Such mistake would destroy the software economy and force small or mid-sized companies to spend more on legal costs rather than software research and development. Also, the patents will not protect small businesses from hungry MegaCorps (tm): These laws are made for MegaCorps, not for protecting innovation. Inventors and programmers do not want and do not need software patents; without public domain stuff you cannot build or invent something new.
I know I'm feeding the trolls, but this is a fundamental concept that few people can understand. However, I'm going to give it a go. Repeat slowly after me...
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE.
And there hasn't been in years. Modern software builds so much on previous work (much of it from before the days of software patents) that the amount of prior art renders the very idea of patenting it laughable. At a very high level, all software is is a means of making an existing job easier by automating that which lends itself to automation.
As computers progress, it becomes easier to automate more things. But ultimately, taking an existing business practise and appending the phrase "... on a computer" doesn't make it innovative.
Information Communication Technology. It seems to be the currently fashionable term for IT.
You may be interested to read this.
Does anyone else also think that the text is more equivocal than suggested by the submitter?
As far as I can tell, this is the relevant paragraph from the report: 342 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. However, opinions on software patent in its current proposed form vary a lot. Many large companies operating on a global scale, including European ones, seem to be in favour of a software patenting regime. But most small enterprises are strongly opposed. Only very few European companies have prepared themselves for the consequences of a software patent regime. It raises the question how the introduction of the European software patent interacts with a European strategy based on widespread use of ICT's.
This is not the whole-hearted indictment of software patents I was hoping for.
What concerns me though is: if we do away with patents what will replace them?
/.ers seen or thought of a solution to this problem?
... if they did, you would probably be broke.
... a type of non-transferable copyright with manditory licensing attached, where the author is entitled to some percentage of any money made on their work (or derivative works), but cannot restrict how their work (or any derivative works) are used, with anti-plagerism statues requiring citation in perpetuity. Others have suggested shortening the length of copyrights back to their original 12 or 24 years. Reform is needed, and many have suggested all kinds of innovative approaches to replace or at least weaken the current monopoly entitlement schemes ... it is a subject that has b
You start off with a false premise: that something must replace patents (else there will be little or no innovation)
Patents do not need to be replaced with anything. The software world experienced much more innovation without them, and continued innovation in the United States only exists because they go largely unenforced.
Have any
There is no such problem. Your assumption is false.
I'm all for making software as "free" as possible, but I'm also of the mind that there would have to be some kind of IP structure in place.
I am assuming you are new to the software industry (apologies if this is not the case, but your statement indicates that you are unfamiliar with how the software economy worked in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s prior to software patents, and prior to their being widespread). Having said that, you have some interesting thoughts despite the false premise from which you begin (you very correctly identify and express unease with the monopoly entitlement the government is granting on so many basic ideas and software implimentations, and the catastrophic consiquences to a robust and free market that follow).
Software has always enjoyed the protection of copyright, which has always been enough protection for companies large and small (c.f. Apple Computers, Microsoft & Joe's consulting) to make excellent profits. Patents are in fact antithetical to this, as they lock down basic ideas. Patents only came along much later (in the 1980s IIRC) If you write software in the United States, you violate patents. You can thank your lucky stars no one has decided to enforce them against you
Has anyone run into an IP scheme that would balance the creator/user relationship? Our present system is skewed and prone to monopolism, and a total absence of ownership would entail its own set of problems.
It depends on what you mean by "IP". If you're talking about trade secrets, the current laws work reasonably well. If you're talking about trademarks, the current scheme works pretty well modulo people abusing trademark law to silence critics using their name (this seems to get sorted out reasonably by the courts most of the time).
If you're talking about patents, the best reform is to eliminate patents. Government entitlement monopolies have been shown historically to not only NOT encourage innovation, but to actively stifle it. As an example, read up on the history of the airplane, the Wright Brother's patents, and America's desperation to catch up to advanced European (non-patent-encumbered) aviation technology during world war I. For those to lazy or uninterested to look it up, the short answer is that the US Government, in a tacit admission that the Wright Brother's patent on airplanes stifled innovation and improvements, effectively seized their patent (nationalized it), paid them a flat 1% royalty, and threw the technology open to all comers and competitors to develop modern airplanes. The amount of innovation that followed was truly phenominal.
If you are talking about copyrights, some have suggested a form of non-monopoly "authorright" as an alternative
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Maybe. We won't know for sure unless:
Someone comes up with a way to measure the contribution of "innovation" to the economy that doesn't depend on counting patents
That measure is applied to places and times with and without patents (US before/after software patents, US vs. EU vs Japan)
Without that kind of measure, we're reduced to dueling anecdotes - patent holder beats up megacorp and makes money, startup is crushed by megacorp with patent basket, etc.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Now that governments admit they can do nothing terribly helpful about outsourcing and the equalization of international labor wages and globalization is a thing taught in history books to 6th graders international economics and domestic policy certainly do not support the Infant Industry Argument any longer. Thus, the US Patent Office is nothing more than a vestige of the past in need of dying out, to the sick and twisted people who believe that research and development brooks complete entitlement to cut a CD or set up a web and database server you are definitely not protecting anything - you are society's worst enemy and the singular cause for the largest most devastating deadweight loss our global economy and technological progression will ever know. These days will be known as the second dark ages, once we get rid of the idea of entitlement to something which by definition may be accomplished an infinite number of ways (software is the topic).
I have no problem having patents for new and innovative things. The problem is that, at least in the US, most of the patented stuff is obvious to an experienced worker in his field of expertiese, or it just reimplements something from real life on a computer.
E.g. nobody would ever try to patent sorting papers on you real life desktop into stacks, but doing so on your computer desktop all of a sudden becomes worhty a patent even though the task of fixing this is trivial.
If the things patented are trivial, then we can expect that any person with a university degree and/or some years of experience is extremely likely to produce patented solutions without knowing it just by coding what naturall comes to his mind. He could do patent searches, but this is quite hard since much in software design is about general ideas with sometimes overlapping contexts, chances are that he will not find what he is looking for as he expresses the same idea in different terms.
If we let a couple of monkeys hammer away at a keyboard they will sooner or later have written the complete works of Shakespeare. Now imagine that Shakesspeare had written all his stuff in a language containing the only words if, then, else, while. The time for that to happen would have been greately reduced. Now, replace the monkeys with humans that use this very limited language to express themselves, and you will very soon see sentences that look quite Shaksperian even if the never ever read a line from the original auther.
So if you like software patents, why not patents on litterature, and art. After all if I think that I'm the first person who write a crime story where sombody is killed by a knife why shouldn't I patent it. I'm quite sure that such patent have never been filed. As I privately have a slight suspicion that sombody actually may have written such a story before me, I am happy to licence the idea to other authers for a fee slightly less than it would cost to take the dispute to court. The only one who would not go to court would be sombody that positively would know that he could prove prior art, but as that person is most likely to be dead there is little risk.
Now it strikes me, why write a book in the first place. After all, the part where sombody is killed by the knife is a very minor part of a normal crime novel. Why spend all that time. Why risk to be sued by the auther holding the patent on having characters being transported by a car, or having a conversation, or kissing, or..., In fact by actually writing a book I open myself to all kinds of liabilities. Besides I'm not much of a writer anyway.
I think I just stick to just filing the patent on the knife usage. Then I can wait for some real auther to get a bestseller using my knife concept. After all people are known to have been killed by knifes as early as Julius Ceasar, so its bound to get into a novel soner or later. So I sit back and wait unitl somebody actually write such a story and get what is rightfully mine from him. That way the risk of being sued is much less, not to mention that it is much less work. I don't have any costs for marketing either.
Now, If software patents are so important for the software industry, the same thing would be valid for other ways of expression like litterature and art. So why should it not be possible to have patents in this field as well? After all there is big money in this business just as in software. Look at the movie and record industry, or that software industry such as Microsoft buy the rights to digital publishing of classic art.
The strange thing is that you seldom hear people argue that patents on art would be a good thing, even though my guess is that there are more artists in need of some extra income than there are software developers. Why should they not be able to get some money from their way of express themselves, when the software developer can?
Or is it just that patenting peoples way of expression themselves is a bad idea?
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Wow -- I can't even tell you how wrong you are.
A simplified history lesson for everyone
1) PwC spun off their MCS group (think large ERP/system implementations..e.g. Accenture) to become PwC Consulting
2) PwCC rebrands itself "Monday"
3) IBM Global Services buys Monday [insert horrible markeing jokes here]
PwCC/Monday was ~ 35K (I think) employees.
PwC STILL HAS OVER 130K EMPLOYEES.
PwC is the largest of the Big 4 Audit firms.
IBM does not "own" anything of PwC.
Someone with sufficient understanding of economics has done the math and calculated the effect of patents in different scenarios:
Industries where innovation comes largely independent of each other, like medicine and
industries where inovation builds upon prior art.
Interestingly, it can be shown, that in the latter scenario (software!), patents harm not only the public, but even the paent-holder. A very interesting read (at least for the economics-geeks out there...). Here's the link.
Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) is against software patents because:
a) He is a really nice guy, a humanitarian, and wants to do the right thing for The Children.
b) He wants to foster innovation that could potentially allow smaller competitors challenge Oracle's dominance because industry-wide innovation is more important than Oracle's stock price.
c) He knows Oracle, being the second largest software company in the world and having the deepest inroads into corporate IT departments, can steal the ideas of smaller competitors and wipe them out easier when those pesky software patents are out of the way.
Surely the patent system is flawed, and it has problems, and it needs to be fixed, not eliminated altogether.
Before we call this a "duh" issue, can people please exercise their brain just a little to ponder why Larry Ellison, one of the most ruthless businessmen the world has ever seen, is against software patents?
you need protection for your innovations. It's the only way for investors to assess just how valuable the software companies are. Microsoft for instance isn't valued based on the millions of lines of code it has - not just because the quality is hard to assess but also because it doesn't give any information about leverage on their competitors.
Also one shouldn't forget that about 50% of all patents are invalidated when taken to court, that coupled with the fact that when engineers unknowingly use patented technology, the companies aren't fined (but forced to license or decist) means that only that only the safe and truly valuable patents will be enforced.
Finally, if one looks at history, patents were created so that small companies and inventors cheaply could protect their inventions against big firms. This still holds, the problem with software patents lies not in the patents themselves but their broadness. By restricting what is software innovation and what isn't, one could get rid of most issues. For instance Amazon.com's one-click technology isn't really an invention but passed because the definition of software innovation is currently too vague.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on several points.
I think we do have a reasonable standard here in the US (nonobvious to a skilled practitioner in the field), it's just not being applied. In nearly all cases, patent examiners are not skilled practitioners in the field.
I'm a firm believer that the patent system continues to have an overall positive effect.
Anecdotally, my brother worked for a small medical-device startup company. He is co-inventor on several patents for devices that can non-invasively measure pulserate and oxygen saturation levels in blood. After several years and tens of millions of dollars of research and development, they succeeded in making devices that are more reliable and accurate than the devices then on the market (meaning the difference between life and death for some patients). The invention is a method of extracting data from the sensor waveforms. In practice, it's implemented primarily in software. This company licensed their technology to the big players in this industry, but soon one of the customers simply copied it, canceled the contract, and began selling it as their own. The startup prevailed in the patent lawsuit and is once-again collecting royalties.
Now, without a patent system, I suspect this startup never would have existed (nobody would have funded it), and therefore the state-of-the-art in this field would have stagnated. Or worse--except for regulatory disclosure for medical devices and the potential for reverse engineering--they could have kept their inventions secret and maintained a monopoly on them indefinitely, denying others the inspiration to find even better solutions and preventing the commoditization of the technology at the end of what would have been the patent protection term.
Furthermore, this example illustrates that patents can help protect the small guys when they go up against the big guys. I've never understood why so many people think of patents (and copyrights) solely as weapons of the megacorps. (Maybe because of the cost of securing and defending a patent? That seems to be a general problem with the legal system here, not the patent system.) Sure, patents are often wielded by the big guys, but could little guys go against megacorps without such tools?
Many people think patents prevent innovation because they stop people (for a limited time) from using certain methods. In actuality, it forces inventors to look for new solutions (to get around the known one that has patent protection), and often they come up with better solutions. Would we have PNG today without the LZW patent encumberance of GIF?
We always hear about the silly patents, and the lawerly harrassment related to patents. I don't think we get a balanced picture.
Yes, there are problems. But I think they can be fixed. Raise the bar for inventiveness. Adjust the protection term depending on the field, much shorter for rapidly-changing fields, a tad longer for high-risk and large-investment creations. And eliminate "submarining" with a defend-it-or-lose-it doctrine. Remove the incentive of the patent office to approve everything by basing fees solely on applications. and evaluate examiner performance on something other than the volume applications reviewed.
We've ventured off-topic by discussing the patent system in general. In terms of software patents, I'm still unclear on the definitions. (Given that I'm uncertain after reading and rereading most of the PDF and all of your comments, I suspect that many people are still working with different definitions of software patents.) I still don't know why the term "non-technical" was applied.
Some consider my brother's