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Software Patents Stopped in India
piyushranjan writes "Indian parliament deleted the section from the patents bill regrading the software patents as left parties prevailed over the Government on the issue. This may be a major victory for free software foundation(fsf) which has been lobbying hard against the bill."
Here's the interesting thing about patents and, if you are a patent expert, I realize you already know this, but I think most people don't see the true irony of patents.
The irony is: they were designed to protect the small guy from the big guy. That's right. I shall repeat. They were designed to protect the small guy from the big guy.
They did this to encourage innovation.
You see, some guy in his garage could invent the television, a big company could come along and copy it, and make billions because he has a bigger operating budget. With patents, the guy could protect his invention, and the big guys couldn't steal his idea. All of a sudden, people want to invent because they can protect their ideas.
But now the patent system has turned on its head. It essentially protects the big guys from the small guys. Probably if we looked at patents in their stricted sense, a kid in their garage could write a text editor and infringe on hundreds of patents. I realize this doesn't usually result in a lawsuit, but the system is so convoluted that the only way to understand it is to hire expensive lawyers, which small guys tend not to be able to afford. So in many cases, the small guy gives up when faced with serious opposition (think RIAA).
Okay, I will freely admit that this post is a little inflamatory and that usually lawsuits are not launched even when a patent is owned for things like using key-combinations on a keyboard. But that's not the point.
The point is this: The patent system no longer does what it was supposed to do which is encourage the creation of new ideas. If a system no longer does what it was designed to do, THAT is the definition of broken.
Sunny
Be my Friend
Isn't one of the arguments against software patents that most of the software patents aren't innovations at all, but mere logical steps forward? So, whose to say they aren't 'innovating' according to the US software patent system?
I think there are a lot of people who for one reason or another think that competition from other countries is a bad thing.
They seem to think that it is somehow 'unfair' that people in other contries can make product X cheaper. I don't know how many times I've heard the 'rush to the bottom' argument from people who obviously have no grasp of basic economics.
If you are one of those people please read this:
http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/pdg.pl?fcd=dsp&ter
The reason competition is good in this particular case is because the US government is clearly not acting in its citizens best interest in regards to software patents.
The contries that have a more rational intelectual property policy will obviously benefit. This will do one of two things:
1. Businesses and citizens who create software will be forced to move to these 'enlightened' contries if they aren't there already. Basically the US will find itself locking itself out of the software market because producing software in the US will become too expensive or in some instances maybe even impossible.
2. Because of pressure from 1. the US will be forced to adopt better laws.
Basically if you can squash competition by making everyone obey your rules then you can force through productivity and creativity limiting laws such as software patents.
However in a free marketplace countries that have chosen not to incorporate such laws will naturally do better than countries that have. I'm assuming here of course that software patents stifle creativity and productivity but I think this is a pretty safe assumtption.
If you don't understand why software patents are bad please read this:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index
In short this is good for everyone because it will garantee that consumers of software will continue to benefit from the explosion of creativity and productivity in the software industry. Also for those of us who produce software this helps by putting real pressure on our government to change its tune in regards to software patents.