Paul Graham on Patents

volts writes "The always interesting Paul Graham has a new essay, 'Are Software Patents Evil?'. "A few weeks ago I found to my surprise that I'd been granted four patents. This was all the more surprising because I'd only applied for three...""

Comments

Re:Good but idealistic article

[magetoo]

I will only address one point of the optimistic idealism I saw in several parts of the article, there are others:

"A company that sues competitors for patent infringement is like a a defender who has been beaten so thoroughly that he turns to plead with the referee."

This point is made in the context of other statements that indicate this is the main reason that a company starts suing for patent infringement. The reality is there are companies that have no developers at all, just lawyers, whose sole purpose is to seek out and buy patents and pressure other companies for licensing fees.

Yes, and he mentions them a page further down. You did read the article before posting, didn't you? Of course you did.