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Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics
doom writes "You've probably already heard that the Nobel Prize for Economics was given to three gents who were working on advances in mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one of those recipients was using that theory to study: 'One recent subject of Professor Maskin's wide-ranging research has been on the value of software patents. He determined that software was a market where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than stimulating progress.' Here's one of Maskin's papers on the subject: Sequential Innovation, Patents, limitation (pdf).
Is mindblowing to the average person. This is the sort of paper that really needs to be distributed as much as possible (but rewritten to be understandable to the layman), because there really needs to be a great deal of political support for such an exemption from the patent process here. The biggest problem is that the software industry has already defined a piece of software as a patentable product, similar to a car or a monitor, and the general populace believes that to be true. However, you don't make a new car by tearing out the carburetor of a 1995 Ford, clean it up, add a couple parts from a 2002 Chevy to it, and stick it into your new car. However, that is precisely how software is generally made. There's your layman's explanation right there.