A Generation of Software Patents Examined

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:44AM from the malfeasance-calumny-and-waste dept.

pieterh writes "Boston University's James Bessen has published a landmark study [abstract; full paper available at the link, free of charge] on a generation of software patents. Looking at almost 20 years of software patents, he finds 'that most software firms still do not patent, most software patents are obtained by a few large firms in the software industry or in other industries, and the risk of litigation from software patents continues to increase dramatically. Given these findings, it is hard to conclude that software patents have provided a net social benefit in the software industry.' Not that this surprises anyone actually innovating in software."

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Oh Patents by Morphine007 · 2011-06-23 06:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

They're definitely a contributing factor as to why I'm still in academia, rather than trying to start a software shop with my CS degrees.

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Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Anecdotal evidence that they don't by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · 2011-06-23 07:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

I got called in for a deposition when $BIGCOMPANY was sued for infringing a patent on $OBVIOUSTECHNIQUE in $FIELD. The level of inefficiency in the proceedings was staggering, particularly since the project I was on hadn't even used $OBVIOUSTECHNIQUE. One of $BIGCOMPANY'S attorneys told me that progress in $FIELD has halted due to fear of patent litigation, which anyone much smaller than $BIGCOMPANY couldn't possibly afford.