Nobelist Gary Becker Calls For an End To Software Patents

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 23, 2013 @03:06AM from the gary's-good-gnus dept.

GigaOM notes that (excerpting) "Gary Becker, a Nobel-prize winning professor at the University of Chicago, stated this week that the U.S. patent system is ”too broad, too loose, and too expensive” and called for the end of software patents: 'Disputes over software patents are among the most common, expensive, and counterproductive. Their exclusion from the patent system would discourage some software innovations, but the saving from litigation costs over disputed patent rights would more than compensate the economy for that cost.'" Here are Becker's comments, from the always-fun Becker-Posner Blog.

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how to delineate software patents? by Joining+Yet+Again · 2013-07-23 03:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is it a mere algorithm? An algorithm with a specific realised implementation?
Since I'm not currently in a country where mathematics can be owned, it seems weird to me.
Does any software company actually indicate that they would stop work if it were not for software patents? I.e. is there any company which says that it relies on software patents to do business in software, rather than as a defensive/offensive mechanism?