Well you can not have both ways Microsoft!

Software patents are bad idea that why open source where so anti-software patent in Europe. Microsoft where very pro for patents in Europe.

Also what are going to get from open source projects.

Certainly.

The patent system was a unmanageable before software patents were “invented” simply because there were too many patents and they became unmaneageble for inventors and for the patent office….. like copyrights are currently unmaneageble, although for different reasons.

But now the mess is multiplied because of the invention of software patents, which are nothing more than simple solutions that are “discovered” (not invented) when a problem was being solved by a programmer.

You give 100 programmers the same problem and many of them will discover the same solution, the best one, the common sense ones. Now, all of the programmers have the right to go to the patent office and patent their 100 solutions, many identical, to the same problem. Kinf of ridiculous.

But that is not all.

I use to be in the software development business. My small software company developed several DOS program that we sold to industrial firms. Among the reasons for getting out of the business was software patents. It is scary to know that you cannot do a patent search for software and whatever you do may already be patented and could ruin you if you are sued.

Patent law, like copyright is supposed to promote the creation of new things. With me patent law had the oposite effect. I stopped making new software applications. Just like copyright law is suppressing culture and speech.

Of course, one of the unstated purposes of patenets is to muzzle competition. On that it is working as planned.

BTW, the real inventor of file compression, I think was Pkware, back in the 80’s. MP3 is file compression. I bet that Pkware (or whoever “invented” file compression), never made nearly as much money as Alcatel-Lucent (ironically a company from Europe, where software patents do not exists) made in an instant in a courtroom from someone’s alleged infringement.

Wierd!

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com