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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 11 2012 @ 11:46 PM EDT |
| Big corps used to like software patents, because they were an easy weapon to
squish their smaller competitors with (or extort license fees out of them with).
Big corps have huge patent portfolios, and whenever they locked horns with each
other, the usual result was they would cross-license their portfolios in some
way (giving each other licenses). So the bigger their patent portfolio, the
stronger their bargaining position is during this cross-licensing.
Lately,
some big corps don't like them as much, because they've been on the receiving
end of a bunch of troll lawsuits. (Remember when NTP extorted a $500
million settlement out of RIM, and then the patents at issue were invalidated
after re-examination?) And the cell phone manufacturers have always been
lawsuit-happy, but lately things are starting to get out of control in that
sphere. But the status quo is hard to change.
It doesn't help that there's
thousands of patent lawyers who find the status quo beneficial, and nobody
besides programmers who truly understands how much damage software patents have
already done and will continue to do to U.S. innovation, through chilling
effects and unnecessary patent expenditures (for self-defense, or to please
venture capitalists, it matters not... its all wasted
activity). If you could put a dollar figure on it, I'm sure it would be
large (like billions of dollars per year.)
Software patents have been a
thorn in the industry's side for two decades now, but the problem has been
growing steadily worse and is now bad enough that even non-programmers are
starting to take notice. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 01:06 PM EDT |
And getting worse. The recent patent "reform" will empower the large
companies even more: first to file combined with much higher fees will
eliminate individuals, and the not-so-rich open software developers.
The concept is not new: remember MS and Stacker (~1990). They stole the disk
compression code and lost the court case, but escaped any real penalties and
litigated Stac Electronics into oblivion.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 07:14 PM EDT |
Modern corporations don't act in the interest of profit. Their primary goal is
crushing competition at any cost. They would rather go bankrupt themselves than
see a competitor make $1 for every $1000 dollars they make.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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