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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 06:46 AM EDT |
How does the rest of the world survive with no software patents?
Surely if the author believes it is right to support software patents over work
I perform as a software developer then I should have a right to patent the work
that the author performs?
rgds[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 02:25 PM EDT |
1. Congressional action.
2. Supreme Court decision.
3. Constitutional amendment.
4. International treaty.
Congressional action isn't likely to happen any time soon. The
"intellectual property" lobby (both companies and lawyers) is too
strong; the pain is not currently felt strongly enough by the victims and/or the
public to overcome that.
A Supreme Court decision could happen, but someone would have to argue something
along the lines of "the current system does not do what the Constitution
requires of the patent system". With adequate data, that might be a valid
Supreme Court argument, but it's a nuclear option (whoever argued it would lose
their own patents as well), so don't hold your breath. (It *might* be possible
to present it as an amicus curiae (sp?) on a software patent case, but the odds
are low.)
A constitutional amendment is almost certainly not practical until the pain
becomes overwhelming. Congressional action would be *much* easier.
That leaves international treaty. If the EU holds the line on rejecting
software patents, then the next time they try to harmonize the US and EU patent
rules, we need the EU to win that particular point. Given the way that the US
has been the gorilla, pushing everyone else to do it the US's way, this approach
does not have high probability of success - but higher than any of the other
three approaches.
One person's view only...
MSS2[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 11:38 PM EDT |
There is now so much capital tied up in software patents that it will be
impossible to invalidate them short of having a revolution.
To make them go away they need to become a liability for the holder rather than
an asset. One possibility would be to publish an open source implementation of
each patent as soon as it is published by the patent office. If the rest of the
world can grab your idea and put it into their products faster than you can
there would not much incentive in patenting software. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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