Called the Partnership for American Innovation, the group warned that steps to stop the PAEs could also hurt truly innovative companies.
Companies signing on to the effort so far are Apple Inc., DuPont, Ford Motor Co., General Electric, IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp and Pfizer Inc.
[…]
In particular, the group would oppose efforts to make software or biotechnology unpatentable.
Google, Cisco and other supporters of efforts to curb frivolous patent litigation from PAEs, often termed “patent trolls,” supported a bill that easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December.
Software patents are destructive and hinder innovation. Apple, Microsoft, and the other members are actively lobbying to limit innovation in the technology industry. This, in turn, will harm the American economy, and cost the American people tens of thousands of jobs.
It’s easy to sound like a politician.
…why geeks should stop assigning good and bad behaviours to corporations.
They aren’t above making a choice and bearing the responsibility for it. No one is forcing MS, Apple and others to be patent racketeers. It’s their choice. So obviously when government starts thinking about stopping this rampant racket, they come screaming that it undermines their interests.
Edited 2014-04-03 17:48 UTC
Actually Richard Stallman’s documentary about Software Patents disagrees with you. He recognises that most companies did it because it was to create a MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) scenario.
MAD doesn’t work when privateering kicks in. NPEs have nothing to lose. So the situation is long beyond that.
MS and Apple holding lot’s of patents can be compared to MAD. Them giving those patents to NPE trolls is like powers secretly hiring terrorists to attack others giving them the weapons of mass destruction. MAD becomes completely irrelevant.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:53 UTC
Guess what people have gamed the system. I work in the gambling industry, and just moved back from Gibraltar … you know why … because the Gambling companies gamed the British Tax system, the UK government closed the loophole and they are moving everyone back. It was nice being in the sun for a few years but it is over.
Large companies aren’t the ones that game systems, plenty of regular people do too.
There was a reason why they originally filled all these patents and it was because it defensive. Not so much now, but that doesn’t change the history.
Edited 2014-04-03 19:00 UTC
Plus, don’t forget that MAD analogy isn’t really working when small companies and developers are threatened by monstrous sized patent aggressors. So MS doesn’t feel any fear when racketing smaller parties.
That’s the whole point – the system shouldn’t be “gambled”. It should just get rid of bad patents (like on software).
And no, patent racket isn’t a new phenomenon (it’s just rampant these days). They used patents for racket for a long time already, so they knew well that amassing arsenals wasn’t just for defense only.
Edited 2014-04-03 19:09 UTC
I’ve accepted why it is bad. I agree with you. But I recognise why the larger companies started filing and protecting these patents.
Claiming it was automatically malicious, when it quite clearly wasn’t is disingenuous.
There was even a story here on OSNews, about IBM racketing others with notions like “if you try to fight these patents, we’ll pull out more so better pay up or else”.
That happened way in the past, so it doesn’t look to me like they intended that for defense to begin with. It’s a classic shakedown.
Edited 2014-04-03 19:23 UTC
FFS, I am not condoning it, I am explaining it. Even Stallman disagrees with you, Stallman’s version of the truth disagrees with you!
You are religious about this and there is little point continuing the discussion.
Edited 2014-04-03 19:30 UTC
Disagreeing is normal.
You don’t disagree … you take an idealogical stance and refuse to see anyone else’s point of view no matter how valid it is. You do it all the time. You are right and I am wrong … that is your view.
You will scream “ad-hominem”, yet you show a pattern of behaviour that is consistently idealogical and not helpful for discussion.
Go home and masturbate how successful you were at being difficult for the sake of it.
Most often I see you doing this simply trying to defend bad practices. Good to see in this case you actually admitted that patent racket is bad.
I don’t defend bad practices and never will do. I disagree what is bad practice with you. I don’t see things as black and white when it comes to technology, because the world is rarely that simple.
Thanks for ignoring the point all the way through and being intentionally difficult. You prove yourself over and over again impossible to have any sort of sensible discussion about technology. As you won’t discuss it, I will just assume that you are a Zealot.
Edited 2014-04-03 20:05 UTC
What you call sensible can be viewed as wrong by others. Didn’t you say before about disagreeing? So don’t be surprised if that happens. We don’t always disagree by the way.
Edited 2014-04-03 20:16 UTC
The thing is that you always go the one way. The few times I think that way isn’t us not disagreeing it is the few time that I don’t think you are being difficult.
You were being deliberately difficult with MoonDevil in another thread. As far as I can see you are being difficult for the sake of it. It isn’t helpful.
Edited 2014-04-03 20:27 UTC
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
My condolences on having to move back to the British isle.
One could argue that they don’t need to because the system is heavily tilted in their favor
Edited 2014-04-05 08:23 UTC
I take it you don’t know about all of the false flag and proxy war battles there where between the USSR and USA during the Cold War. Who do you think funded all of those paramilitary and terrorist groups back in the day?
Thats essentially what it is, the big companies have patents so fundamental to everyone else that anyone directly attacking anyone else would put both companies out of buisness. This however doesn’t mean that can’t find round about ways to bleed each other dry on cash flow and market share.
In both cases is it a profoundly bad idea for everyone? Very much yes, sure the software patent wars aren’t likely to kill anyone, at least not directly, but they are causing unnecessary economic hardship for those people that have a new idea but can’t bring it to market due to licensing costs or legal threats.
That’s exactly what I wrote above. MAD doesn’t really work.
Edited 2014-04-04 17:39 UTC
Sure it does, as I said, they just aren’t going to go after each other directly. Just look at what happened with IBM and Microsoft over Linux. Did it stop Microsoft from attacking Linux? NO, but it stopped them from attacking it in a way that would have had a chance to completely shutting it down and left them with having to go after them via proxy with SCO and various skewed benchmarks and empty threats.
If Microsoft had pulled the trigger IBM would have fired back due to Linux being a core part of their buisness model, they would have no choice but to intervene and if neither side relented both companies would have shredded each other in court.
Why was Microsoft able to continue to fight Linux via SCO? Well SCO didn’t really have any relevant patent and could easily be discarded if IBM where to go full bore on them without Microsoft taking any direct damage to their patent portfolio. In much the same way that Korea was torn in 2 by USSR and USA military posturing during their civil war. Neither country should have been involved in the Korean civil war, but both where and they made it a far worse conflict then it needed to be.
Then again that list of corporations is generally on my list of bad citizens in the world of patents.
So I think this news just re-inforces my understanding.
It’s Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, etc. – it’s not “corporations,” they have neither hearts nor minds.
It’s the people who hold crooked ideas.
Corporations are led by these people. They can’t escape being responsible by saying “our legal team went berserk and started a patent war, we had no clue”.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:24 UTC
Have you ever worked in a large company? The one I work in is much smaller than Apple or Microsoft, yet it becomes very easy for one half of the company not to know what the other is doing.
I know that it’s possible in practice. My point is, the leadership will still be held responsible. And if they can’t control that, it’s their fault as well.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:48 UTC
Possible? Yes it is possible, It is possible I could go to the moon in my lifetime, likely … nope.
Also why is it their always their fault?
People regularly do things behind managements backs for their own interests or mis-interpret instructions.
You are overly generalizing too much as per usual and taking an idealogical stance even when you should know that it doesn’t work like that in practice.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:54 UTC
No, you as usual try to say that likes of MS aren’t responsible for crooked things they do, like patent racket. That’s laughable. In general, they are fully aware of what’s going on.
I am not saying the company isn’t responsible. I am saying that the highest paid employees aren’t some sort of God like figures that are all knowing.
You keep on assuming that internally these companies work perfectly from a top down view. I have actually worked in large organisations and I know this isn’t the reality of the situation and I know it is quite feasible that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.
If you don’t want to accept reality to suit your rhetoric, that is your business. But it doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
Edited 2014-04-03 19:07 UTC
Even if the right hand isn’t aware of the left, it’s not an excuse for the damage they cause in the end.
I didn’t say that wasn’t the case. I said that the highest paid employees won’t always be responsible for what a company does.
It seems you have a reading comprehension problem because I said very specifically what I was talking about.
Keep on going at missing the point to prove you own rhetoric.
Management is responsible for even the things their subordinates do behind their backs, and it goes all the way up the chain to the CEO. That’s why they get paid the big bucks.
If they don’t like it, they can resign, and get a lower level position where someone who doesn’t like it belongs.
Exactly my point. If they can’t reign in the chaos in their own companies, they shouldn’t take that position to begin with.
Because it’s their job to make sure these things don’t happen?
This idea, to allow legal monopolies on things that are either obvious or written (software) or on things they find but didn’t invent (biotech) come from the same folks who sign pacts with one another to suppress the wages of their employees.
We shouldn’t take anything these guys say about political and economic systems seriously. They are CLEARLY unable to separate their own short term greed from the long term interests of the entire systems.
Apple and several others were also supporters of the Patent Reform bill that passed the House in late Nov/Dec. The article and quote seem to be trying to contort this new lobby group as Apple opposing patent reform for PAEs and contrary to Google’s position on that Bill. When, in fact, they were and still are aligned on that matter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/us-congress-patent-goodla…
Note, the article doesn’t say Apple are against stopping trolls (i.e. narrowly understood as NPEs). They are scared that it would blow up into stopping all software patents and that they don’t want already.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:28 UTC
I’m fully aware of that; I’m well-informed. It also “explicitly” omits that they supported the patent reform bill.
As I stated above, however, ignoring that virtually every article on the Patent Reform bill prior to this new group being announced today includes Apple side by side with Google as supporters and then writing: “Google, Cisco and other supporters of efforts to curb frivolous patent litigation from PAEs, often termed “patent trolls,” supported a bill that easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December” does strongly imply to the less well-informed (the majority, even a fair portion of OSNews readers) that Apple did not support or even opposed the Bill, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:37 UTC
Apple aren’t that clean on that bill though. They fought hard to make it more toothless. See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131118/16302825283/microsofts-in…
So, it’s not really clear that they are on the right side in this matter. Plus don’t forget, Apple aren’t new to patent privateering and using the services of external patent trolls to extort money from others.
Edited 2014-04-03 18:45 UTC
I don’t see much of a point being made. The author of the bill supported the bill in the same form that most of the industry (and Apple) supported and that is what Google is getting credit for supporting and having passed, while not Apple.
That is bad reporting.
Also, it’s unclear what you are trying to “teach” me. My point is solely this: if the article read: “Apple, Google, and other supporters of efforts to curb frivolous patent litigation from PAEs, often termed “patent trolls,” supported a bill that easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives in December,” the story would be several orders of magnitude more valuable: clearly delineating that Apple does support patent reform particular with PAEs (NPEs) but not so far as to rule out all patents, particularly on software. Simple.
It wouldn’t set up a nebulous gray area of what does Apple support or not? It wouldn’t set up Google as differing from Apple in their patent policy through the support of the House Bill (because they BOTH supported it.) Etc.
If you also wanted them to add another sentence that says: “Apple is believed to own the majority of Rockstar which is categorized by some to be a PAE.” That would be fine. But then (only if you are going to mention Google at all as somehow representing views different than Apple), it would likewise be appropriate to say: Meanwhile, Google, as well as Apple, were early investors, supporters, and continue to be a licensees to Intellectual Ventures, widely considered the largest PAE in the world.
Oh, wait, were you going to gloss over the fact that Google, and specifically Larry and Eric, were some of the biggest supporters of IV, the biggest patent privateer of them all, for the first ten years until patents started to matter to them and IV actually started to do what it always claimed it would do?
Edited 2014-04-03 19:07 UTC
For all of you that are against patents I’m guessing that pretty close to 100% of you have never created anything that you then turned around and tried to sell.
Without patents: You create a product or a version of a product that is deemed different enough to have everyone take notice for its new unique design and function that is attractive to a lot (maybe small pct of population but still large number) of people and you start selling a lot of that product. Great news!!! Then oops, you start seeing other people create a copy of your product that you have put lots of blood, sweat and your own personal money into, and here they come and steal all your customers and there is nothing that you can do about it. Since you have debts because of what it took to create the products you have costs that all the copiers don’t have so you go bankrupt while they make money. Wow! Great system. NOT.
With Patents: You work very hard and create a brand new product or version of a product that is new enough to grab people’s attention. It is different enough that you are able to patent your idea and maybe even the way you create your new device. Since you have a patent it is illegal for others to copy and sell your product. Because of this nobody can legally create a copy and sell it for less than what you can and because of this you are able to sell your product with the expectation that you are protected from being ripped off by others.
I believe that you shouldn’t be able to buy patents unless you are going to use that patent for a product that you, yourself, or your company is going to make. You shouldn’t be able to buy a patent as a patent troll.
The patent system isn’t perfect but people that have never created and tried to patent something have zero clue how this system really works.
I’d compare those people to kids thinking they know better than their parents on how things should be. There are a few kids who do know better but for the most part they do not. Parents have wisdom from having gone through childhood and are now parents.
People that have never created a product and tried to patent it and then tried to sell a product based on that, well they are just little kids trying to figure out what it means to be an adult.
But just like almost every living animal in the world, we all have places where **** comes out of. Ignorance may be bliss but it is very ugly.
It’s not against patents. It’s against software patents. Check the difference and figure out why software patents in particular aren’t encouraging innovation but doing completely the opposite.
Examples which explain the issue:
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Hacking-through-the-Software-…
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/papers/HHvGR_Patent_Thickets_FIN_2…
http://www2.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol6-2/ballardini.asp
How to fix it is debatable, but first one should acknowledge there is a serious problem with software patents. Dismissing it with saying “you never invented anything so what do you know” misses the point completely.
Edited 2014-04-03 21:04 UTC
I know what the difference is. Yes I noted that there are problems. But there has to be protection too if someone actually has something unique. I also noted that trying to be a patent troll should be illegal.
To me it should be the same as a physical device. The problem with software patents is the people granting the software patents don’t seem to know what software is and they are not using the same kind of reasoning behind the patents as physical patents.
One thing that SHOULD be patentable (note for 10 years) is the shape of cars so that you don’t have Toyota making the Prius and then Honda coming out with a care that looks too much the same. It was bull**** then and it is still that there should be a “hybrid shape”. I the same is true with the physical looks of cell phones and the look and way the OS and software looks on cell phones. Each OS should be obviously unique so that, without seeing a brand you should be able to pick out which company created it.
Copying is laziness.
Has to be? The basis of the patent law is encouraging innovation by giving limited time monopoly to those who claim the invention. Or how it’s otherwise put “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. If the tool (giving the monopoly) defeats the purpose (promotion of progress), then one should question whether that thing should be patentable in the first place. There is no such thing as a blank “there has to be a protection because I own the idea”.
Copying (or rather reusing) is not laziness. It’s building on existing ideas to go further instead of reinventing the whole thing from scratch – i.e. it’s progress. Or you think each browser had to use its own UI methodology instead of tabs for example, because Opera used them first or something the like? No, thanks. Such ideas should not be patentable.
Edited 2014-04-03 22:45 UTC
You went from saying it’s not patents, it’s specifically software patents to making an argument against all patents: that is, in your view, I can’t see how a physical, mechanical patent is any different from hindering “innovation” (based on your views) than a software patent. So… is it just software patents or all patents?
I didn’t make an argument against all patents, since there are useful cases when patents encourage innovation rather than suppress it.
All this was about software patents specifically which are problematic. The reasons were shown above. I.e. software patents stifle innovation because of the thickets problems and because more than often they are really abstract ideas which are abused for functional claiming. That’s the basis for those who say that software shouldn’t be patentable to begin with.
Great example of patent thickets are audio and video codecs. Just take a look at a horrendously long list of patents covering encumbered codecs. It’s so long that it gives their holders an idea to claim that there can’t be a codec which doesn’t infringe them. That’s the essence of the thicket problem.
On the other hand they can’t claim codecs can’t be created without patents. See free codecs such as Opus, Daala and etc. which are unique. But that’s besides the point. Patent thickets are enough of a reason to render software unpatentable.
Edited 2014-04-03 23:01 UTC
Just saying “patent thickets” isn’t an argument. Are there bad patents? Yes. But trying to point to “patent thickets” thus “software patents” are always bad does not convey any argument or make any sense to me. If anything it says to me: the software patent problem can be solved with greater discernment towards novelty and the interaction of software with hardware. It certainly doesn’t tell me all software patents are bad. There are also “patent thickets” in other industries.
Your argument above was: all software patents work against innovation by monopolizing it. Using a claimed software patent and building on it is innovation. Based on your sense of innovation and monopoly, this is true of all patents. A novel gear mechanism can be invented and patented: but that would prevent others from using it, would prevent others from building greater innovations by using that gear mechanism as a subcomponent of a greater innovation.
I’m just not seeing any clarity to your argument. If you are against all patents, that is significant and very different from the point of view that not all patents are bad but all software patents are bad. And certainly the next step is explaining why all software patents are uniquely and distinctly bad in comparison to other patents which may be good but essentially share the same characteristics.
P.S. Don’t point to 3 links and say “that’s my argument” because the arguments presented in those links do not match the full details of what you just stated above. I cannot fathom the distinction you are making between some patents which do foster innovation and some patents which do not foster innovation nor am I seeing that argument being made by those links (at least not secondarily to several other points to be made).
For example, your third link proposes that the solution to the problem is at hand and already the law in the UK and US and that the problem could be solved in such a way that software patents and patents in general would continue on successfully. So… was that your point?
Edited 2014-04-03 23:36 UTC
The links were brought for analysis of the problem (which they all agree about), and not for showing that they all say that software should not be patentable.
Forbidding software patents is just one approach of how this can be solved, and there are critics of it as well not amongst those who abuse them – those for sure hate the idea, but amongst those who admit the problem but think that carving out “software” won’t really help because there would be ways around it or and it’s not really a solution for the root of the problem which is actually wider than just software.
Either way, the power of current abusers of those patents which they got through the holes in the law clearly needs to be reduced and they’ll be upset with any solution, it’s their problem. The question is, how to reduce it effectively.
Edited 2014-04-04 00:23 UTC
The final link certainly does not say that software patents should not be allowed. SO… as I said, the questions remain: are you against all patents? (Some of your comments suggest so. Your links that you point to do not answer the question.) And if not, what makes software patents uniquely different from other patents (again, your own comments do not make that clear and pointing to a “discussion” that includes views that not only support patents generally but actually support software patents as well and even claim to have a solution to make them workable certainly does not make that argument for you either.)
Edited 2014-04-04 00:37 UTC
I already answered that. I’m against software patents in particular, not against all patents. So far I didn’t see any solution proposed which is more effective than banning all software patents. I agree that it’s not an ideal solution either (as I explained above, it might not be that effective or not sufficient).
All your questions are really answered above already. The problem of thickets is not unique to software patents, and bad patents to abstract ideas can affect other fields as well. Whether focusing on software is good to solve one area, or bad because it leaves out other areas is questionable. Solving all problems at once would be ideal (and that would forbid more than just software patents, i.e. it would be wider, not narrower, and it doesn’t mean all patents either), but solving some is better than solving none on the other hand. The hard problem here is how to build the solution for this problem into the legal system in a way that would seriously reduce the abuse of patent aggression which hurts innovation and prevent various sneaky workarounds for these abusers.
Edited 2014-04-04 01:05 UTC
One of such problems is software patents. The valid software patent is yet to be issued – if possible at all. Given the abuse ratio, the software patents are net loss, and no viable solution was ever proposed.
Why? You propose to limit customers’ choice by making impossible for companies to improve on others’ mistakes. Adopting such measure would massively hurt everyone except producers of most trendy goods, who would be allowed to capitalize on their success by lowering costs by lowering quality. Huge net loss.
You are the one who doesn’t seem to understand software (I talk about software because that’s what this article is about: software patents).
That is so naive it’s almost cute. You remind me of all those kids in forums saying that the only important thing to learn is algorithms, because “all languages are almost the same”, as if implementation didn’t count. You know, companies can not magically know exactly how you did everything, and copy the quality of your code, your programmers, your QA practices, and your support, just by looking at your product. Are you so clueless to think that once you have an idea, everything else comes basically for free? That translating those ideas into quality products (and maintaining and supporting them) is the easy/cheap part? I suppose you think that if software patents were abolished, companies like Adobe and Microsoft would soon be out of business because the GIMP developers would have an indistinguishable copy of Photoshop in a couple of months, and the ReactOS guys would have a perfect Windows 8.1 clone by the end of the year, right?
WTF? That’s what copyright protects you from. Do you know anything at all about patents?
Sabon,
Let me guess, you are not in the software industry are you? Most software companies & developers don’t want anything to do with software patents because we don’t come to this field to litigate, we come here to solve problems and write software to address customers’ needs.
And that’s one of the core problem with software patents. It’s trivial for us to trample on unknown patents in the course of building our software without copying. For copying, there’s already copyright. With patents, it doesn’t matter if we copied or not. It doesn’t matter if implementation overlap is statistically inevitable when developers go to solve the same problems. We face triple damages if we knew about the patents – some companies tell employees NOT to read patents.
In practice, software patents are not sought after to recoup development costs, instead they are being sought after in and of themselves to be used for litigation against the rest of the industry. The software landscape has been broken up into virtual “land grabs”, where it’s not good enough for a developer to be able to write software of his own skill, he also has to worry about who else might already own the rights for the underling algorithms and sue him for royalties. Most likely he will fly under the radar for as long as he can until a patent lawyer sees that there’s money to be had by bringing him to court.
Many people naively assume software developers are for software patents because they are supposed to give us more rights over our work. However it’s easy to overlook that there are many developers working on similar problems, and that means lots of infringement is necessarily going to happen inadvertently. On top of that it doesn’t help that companies deliberately patent every conceivable solution to a problem in order to minimize the chance others can find an efficient solution without infringing their patents.
Also, this software patents with litigation takes a huge toll on both software companies and on society at large. We’ve wasted millions of man hours and probably trillions of dollars that could have been put to much better use. That’s a huge opportunity cost for humanity, for very little in return. At least with other types of patents (ie chemicals & drugs), those are being issued for a good cause and we have something to show for them. But this doesn’t apply to software patents. At the end we are left with patent filings, written in legalese, that are so cryptic and useless even for professionals that they belong in the trash.
Edited 2014-04-04 04:15 UTC
Hi,
The chance of making profit by creating and selling software is less than the chance of getting your butt sued into bankruptcy by patent trolls. For this reason I’d assume you’re correct, and all of the people here that could be creating and selling new and interesting software aren’t.
– Brendan
I more or less agree with what you’re saying, but the solution isn’t to keep software patents alive just because physical product patents benefit inventors. We need to fix the software patent situation, or scrap it altogether and build something better. Those are the only two valid options; keeping the status quo is what allows those little-guy developers you seem to care so much about, to be screwed over by patent trolls.
The patent system was designed to foster innovation by assuring that an inventor was paid for his work, that his ideas were not stolen by others without proper credit and payment. This system worked just fine for years and years, so to say ending patents completely will stifle innovation is just wrong.
The problem began only when “patent troll” companies came about. They are little more than shells, consisting only of teams of lawyers, they don’t manufacture anything. They acquire by any means possible,reams of little known, unused, or unenforced patents and started litigation against anyone and everyone who might possibly be using those patents. These companies do not make ANYTHING, they don’t use those patents for any purpose other than suing others. They don’t pay the original patent owners or their heirs ANY of the revenue they receive, it all goes into their pockets.
And therein lies the problem. Require that anyone who sues regarding any patent to be actually involved in manufacturing a product that uses that patented technology and these shell “companies” who only sue, not produce, and the problem will go away. It’s quite simple, if you are not actually MAKING a product that utilizes a patent that you own, you lose all standing to sue regarding that patent. This isn’t rocket science, it’s quite easy to fix, the problem lies in getting past all the money these shell law firms are giving to the politicians to prevent any fixes. The solution lies in voting for politicians who will reject the payoffs and fix the problem. Don’t just bitch about it, use the system we have at our disposal.
Edited 2014-04-04 10:39 UTC
wocowboy,
Most are not for ending the patents completely, just for things like software where they don’t make much sense. In the software context it has NOT worked fine for years and years, it’s always been an impediment from the get go which has gotten drastically worse over the years as more and more software patents have gotten into the system. Not all industries are the same, a physical lab or factory could cost millions of dollars, yet software can easily be prototyped on a home computer/network. Many of us have more powerful computers at home than at work where we do professional software development. Patents only make any sense when the barriers to entry are high, but the barriers to entry for software have only gotten lower.
In the end, it doesn’t much matter WHO’s suing you over patents, the damage is still done. Non practicing entities are considered worse due to the fact that they cannot be countersued (ie this Mutually Agreed Destruction philosophy). However the benefits of MAD assume some level of equal footing. In the case of small developers against huge corporations, we cannot really afford the millions of dollars needed to for legal battles, so that whole philosophy is flawed.
Edited 2014-04-04 13:49 UTC
I’d say it was made also to disband the secretive guilds…