"If there are no investors to fund patent suits, there will be no patents except in large companies for defensive purposes."
If all large companies hold software patent portfolios for defensive purposes only then what are they defending against? Not software patent trolls because trolls have no product to counter attack with defensive software patents. IBM started the software patent wars by amassing a large software patent portfolio and then aggressively forcing "cross licensing" agreements with companies holding smaller portfolios of software patents. Other companies got on the software patent bandwagon both to defend against IBM and to find their own cross licensing victims. The current aggressors in the software patent wars are IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft. The result is a less than zero sum game which is a net drag on the software industry.
Whatever happens to software patent trolls only affects the larger software patent wars in that the big aggressors would be relieved of a nuisance if software patent trolls were eliminated. So the large companies have been lobbying Congress to deflect any software patent reform to only apply to software patent trolls.
Congress has decided to pass some new laws to curb patent trolls. Congress has also decided that they will not single out software patents as a special problem. So the new restrictions on patent lawsuits will apply across the board to all industries. Personally I have no idea whether the industries other than the software industry will be benefited or hurt by the proposed anti-troll laws.
I do know that the political furor over software patents will not abate with the passage of the anti-troll laws. So it is possible that you will see your nightmare of all patents being abolished come true by Congress passing a series of laws to whittle away software patents to nothing and apply the new laws across the board to all patent types.
Perhaps you should lobby Congress to abolish software patents entirely in one fell swoop to save the rest of the patent industry.
Yes, I want to kill all software patents. I wrote software for years before software patents became something other than a novelty. Copyright has always worked well. Software patents have never done anything positive and in the last 15 years or so have become a major drag on the software industry.
I have nothing against patents in fields other than software. I only raised the idea of abolishing all patents as a way to get rid of software patents as an extension of your logic. If the choice came down to keep all patent types including software patents or abolishing all patents period I would choose to abolish all patents. But I seriously doubt that any such choice will arise.
"If there are no investors to fund patent suits, there will be no patents except in large companies for defensive purposes."
If all large companies hold software patent portfolios for defensive purposes only then what are they defending against? Not software patent trolls because trolls have no product to counter attack with defensive software patents. IBM started the software patent wars by amassing a large software patent portfolio and then aggressively forcing "cross licensing" agreements with companies holding smaller portfolios of software patents. Other companies got on the software patent bandwagon both to defend against IBM and to find their own cross licensing victims. The current aggressors in the software patent wars are IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft. The result is a less than zero sum game which is a net drag on the software industry.
Whatever happens to software patent trolls only affects the larger software patent wars in that the big aggressors would be relieved of a nuisance if software patent trolls were eliminated. So the large companies have been lobbying Congress to deflect any software patent reform to only apply to software patent trolls.
Congress has decided to pass some new laws to curb patent trolls. Congress has also decided that they will not single out software patents as a special problem. So the new restrictions on patent lawsuits will apply across the board to all industries. Personally I have no idea whether the industries other than the software industry will be benefited or hurt by the proposed anti-troll laws.
I do know that the political furor over software patents will not abate with the passage of the anti-troll laws. So it is possible that you will see your nightmare of all patents being abolished come true by Congress passing a series of laws to whittle away software patents to nothing and apply the new laws across the board to all patent types.
Perhaps you should lobby Congress to abolish software patents entirely in one fell swoop to save the rest of the patent industry.
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Steve Stites