Europe: No patents for software

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This will ultimately stifle innovation IMO

It seems like the idea of patenting an innovation has gotten so screwed up. Up until the mid-90s one could only patent a novel innovation. After that the U.S. federal government loosened the standard for patents. And now someone who puts a design on a friggin' TOWEL can patent it! I've heard the complaints about simple technologies being patented, and I sympathize. This stifles innovation. I assume this is what the EU is attempting to guard against, but the answer is not to disallow patents altogether for software. The answer is to raise the bar. Make it more difficult to get a patent, not in terms of rules and bureaucracy, but in terms of how a product or process is judged. Make the patent worthy of the name.

Software innovators are going to have a few reactions to this. They're going to develop their technology elsewhere, where they have patent protection. It's going to make the incentive to keep source code secret even stronger in Europe, since companies will say it's a trade secret. It will drive investment money away from software innovators in Europe, since small companies will not be allowed the potential of a temporary monopoly on their product.

Patents were meant to be a positive enabler for innovation. They were meant to reward, and encourage it, plus encourage the eventual disclosure of the invention. It was meant to prevent corporations from keeping inventions as trade secrets, as well.

If an inventor could patent their creation, it would enable that inventor to attract capital to further develop the product, expand its market share, etc. The deal was that they were allowed this temporary monopoly to reap their rewards, but eventually the patent would expire and the invention would go into the public domain, which would allow competition, and allow educational institutions to study it.

It seems to me that the West has lost sight of what patents are all about. Now it's just a tool for patent trading among large companies, and a way for them to put the squeeze on a small startup.

There are the "patent trolls", small companies (on paper, anyway) that sue large ones to extract payment from them, but I think they're the exceptions, not the rule. Usually the power relationship is in favor of the large companies in our current system.

Posted by: Mark Miller   Posted on: 05/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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