The Terrible Cost of (software) Patents

[Triple Zero]

Dunno if any of you have been following the recent madness about big companies buying eachother's patents or even buying patent portfolio's in order to scare other corporations not to sue them over patents because they'll sue back etc?

It's all about software patents BTW. Regular technology patents seem okay in my book, there's good reason for them being there. Software patents however tend to patent ridiculous things like online shopping carts, the ability to sell things on a mobile platform in an appstore, clicking on things signified by icons, etc etc (I could link to any of these but I don't feel like looking them up sorry).

I didn't really like the (now expired) patents on MP3 (encoding not decoding) and GIF (LZW) image compression, cause they gave me a lot of hassle when they were still active, but at least those are novel technologies into which went a lot of research, so I can understand their reasons for existing. Even though I'd have preferred if they would have made them public.

Also, at least for MP3 and GIF we (computational science people believing in openness) had the ability to construct our own compression methods and release those to the public. So we got OGG and AAC for audio, and PNG for lossless image compression.

But the current software patent idiocy pretty much guarantees that no small player will ever be able to build their own mobile platform. I mean, even Google is struggling with the patent trolls and they've been spending BILLIONS of dollars buying their own patent portfolio for leverage as to be able to keep selling their Android mobile platform. That's billions dollars wasted, that aren't going into development for better Android software, but will of course end up with the consumer paying for them.

It even goes so far as that small-time software development companies trying to make a living by building apps for the iPhone or Android platforms are getting harassed by patent trolls--patent trolls are relatively obscure companies that managed to file a shitload of patent applications 5-10 years ago about the most trivial shit, mostly employ IP lawyers and are currently sending scary notices to small software companies, who of course do not have the legal funds to go to court about this (not that they would win if they did) and are forced to settle for substantial amounts of money.

BTW the state of software patents in Europe is a bit better, but only barely, as there are a few shreds of common sense built into our patent law, somehow.

One of the many articles on this subject:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/terrible-cost-patents/

[Freeky]

This is why I laugh when anyone mentions "something something small businesses something something complete."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Because the big guys influence the laws and regulations, the small guys don't stand a chance.