What is the importance of software patent in software industry?

Similar questions: importance software patent industry.

Patent is important for it is intended to promote innovation & protection of investments. Patentable subject matterMain article: Patentable subject matterPatents are intended to promote innovation by encouraging the timely disclosure of how to make and use inventions and by protecting investments made to commercialize inventions. They attempt to accomplish this by requiring that a prompt and full disclosure is made by an inventor of how to make and use the invention and by granting a monopoly right for a limited period of time to a patent owner to prevent others from making, using or selling the invention in exchange for said prompt and full disclosure.

There is debate as to whether or not these aims are achieved with software patents. Edit ProposalsIn seeking to find a balance, different countries have different policies as to where the boundary between patentable and non-patentable software should lie. In Europe, a number of different proposals for setting a boundary line were put forward during the debate concerning the proposed Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, none of which were found acceptable by the various parties to the debate.

Two particular suggestions for a hurdle that software must pass to be patentable include: * A computer program that utilises "controllable forces of nature to achieve predictable results". * A computer program which provides a "technical effect". In the US, Ben Klemens, a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, proposed that patents should be granted only to inventions that include a physical component that is by itself nonobvious.

This is based on Justice William Rehnquist's ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Diamond v. Diehr that stated that "... insignificant postsolution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process. " By this rule, one would consider software loaded onto a stock PC to be an abstract algorithm with obvious postsolution activity, while a new circuit design implementing the logic would likely be a nonobvious physical device.

Upholding an "insignificant postsolution activity" rule as per Justice Rehnquist's ruling would also eliminate most business method patents. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent .

This article considers the pros and cons of patents in the software industry. The Article starts by emphasizing the difficulties that prerevenue startups face in obtaining any value from patents. Litigation to enforce patents is impractical for those firms.

Efforts to obtain patents divert the firms focus from the central task of designing and deploying a product, and the benefits of excluding competitors are limited for firms that cannot themselves exploit the relevant technology. Once the firm is larger, a number of potential benefits appear. First, despite concerns that patents are not effective to appropriate innovation in the software industry, a substantial number of software startups do have patents of sufficient strength to exclude competitors.

That important finding, taken with the fact that the principal targets of those patents are much larger firms, suggests patents are more beneficial to small firms than to large firms. The Article then considers indirect effects related to the use of patents in cross-licensing transactions and in providing information about the firm. The first benefit may be substantial to firms that obtain patents, but the Article dismisses use in cross licensing as a net benefit to the industry: absent some other benefit, all firms would be better off saving the costs of obtaining patents.

The information benefits, in contrast, seem to be net improvements in the system of innovation. The central question, which I do not attempt to answer here, is whether those benefits are sufficiently substantial to justify the costs of obtaining the patents. The Article then turns to the prominent claims that the enforcement of software patents has hindered innovation in the software industry through creation of a patent "thicket."

The Article rejects those claims for two broad reasons. First, notwithstanding the empirical analysis of R&D spending in papers by Bessen, Maskin, and Hunt, direct evidence of high R&D spending in the software industry undermines claims that software patents cause firms to reduce R&D spending. Second, the actual structure and practices of the industry belie any claim of a patent thicket.

Relying on interviews that I conducted and publicly available information, I show that the development of young firms in the software industry is not significantly constrained by the existence of large patent portfolios in the hands of incumbent firms. The Article also contextualizes the role of patents by examining the relatively weak protections that copyright and trade secret can afford. At bottom, neither of those systems can provide a useful mechanism that would allow small firms to appropriate the values of their inventions.

If such protection is a significant positive benefit of the patent system, it is equally true that neither copyrights nor trade secrets are contributing (or can contribute) significantly in that respect, however useful they might be in other roles (such as preventing piracy). The Article closes by considering critically the possibility of middle-ground responses that would limit patent rights in the industry but not abolish them entirely. First, I criticize a possible registration system that might provide the information benefits discussed in Part III without the costs of excluding competitors.

I argue that such an approach would be impractical both because it would be difficult to disentangle the information benefits from the right to control technology and because of my sense that software firms would have an inadequate incentive to participate in such a system. Second, I consider the possibility of special limits on the rights of "trolls," small nonoperating firms formed solely to litigate patents. Trolls serve a useful function as specialized intermediaries and thus in fact may have a positive role in promoting innovation in the industry.

Third, I consider the possibility that slight alterations in the patent rules for enablement and disclosure might mitigate the risks that trolls pose to the licensing equilibrium that minimizes the costs of patenting in the software industry. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=510103Several patent reform advocacy organizations have banded together to form a new coalition that will lead a collaborative effort to abolish software patents. Supported by the Free Software Foundation, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center, the End Software Patents (ESP) project aims to challenge the legal validity of patents that do not specify a physically innovative step.In addition to helping companies challenge software patents in the courts and in the patent office, the ESP project will also work to educate the public and encourage grass-roots patent reform activism in order to promote effective legislative solutions to the software patent problem.

http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/02/patent-reform-coalition-aims-to-abolish-software-patents.ars Sources: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=510103 .

Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition.1 One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".2a In 2005, the European Patent Office suggested that a software patent is a patent for a computer program claimed as such, or an algorithm or computer-implemented business method that make no technical contribution.3There is intense debate over the extent to which software patents should be granted, if at all. Important issues concerning software patents include: * Where the boundary between patentable and non-patentable software should lie;4 * Whether the inventive step and non-obviousness requirement is too easily satisfied for software;5 and * Whether patents covering software encourage or discourage innovation.6Free and open source softwareMain article: Software patents and free softwareThere is tremendous animosity in the free software community towards software patents. Much of this has been caused by free software/open source projects shutting down32 when the holders of patents covering aspects of a project demanded license fees that the project could not or was not willing to pay or offered licenses under terms which the project was unwilling to accept, or could not accept because it conflicted with the free software licence in use.33Several patent holders have offered royalty-free patent licenses.

Companies that have done this include IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Novell,34 Red Hat,35 Sun Microsystems and Unisys. Such actions have rarely appeased the free/open source software community for reasons such as fear of the patent holder changing their mind or problems with some of the license terms.36In 2005 Sun Microsystems announced that they were making a portfolio of 1,600 patents available through a free software/open-source-type patent license called Common Development and Distribution License.37 This was criticized by the free/open source software community, however, since it did not release the source code under a free/open source software license.38In 2006, Microsoft's patent pledge not to sue Novell Linux customers, openSUSE contributors, and free/open source software developers39 and the associated collaboration agreement with Novell40 was met with disdain from the Software Freedom Law Center41 while commentators from the Free Software Foundation stated that the agreement would not comply with GPLv3.4243Draft versions of the GNU GPL version 3 may also conflict with patents on software by preventing any patent holder from enforcing their patents against a user if said patent holder also distributes software covered by those patents under the GPL.44 Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent .

1 In the US, it means that the code is protected and can not be duplicated without the risk of financial penalties in a law suit. In third world countries like India it means outsourced code can be stolen and reused without legal or financial repercussions.

In the US, it means that the code is protected and can not be duplicated without the risk of financial penalties in a law suit. In third world countries like India it means outsourced code can be stolen and reused without legal or financial repercussions.

" "Can you tell me who are the best patent attorneys/patent law firms in California." "If I have a BS in Biology and get get a patent law degree..." "importance of tetracycline.

What are the effects of using an open source software in the software industry.

Can you tell me who are the best patent attorneys/patent law firms in California.

If I have a BS in Biology and get get a patent law degree...

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.