Software Patents Considered Harmful

The practical downsides of software patents are overwhelming the upsides. For every "good" patent, there are dozens if not hundreds of trivial or ill-conceived patents. Perhaps if the review process were cleaned up and made rigorous, the net benefits would appear, but I'm not confident the Patent Office and Congress can pull that off. The current system benefits lawyers and patent hoarders, not inventors nor consumers.

At least enforce and scrutinize "non-obvious" better. The "obvious" problem is probably the biggest and most obvious current flaw. And the mere act of automating and/or emulating a physical process should be tossed out. A specific implementation may count (if non-obvious), but the very act of emulation by itself should not count as a patent. For example, emulating a physical slide-lock to unlock a smart-phone was granted a patent. All implementations of the emulation appeared to be susceptible to successful lawsuits. That is pure nonsense.

I wholeheartedly agree with this article. The common defense for software patents is that a small company doesn't have any other means to prevent a big company from copying its invention, but I'd claim that a small company can't afford to build the patent portfolio in the first place and thus even that point is moot.

IANAL but I believe copyright infringement cases if the infringing party is found guilty, the damages are based on the lost revenue or other damage inflicted by the use of the material.

If patents used the same process, the invention could be used by other companies as long as it did not harm the business of the patent owner.