Edited to correct a typo kindly pointed out by a comment below.
Those patents will affect open source which no other industry has adopted to the extent software has. Even hardware is being open sourced now as a cultural influence.
Can you point me to any other industry where small teams or individuals can build and learn the same cutting edge tech used at big companies without a big fat license and accepting legal jargon? Is lack of that a bad thing for the society as a whole? No idea is in isolation so it doesn't make sense to give exclusive rights to a single entity.
Do you wanna fight Oracle? Of course, you do just like Google.
Current situation won't give you the real picture of the impact because many companies choose not to patent software when they can.
Investors can also see lack of patents as reduced barrier to entering the market and diversify more.
3D printers were used by industry for many years prior to the expiration, esp. in aerospace and the military.
Patents do somewhat work in the 'corporate' world, where potential inventions require a quantifiable capital investment that would obviously not be worth it in the absence of patent law (like antibiotics). But even then, companies often choose to keep the invention a secret if possible.
Software, generally is not like that, capital investment required is only quantifiable for 'big' applications, that do not require much creativity but simply a lot of work to create. And these applications are actually not the sort of thing that is patentable.
I think the reason patents are generally accepted is the 'righteus' notion that if someone invents something, he owns it and it cannot be stolen from him. But this notion is achterhaald, what if two people invent something at the same time? What someone invented the same thing a few years later, but actually succeeds in bringing it to market, unlike the first inventor?
Speaking as someone who has worked in fields related to data compression and audio/video codecs, you can't imagine how wrong you are about this. Entire fields of research have been blocked off from the point of view of commercial developers and researchers. Nobody would touch arithmetic encoding with the proverbial ten-foot pole until IBM's fundamental patent expired, for instance.[1] Never mind LZW derivatives.
It's outrageous that patents on fundamental algorithms were ever allowed. Germans need to do what they can to stop it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_coding#History_and_...
The idea that something or an idea can be limited to a particular chain of causality is irrational. The only reason someone likes the idea of saying only one chain of causality should exist for an idea or, better put an idea that makes money, is because they themselves like money or think they can gain access to that money.
Even the Cornoavirus has been shown to innovate, through mutation, by changing itself. It is not a single change, either. Many, many viruses change themselves to a new same same configuration over time. Now some may not, but some definitely do, which means that change is available to all.
Just because someone is able to get resources to patent an idea is not a good reason to allow them "protection" over another who did not have the resources, but still arrived intellectually at the same conclusion.
Are we to say all things we do are protected if they bring value? What about all the things we do not do that bring value? Will those be protected next?
If I had resources to spend on a thing, it would be to invent a space drive to get the fuck off this planet and away from all the greedy people.
USA does blur the lines with its broad software patents and business method patents. But we in Europe have software patents to, they're just for inventions, not ideas.
This post is my personal opinion and does not relate to my employment.
It's the idea of an implementation that is patented, not the implementation of an idea.
This is particularly obvious when it comes to software patents as the entire process being patented concerns the manipulation of abstract information, which places even the implementation of the idea squarely in the realm of ideas. Even if that patent office requires the software to be "embodied" in some general-purpose computer before granting the patent, the patent covers the abstract data-manipulation algorithms even when they are reimplemented in different software running on a completely different kind of computer—which puts the lie to the idea that this "embodiment" has any relevance at all to the patent.
A true but useless statement. An idea is not patentable. An idea implemented in a computer program is.
Not according to EPC art52.2 (in Europe).
And not according to Alice jurisprudence (in the US).
But the patent lobby, including the patent offices, are at work trying to destroy those.
If you have no IP system then you are too dependent on people innovating for the sake of innovation because they enjoy it. If you have an extreme IP system then you are too dependent on corporations innovating for the sake of profit maximization. Both extremes limit overall innovation. There is a sweet spot in the middle where you both maximize corporate and voluntary innovation. The current copyright system is the closest to that sweet spot but it's leaning closer to corporate than voluntary because of its long duration. The current IP protection is good for both corporations and the open source/FOSS community. There is an opportunity to commercialize opensource software and make it easier to sponsor the developers but if the current system was kept until the end of humanity we wouldn't miss out on too much innovation.
But this article isn't about keeping what we have. Software is about to receive an additional IP system. One that is completely inaccessible to voluntary innovation. We are bound to leave the sweet spot at this rate and prioritize corporate innovation above everything else, even if it means there will be less innovation overall.