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Comment by scottmp10 | Hacker News Reader

I think that it will be very difficult to have serious patent reform for the software industry without having significant effects on other industries. So while it seems like the software industry is generally behind getting rid of patents, the changes will be very difficult to isolate to software and companies outside the field will likely oppose any significant changes. FWIW, I hope they make significant changes for software patents soon.

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Can you speculate some companies who would take issue to the abolishment of software patents?

I would imagine it would be anyone, or industry, who has a significant patent portfolio who worries that invalidating software patents would weaken their patent position.

Both in dollar terms and legal terms.

Yes so there are likely some software companies that might have issues (depending on what the changes looked like) such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM (not sure if these companies would object or not, just citing companies with large portfolios). Some non-software companies like pharmaceuticals almost certainly would oppose changes that would affect their ability to exercise their patents.

Edit: A better example might be a company like Intel that has a lot of hardware patents. It is potentially difficult to change the patent laws to prohibit software patents without affecting hardware patents.

Excluding the patent extortion industry, any industry who believes it's hard to define a software patent. "I know one when I see it" might not cut it and there might be some nasty edge cases where an algorithm controls a physical process.

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