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Comment by sushirain | Hacker News Reader

Just because I don't have enough understanding in other fields outside of software. It is possible, for example, that medicine today requires patents to advance faster.

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This is exactly why your opinion on abolishing patents does not hold water. You do not yet know. I am not necessarily in the favor patents, but do not agree that a resolution should be reached without thinking it through in its entirety.

Edit (to answer biehl's comment): I meant abolish "software" patents.

He did not ask for "abolishing patents" he asked for the more narrow "abolish software patents". There is no need to broaden the subject to all patents.

(Edit: Then your statement still makes no sense. If you understand that he spoke only about software patents - why do you then needlessly broaden the subject?)

Edit2: It is worse-than-useless to demand no action for softwarepatents until all patent types have been analyzed. Do you also support stabbing people being legal until all uses of knives (in kitchens etc.) have been analyzed? Or do you see that we can reasonably outlaw some form of knife-use?

Right. I edited my comment to clarify. What I am saying is that the narrow "abolish software patents" should not be applied without thinking about all other fields where the same course of action would be helpful. You cannot just make Pluto not a planet without defining what's the new criteria that separates a planet from a non-planet that is better than saying anything named "Pluto" is not a planet, unless there is a specific justifiable reason that isolates just software and nothing else. (Obviously, not understanding beyond software is not an answer.)

Response to Edit2: You are right here too. Just that not thinking through brings a risk of making wrong decisions, which I think could be the case in this case. I am not 100% convinced that software patents should be abolished without understanding the criteria on the basis of which they should be (which may then apply to other fields also, but may not).

Advocating for abolishing software patents is saying that software is a special case. This is not obviously so (the 'software is math' argument is weak), and so any argument one puts forward for abolishing software patents likely applies to many other areas. It is obvious there is a problem with the quality of software patents being issued. It is not obvious that software patents in general should be abolished. After all, is it not possible to have an invention that is largely or completely software?

In some areas, the R&D required to come out with a prototype is substantial -- in medicine you have costly clinical trials for instance. Free riders would benefit a lot more from that than software innovations.

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