Software patents are something of a sore spot for me, both as a software developer and as a generally intelligent human being. I read an opinion article on Ars Technica several days ago on the subject, and they pointed out why the software patent system is fundamentally broken:
Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft veteran who founded the patent-trolling giant Intellectual Ventures, loves to complain about the “culture of intentionally infringing patents” in the software industry. “You have a set of people who are used to getting something for free,” he told Business Week in 2006.
[… In] demanding that this infringement stop, Myhrvold isn’t just declaring war on what he regards as Silicon Valley’s patent-hostile culture. He’s declaring war on the laws of mathematics. The legal research required for all software-producing firms to stop infringing patents would cost more than the entire revenue of the software industry. Firms infringe software patents because they don’t have any other choice.
(Emphasis added.)
I work for a company that builds services that can help organizations of every scale — from one-man startups to multi-billion-dollar corporations to scientific research labs — stop worrying about the complexities of managing their own infrastructure. Basically, startups can get as much infrastructure as they need with no huge up-front in犀利士
vestment, and large companies can get as much as they need without having to invest huge amounts of money in data centers and hardware maintenance.
Well that sounds great, you’re thinking, but how is this relevant to software patents?
Startups aren’t exactly swimming in money, so the software patent system gives startups two options:
- Spend more than their entire budget just figuring out whether they need to pay someone else even more money.
- Ignore the vast body of existing software patents and just deal with potential lawsuits if and when they come up.
Large companies generally don’t have this problem; they build portfolios of software patents, and cross-license their entire portfolios to their competitors, who return the favor, often with little or no money actually changing hands. However, they aren’t completely immune; any random person with a software patent can sue large companies for infringement, sometimes winning huge settlements.
The reason this is relevant to my job is that I am building systems designed to help startups build what they want to build — but if software patents make startups seem too risky (who wants to do a ridiculous amount of patent research before you can try to start a business?), then a lot fewer people will be willing to take advantage of the stuff I do every day.
The software patent system is broken for other reasons, too, but money is something everyone can understand, and when not even the wealthy have enough money to follow the rules, something is fundamentally wrong with the system.