Patent: Whitespace in keywords

Don Clugston dac at nospam.com.au
Sat Dec 23 21:12:44 PST 2006


Walter Bright wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> I personally feel that the value of patents has been tarnished so much 
>> by the tech industry that the whole thing should just be scrapped and 
>> re-invented.  While patents were once a way to protect the independent 
>> inventor from big business, they have become a way for businesses to 
>> protect their own business model from competition, and more generally, 
>> for independent firms to generate money from out of court settlements. 
>> Thus they no longer serve to protect innovation but instead stifle it. 
>> Some businesses may argue that research budgets would be cut if ideas 
>> could not be patented, but I can't remember the last time I heard of a 
>> legitimate patent case brought to court.
> 
> All software patents should be invalidated. There was no shortage of 
> innovation in software before 1990, so software patents are simply not 
> necessary.

Did you know that the decision to allow people to patent algorithms, was 
based on some case in the 1800's where some guy patented an opera ticket 
that could be folded in three ways?  So on one occasion, origami was 
patented, therefore software can be patented too. It's so ridiculous.

It's so ridiculous.



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