Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t
Eliminate Them - 6:30 AM Patents threaten every software
developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken
out. Software developers and software users – which in our
society, is most people – need software to be free of patents.
The patents that threaten us are often called “software
patents,” but that term is misleading. Such patents are not
about any specific program. Rather, each patent describes some
practical idea, and says that anyone carrying out the idea can
be sued. So it’s clearer to call them “computational idea
patents.” The U.S. patent system doesn’t label patents to say
this one’s a “software patent” and that one isn’t. Software
developers are the ones who make a distinction between the
patents that threaten us – those that cover ideas that can be
implemented in software – and the rest. For example: If the
patented idea is the shape of a physical structure or a chemical
reaction, no program can implement that idea; that pate