EFF Outlines Plan to Fix the Broken Patent System
Most of these are really excellent, such as the suggestion to require example code for claims implemented in software, to allow the regional courts of appeal to decide patent cases, and to defer most discovery until after claim construction.<p>On the other hand, some of the suggestions simply beg the question. What is a "software patent" or a "patent troll?" Software is eating the world--mechanisms that would have in the 1990s been implemented in ASICs are implemented in microcontrollers. What people think of "software" they think of typical application code that mostly moves bits from point A to point B or react to user input. Software where each individual line of code is straightforward and requires little thought. An R&D project might spend millions of dollars to write a bunch of code that will be thrown away--and can still be considered successful if it yields useful algorithms. These are qualitatively different kinds of software, but it's devilishly difficult to draw the line.<p>Of course the easy solution is to eliminate software patents. I'm not convinced that's a good thing long-term. I look at the tech industry, and see one where product companies rather than hard R&D companies make all the money. The folks at SRI who invented Siri get a small license fee, while Apple makes billions by wrapping it with a candy shell. It's an industry where there is tremendous pressure to vertically integrate, because you can only justify R&D on basic technologies if you also control the product that gets sold to end-users.