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And your inability to have a conversation without resorting to foul language. You have serious temper problems Thom. Honestly you do. Encouraging illegal activity, foul mouthed, etc.
Now it's my turn to call BS Thom. The first known example of a software patent was granted on August 17th, 1966 on a British patent application for "efficient memory management for the simplex algorithm, that could be implemented by purely software means"
The United States has granted software patents since at least 1972.
The United States has granted software patents since at least 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_States_p...
Have fun reading.
When you sense bullshit, you say bullshit.
FYI: EPC has explicitly excluded software from being patented as of 1973.
EDIT: Something your side is battling to overturn to this very day. How's life on the side of Lodsys these days?
Edited 2011-07-06 16:41 UTC
This is an easy argument to kill.
Typically big companies are big companies because they are successful in the current market. It is not in their interest for the market to change because they can continue to make money without investing R&D and marketing.
New ideas threaten the big companies because they change the market dynamic. Big companies have choices. Either try to freeze the market, or themselves innovate to meet the threat. The current US patent system has made it extremely easy to go for option 1 (freeze the market).
I don't know about you, but a lot of very smart people I know hate working for big companies and prefer working for smaller innovative ones. In the case where a large company has decided to freeze the market mostly the employees that could enable the innovation have left for greener pastures. That opens up a pretty huge window where the big freeze company is vulnerable.





Member since:
2005-06-29
Bullshit.
Software patents were not granted before 1998. Are you seriously going to argue - with a straight face - that no innovation in softeare took place before 1998? You do realise the bulk of software technologies we use today are far older than 1998, right?