🚀 go-pugleaf

The only legitimate reason for a law is to benefit society.  (Yes, some
laws do not exist for any legitimate reason.)  Patents benefit society
because they encourage investment and discourage secrecy (an inventor
might take his ideas with him into the grave).  A patent also costs
society because it gives a single entity the right to charge everyone else
for using the patent.

In the case of software, the costs vastly outweigh the benefits.  First,
the plethora of software available before the U.S. Patent Office started
giving out large numbers of software patents shows they are not necessary
to encourage investment in software.  In fact, software is particularly
cheap to produce.  Much of the best software is free software which would
be crippled by extensive software patenting.  Second, the high rate of
reinvention and/or independent invention of software algorithms indicates
there is no need to discourage secrecy.  The existence of huge amounts of
free software also shows this.  The number of discoverers of useful
algorithms who have published the algorithms (for professional prestige)
without the benefit of patent protection also indicates that secrecy is
not a problem with software.

Hence software patents should be abolished.

The issue of whether the software patent holder "deserves" a reward is a
red herring.  The sole legimite criteria for a law is the good of all
society, not the individual patent holder.

-- 
Enjoy,

Joe Wells <jbw@bu.edu>