End Software Patents

Siniorakis Spiridon anamenomenos at sch.gr
Fri Feb 29 05:53:24 GMT 2008


http://endsoftpatents.org/

Every company is in the software business, which means that every company
has software liability. We estimate $11.4 billion a year is spent on
software patent litigation (see our resources for economists page), and not
just by Microsoft and IBM-The Green Bay Packers, Kraft Foods, and Ford Motor
are facing software patent infringement lawsuits for their use of the
standard software necessary for running a modern business.

Software innovation happens without government intervention. Virtually all
of the technologies you use now, was developed before software was widely
viewed as patentable. The Web, email, your word processor and spreadsheet
program, instant messaging, or even more technical features like the
psychoachoustic encoding and Huffman compression underlying the MP3
standard-all of it was originally developed by enthusiastic programmers,
many of whom have formed successful business around such software, none of
whom asked the government for a monopoly. So if software authors have a
proven track-record of innovation without patents, why force them to use
patents? What is the gain from billions of dollars in patent litigation?

Change is happening now. The appeals court of the Federal Circuit has agreed
to reconsider the scope of what is patentable, and the ESP project will be
on hand with amicus briefs and public information. See our resources for
lawyers page for more.

This site is an overview of how courts self-expanded their jurisdiction to
include software despite the protests of practitioners such as Bill Gates or
Adobe Microsystems, of the economic damage done, how the story is evolving
today, and how your company can help to restore the software market to a
world run by innovators, not judges.




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