On 20 Mar 2005, at 11:51, Joseph Kiniry wrote:
> On the other hand, to play Devil's Advocate, given the public nature
> of patents and the fact that small changes in realization are cause
> (in the current US system) for the execution of a new patent, one
> could argue that software patents would *encourage* innovation,
> because FOSS developers would be forced to innovate beyond the (fairly
> uninspiring) bounds of existing and pending patents.
No. Because so many patents are held on what would otherwise be termed
basic techniques (eg: the XOR trick to highlight an area of the
screen), it is extremely difficult to write unencumbered software. The
trouble with the current system is that patents are held on many
methods and devices which are trivial yet essential.
Colm
--
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146 / www.colm.buckley.name
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