A patent grants an exclusive right to an idea or algorithm for a period of up to 20 years, which means forever in the software industry. Patents prohibit others from applying knowledge. Anything that prevents people from using ideas to create new products effectively destroys innovation.
Software patents are little more than legal guns that the holder can use to shoot at you or your customers unless you pay them protection money (royalties). If you refuse to pay the protection money (oops…sorry…the royalties), the patent holder can keep you from operating in the market they want to control.
Since there are no laws concerning how patents rights can be used, the owner can ban some companies and use the patent to extort money from other companies. A single patent can put an entire software company out of business, overnight. It can happen to anyone.
The problem is that people can patent ideas instead of just products and devices. The fact that you thought of something but never did anything about it should not allow you to stop someone else who had the same idea from creating a product simply or demand royalties because he patented the idea.
Software, by its very nature is a written expression of mathematical ideas and is covered by copyright laws. The copyright prevents others from using your code to build their product but does not stop them from writing their own code to do the same thing.
Open source software cannot be patented and the “copyleft”, as it is called, license allows the purchaser to modify and improve upon or customize the code. Software patents are bad for the industry. Copyrights provide sufficient protection to software companies and have an added benefit. You must have a working program to publish it and obtain a copyright. See why I prefer Open source!!?
