Do software patents actually encourage innovation?
It’s difficult to answer an unqualified yes or no to that question. However, some facts can be examined to reach one’s own decision about this: • Most, if not all, innovation in the field of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) occurs without any desire or even thought of patenting. Examples of this are the Apache Web Server and associated projects, K Desktop Environment (KDE) and Nagios Network Monitoring System projects. These are free software projects bristling with innovation, new ideas, excellent code and enormous support from the user community. One can ask whether patents really are so crucial to innovation if large amount of innovation is going on completely disconnected from the patent world. • It can be argued that software patents may actually serve as a means of stifling innovation. Since software patents protect an idea and not an implementation, it is possible to get patents on fundamental software development techniques so that no one else can use those techniques subsequen
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