Differences between version 18 and predecessor to the previous major change of SoftwarePatent.
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| Newer page: | version 18 | Last edited on Sunday, July 31, 2005 11:36:31 am | by MattBrown | Revert |
| Older page: | version 17 | Last edited on Saturday, May 28, 2005 8:45:27 am | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
A [Patent] that covers a software "invention".
- __Patents on software
are just as wrong as expanding the patent system to literature.__ With patents on story elements, no movie could be published without having to firstly check whether there
is any general idea
in the storyline that someone patented during the last 20 years. Here's an example: At first sight, Dirty Dancing and Titanic are two very distinct movies. However, if there were patents on story elements, then the makers of Dirty Dancing could have sued the studio of Titanic. Both movies have a scene in which a poor boy takes a rich girl from a party of her social peers to a dancing party of his group, and she enjoys it. Dirty Dancing came out only nine years before Titanic, so any patent would still have been in force. No one knows whether James Cameron had that Dirty Dancing scene in mind as he wrote the Titanic script. Maybe Cameron never saw Dirty Dancing but the patent (if it existed) could be used against him anyway.
- <br> --from "
[Thoughts Are Free! | http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/basics/thoughts.html]"
+An excellent example of why SoftwarePatent~s
are bad
is found
in the [Thoughts Are Free! | http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/basics/thoughts.html] document under the __Patents on software are just as wrong as expanding the patent system to literature__ heading.
+
Another quote from noone other than BillGates, in his [Challenges and Strategy | http://www.bralyn.net/etext/literature/bill.gates/challenges-strategy.txt] memo from 1991:''''
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
