"rights" and "freedoms"

[Richard Stallman]

    Personally I think the US Patent office has gone beserk, and needs to 
    develop a better understanding of prior art in software. Also, it should
    not be as expensive as it is to defend or fight a patent in court. Those
    are "implementation" details though. 

The US Patent Office is incompetent in all fields, and issues
trivial patents habitually.

If the Patent Office did a good job, perhaps patents would
be beneficial overall in many fields.  But I am convinced
that patents in software are inherently harmful, and would
be harmful even if the Patent Office handled them "well".

See lpf.ai.mit.edu for more info about this.