PCT (Patents, Copyright, Trademark) policy and Open Source

[Robert Osfield]

Hi Russel, 

I expect your position is held by 95% of software developers, I havn't met one 
software engineer in my career, wether working on closed or open source, who 
has ever believed that software patents are good for the software industry.  

It is clear that software patents benefit large coorporations and patent 
lawyers, but the vast majority software industry is not in either of these 
catagories.  Its my belief that software patents are the single greatest 
threat to SME's in the software sector and open source development.

Open source depends upon contributions for many individuals, be them working 
for a corporation or on their own behalf.  The increasing threat of patent 
litigation and the threat crimialisation of patent infringement (yep there's 
a directive including this going through the EU right now) is surefly going 
to make contributors think twice about submitting code, or starting a new 
project.  Software engineers are often really generous with giving them time 
to public projects, by won't be happy "doing time" for doing so.  Without 
contributors there is no open source.

With copyright you can eaily be aware of when you're breaking someone elses 
copyright, you can manage this risk entirely.  But with patents is very 
difficult to know whether you infringe or not, a patent can pop up even after 
you've developed something and published it, but then its down to the 
ficklness of court to prove that you don't infringe, if you can't afford to 
get to court then the onwer of even a bogus patent wins.  

Clearly their are lots of downsides to the open source from software patents.  
I have yet to so single positive reason for open source that software patents 
might bring.  The only reason I've seen for pursuing software patents is that 
of defense, which pre-presumes that software patents exist or will exist 
which you'll need to defend against, but this is hardly a positive reason.

Robert.
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