Battleangel

The Guardian strikes with a wholesome article on Intellectual Property and the bitter reality that we never hear of from the IP hyenas.

Guardian - The boom in the intellectual property market will not reap rewards for us all - US venture capitalists now refuse to back a company until it has applied for a patent on its business practice, which they will keep if it fails, as most startups must. If this practice continues, the chilling effect for the future is obvious. The first company into almost any field will fail. But if it leaves enough patents behind it, these may strangle all its successors. Patenting ideas rewards failure and makes success more difficult. You can’t argue that they are needed as incentives. Bill Gates made his fortune in a world without software patents - and if that’s not big enough to act as an incentive, nothing is.

There is some evidence that patenting has not slowed down research into genomes, simply because researchers ignore them. But they are impossible to ignore in software, partly because the laws governing infringement are so drastic. The directors and board members of any company found guilty of patent infringement are liable to triple damages, personally as well as corporately. So companies that may infringe patents simply can’t be sold until the patent holders are bought off, and this is almost always easier and cheaper than fighting the patent, no matter how worthless. This gives the holders of patents tremendous powers of extortion. The only defence is for everybody to do it, which still further clogs up the system.