End Software Patents

Please read ESP's call for donations for 2011

• "There is no authority that we know of which permits software per se to be considered statutory [patentable subject matter]." —-Patent Office board of administrative judges, October 2007 (source PDF)

• Portion of patents granted every year by the Patent Office that are software patents: 15% (Bessen and Hunt, 2004)

• Websites that may be violating a software patent as of January 2007: 155,583,825 (Netcraft)

• "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." —Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft (cited in this New York Times op-ed.)

• Estimated annual cost in legal fees incurred by software patents: $11.2 billion. (2008 State of softpatents)

• Estimated economic benefit from software patents, as calculated by several pro-software patent economists: $0. (See the list of null results on the resources for economists page.)

How to donate

ESP's accounting services are kindly provided by one of our supporters, Free Software Foundation. This simplifies the running of ESP and it makes donations tax-deductible (at least in the USA). Donations to ESP by credit card and PayPal are accepted here:

• ESP secure donations page (on fsf.org)

What work gets done

By donating to ESP, you enable us to continue to:

• Participate in landmark court cases:
  • Amicus brief for in re Bilski (US CAFC, 2008)
  • Amicus brief for Bilski v. Kappos (US Supreme Court, 2009)
• Build the en.swpat.org resource wiki, providing documentation for all campaigns against software patents
• Participation and campaign assistance around the world; ESP contacted and helped local teams in the following government consultations
  • Feb 2009: European Patent Office consultation on software patents (en.swpat.org: EPO EBoA referral G3-08
  • July 2009: New Zealand (en.swpat.org: New Zealand)
  • Dec 2009: Australia is preparing to propose new patent legislation (en.swpat.org: Australia)
  • Nov 2009: Israel's patent office holds a consultation on software patents (en.swpat.org: Israel)
  • Sep 2010: USPTO's consultation on interpreting Bilski (ESP responds to USPTO consultation)
• ACTA: publishing leaks in accessible formats; the propagation of these leaks was an element which forced the governments to publish the official text
• The news.swpat.org discussion forum, which publishes timely documents