End Software Patents

• "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.

• 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.)

Make a tax-deductible donation to ESP via the Free Software Foundation, which is acting as the coalition accountant and providing other administrative support.