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.)

You arrived here from a site that is innovating without patents.

The old wisdom was that patents are essential for innovation: without patent protection, no new ideas could ever make it to the public marketplace.

Software has turned that old wisdom on its head. It is a dynamic and innovative industry beyond the wildest dreams of the founders of the patent system, yet the vast majority of software practitioners hold no patents.

The authors of the site from which you arrived compete in the marketplace of commerce and the marketplace of ideas by doing good work, not by suing the competition.

For more on software patents, see the links to the left.