I'm late with this but Public Knowledge announced two weeks ago that it was starting a Patent Reform Project
link here. Given that we are surrounded with an incredibly expensive and inefficient and now corrupt (with the presence of the patent trolls' extortion) system, it is important for the informed and interested to weigh in.
One cannot be terribly optimistic about the outcome, but to leave the system to the big money and personally interested is to give up. We can do better. Given our democratic system, compromise is essential so one almost never gets all his wishes. But the critics have been making a dent in the unthinking belief that intellectual property was property like physical goods or land and that it always encouraged innovation and thus human progress. It is a right with characteristics like real property, created by law and law can be changed. Now is the time to change it.
Weigh in, please.
No patents should be allowed on ANY software. And no patents on Business Methods. If the have to allow some then set it up as this..You can EITHER Patent one line of code...or you can Copyright the entire work. NOT BOTH...one or the other.
If you patent anything within the program...you CANNOT copyright it. And the other way around. Whichever.
And to stop the trolls...you can not sue unless YOU have a product in the market that uses the code and you must have a 10% market share prior to suing stating you have been harmed in some way.
