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Patents Software

End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging 205

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the amicus-populorum dept.
Linux.com is reporting that the End Software Patents project is launching several new initiatives to help drive support for their cause. Among the new methods are a web site, a report on the state of patents in the US, and a scholarship contest promising to award $10,000 "for the best paper on the effects of the patentability of software and business methods under US law." "The project is being launched with initial funding of a quarter million dollars, supplied primarily by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Under the directorship of Ben Klemens, a long-time advocate of software patent abolition best-known for the book Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, the project is being supported by the FSF, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). One of ESP's goals is to enlist support from academics, software developers, legal experts, and business executives. Its initial supporters show that the project is already well on its way to building such a coalition."
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End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging More

End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging

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  • FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LingNoi ( 1066278 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @09:45PM (#22613212)
    Whatever you think about RMS and FSF you have to agree that getting rid of software patents would benefit everyone, globally in the software industry. From the commercial hardware vendors, all the way down to the hobbyist BSD developer.

    I can't wait for it to happen in the states as I predict it will also trigger the fall in the few countries that also allow software patents.

    From a Linux desktop standpoint alone it would finally allow for built in support of DVD, MP3s, etc. Some projects such as GIMP won't have to work around patents to get the features they want built in. Open source driver support might increase..

    Even from a closed source perspective Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about getting sued and having to purchase massive amounts of patents to defend itself. They could focus of providing a better user experience without restrictions that patents encumber you with.

    Everyone wins... apart from the lawyers..

    • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by webmaster404 ( 1148909 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @09:56PM (#22613264)
      I agree with you. And those that say "software patents help the industry" are totally wrong. If it weren't for SW patents we would have less of a monopoly and stagnation of software because every one would be on equal footing and the community projects (Linux) could use the same things as the commercial projects (Mac and Windows) legally.
      • We would still have copyright to deal with. Although there is more then one way to skin a cat in software so it might be a challenge more then a road block.

        I think the real problem with software in general is that it typically has a 5 to 10 year lifespan. Most projects in operation that long aren't using any of their original code by that time.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TheLink ( 130905 )
          Yes, long copyright and patent terms slow down progress. A reasonable term nowadays is 7 years.

          With long copyright terms you don't have to compete against your old stuff - you can make stuff like Vista or Office 2007 ;).

          With long patent terms, even if you can't implement something (because you suck) you can prevent other people from making progress or slow them down.

          Long copyrights are for people who can only come up with one good song in their lifetime, or the companies that enslave them.
          Long patents are f
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • But we could finally use DVD playback, MP3 playback, etc. That would boost Linux's popularity on the desktop.
          • We could have MP3 playback, but not DVD playback. DVD playback of protected DVDs (in the US at least) requires breaking of the DMCA. Abolishing patents would not solve this. Granted, there are legal ways to play back DVDs on Linux [mandriva.com], but most people who use Linux don't want to pay to pay the licensing fee. You have to pay the licensing fee on Windows, or on any other implementation. So I don't see the reason you shouldn't have to pay for it on Linux.
          • DVD playback contends with the DMCA, so patents going away would still preclude legal CSS decoding.

    • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) * on Saturday March 01, 2008 @10:04PM (#22613304)
      There are two more winners. A lot of companies do cross licensing agreements of patents so company A can use company B's stuff and there is no worry about infringement.

      What this does is that any company not in the patent cross licensing network gets forced out of business, and any innovations they do have on a work that is claimed to be patented end up being able to be used by the holder.

      Last, there are companies out there who buy obscure patents looking for something that related so a company's mainstay. The small company then sues the large company. Almost always, this is settled secretly for lots of money before it goes to court. Even if the patent is questionable, the larger company is on the defensive because if for some reason it does get upheld in a court, its the end of their business.

      I used to have faith in the patent system, where people who were infringing were doing so deliberately, similar to people who made counterfeit software boxes. Now, the barrier for tripping over some obscure patent is so low, almost any company is at risk.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        "Even if the patent is questionable, the larger company is on the defensive because if for some reason it does get upheld in a court, its the end of their business."

        Actually it's more ridiculous than that.

        If the smaller company actually makes stuff, the larger company might have more patents that it can use to threaten the smaller company with. Defensive. Think IBM vs small corps.

        But if the smaller company doesn't actually make stuff at all, then yes they can do that.

        And so how does this encourage innovatio
    • Whatever you think about RMS and FSF you have to agree that getting rid of software patents would benefit everyone, globally in the software industry.

      I'm not 100% convinced this is true. On the surface it seems good, but I'm sure there's secondary fallout that's not being considered. Analogous (but obviously not exactly like) to the: if you can't patent drugs, sick people can get more drugs... but now the incentive and funding to research drugs has dropped dramatically, so there's a cost for that to ever

      • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @11:28PM (#22613710) Homepage Journal

        I think everyone with an ounce of sense will agree that:

        • Europe makes software
        • There was plenty of software written in the U.S. prior to 1981.

        What does this tell us? Most of Europe doesn't allow software patents, and the U.S. didn't prior to 1981, so clearly patents were not a necessary incentive for companies to innovate in the software space. Q.E.D.

        Further, software is the only field that is protected by both patents and copyright. That's simply unreasonable, and there is no good reason for this to be the case. Drop one. We need to tell the corporate software world that if you don't mind giving up copyright protection, you can keep your patents. I dare say not a single company will choose that route, as copyright is a far more valuable tool for corporate software manufacturers.

        • What does this tell us? Most of Europe doesn't allow software patents, and the U.S. didn't prior to 1981, so clearly patents were not a necessary incentive for companies to innovate in the software space. Q.E.D.

          The problem with that proof is that it doesn't demonstrate that an equal amount of software innovation took place with software patents in play vs. without.

          I mean, if we get rid of drug patents, AIDS research isn't going to go away, but there's sure going to be a lot less of it. Is that the case wit

          • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Insightful)

            by slashqwerty ( 1099091 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @12:05AM (#22613812)
            I mean, if we get rid of drug patents, AIDS research isn't going to go away, but there's sure going to be a lot less of it.

            Can you be sure of that? Most basic medical research is financed with government funds. Pharmaceutical companies generally finance only the last step of the research. That is, they do the testing necessary to bring a promising drug to market. Certainly if pharmaceuticals didn't handle the last step other sources would open up--likely more government funding. If that were the case it seems likely to me many more drugs would be studied including many that pharmaceuticals wouldn't bother with.

            One also needs to factor in roadblocks to research when scientists hide their work until they can file for a patent. And consider the extra costs researchers encounter when they have to pay royalties on patented research techniques and patented source materials.

          • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:4, Informative)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @12:19AM (#22613848) Homepage Journal

            Well, look at it this way. We had lots of research going on in computer software, and then patents happened in the 80s, and since then, the research spending has basically dried up and real innovation (as opposed to mere incremental improvement) has dramatically slowed. Granted, we don't have a control group, so we can't definitively say that the slowdown was caused by patents, but we have seen enough examples of innovation being hampered by patents and enough research driven predominantly by the desire to get more patents instead of being driven by a desire to improve the state of the art that we can pretty clearly conclude that patents have a deleterious effect. The only thing that isn't clear is the extent to which this is the case, IMHO.

        • Re:FSF and RMS (Score:5, Interesting)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @12:12AM (#22613832) Homepage Journal

          In fact, I'd go so far as to say that all of the major innovations in the field of computer software were created prior to the U.S. allowing patents, including:

          • Time sharing/process scheduling (late 1950s)
          • Symmetric multiprocessing (mid 1960s)
          • UNIX (late 1960s)
          • TCP/IP (early 1970s)
          • Paged memory management (early 1970s)
          • Non-linear video editing (early 1970s)
          • Ethernet (mid 1970s)
          • Modern graphical user interfaces (late 1970s)
          • Mice (late 1970s)

          When you get right down to it, my computer still basically works the same way as System 1.0 Mac, just with color graphics, a lot more general UI polish, and a lot more features. The basic overall feel, however, is still pretty much the same, only faster. Under the hood, most operating systems still work basically the same way as UNIX did in the 1970s. Computer hardware has gotten much faster and smaller, which has allowed lots of things to be possible that weren't feasible at the time, but even most of the things we think of as "new" like digital video editing date all the way back to the early 1970s, albeit on specialized computer hardware that would fill your entire garage. The only giant leaps since the 80s have been in hardware designs. and, to a limited degree, in the software necessary to support advancement in the hardware.

          Where, then, are the huge leaps that software patent proponents promised? Why did those leaps basically dry up as software patents became entrenched in the U.S.? Outside of a few specialized areas like computer graphics and voice recognition, the computer industry basically has been stagnant since software patents became legal. Worse, most of the "revolutionary" ideas since then have either been evolutionary dead ends like NUMA and ccNUMA or have taken absurdly long to catch on like touch screens, which first appeared commercially in the early 80s, but outside of POS systems and PDAs/smartphones, are still almost nonexistent in the marketplace.

          If you need proof that patents don't inherently result in increased innovation (at least in computers), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Would the innovation slowdown have occurred in the same way if we didn't have patents? Maybe, but I can tell you that there is a lot less pure research being done in major tech companies now than at any time in the past couple of decades. If patents are supposed to encourage research spending, they are sure doing a lousy job of it.

          • Thanks for leaving out the web, done at CERN (in Europe, where there is no software patent law... oh wait I see).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by TheLink ( 130905 )
            Mice = 1970s? Earlier than that, and far far more than just mice too:

            http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html

            That's when they demonstrated the stuff they had been working on for _years_.

            Now progress is just "wow what a great GUI theme". Yes I'm looking at the Linux Desktop bunch too - a lot of what they make are basically cutscenes that get in the way of doing stuff- very nice cutscenes I suppose, but lets have better "gameplay" already. Wobbling, translucent windows, fancy animations are all crap
          • Hmm. What about:

            - Relational databases
            - Journaling (relatively new in filesystems, but been done for a long time in databases)
            - Parallel programming (using multiple simultaneous threads for a single task)
            - Distributed computing (spreading computation over multiple locations)
            - Functional programming (whatever that really means)
            - Object-oriented programming (whatever _that_ actually means)
            - ...

            Can't be bothered to continue the list. There surely has been

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by aproposofwhat ( 1019098 )
              Relational databases: Micro DBMS (1969)
              Journaling: I believe Ingres had it in the mid 70s
              Parallel programming: Burroughs D825 (1962)
              Distributed computing: OK - I'll concede that's fairly recent (mid 90s?), but that's more to do with networking improvements making it feasible than any other factor
              Functional programming: LISP (1958)
              OOP: Simula 67 (1967)

              All old, old technology.

              Software patents do nothing except enrich trolls and lawyers, and the fact of the matter is that people will continue to invent ne

            • Have any of those "inventions" been patented though? A lot of those systems are much older than software patents also. RDBMS [wikipedia.org] was first proposed in 1970. Although object oriented programming [wikipedia.org] wasn't really used mucn until the 90's, the ideas for it originated in the 60's.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by leabre ( 304234 )
          As I read this I just had a thought. Whether I agree or not is irrelevant but I can see how it would be hard to enforce 'patent or copyright: pick one and only one to protect you'. Software is complex, composed of many instructions and expressions. Much of which may not be patented or patentable. But some very key portions might be patented or patentable. While the entire work may be copyrighted only small portions may be patented. Maybe the design is patented. How can the work be quantified into wha

  • Lobby groups (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Snatch422 ( 896695 )
    The software patent lobby is huge even if they are underreported on. Just think about Amazon and how they defend obvious software patents. There are so many patent holders out there right now that have so much to worry about that despite this new organized effort to reform I fear it will not totally solve the problem. There would be "grandfather" software patent clauses or something I would bet...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, this is what bothered me so much about the $10,000 scholarship contest. If you want to get something done give that $10K to a Senator, not some poor student! Bribing politicians is a time tested way of getting what you want. That's how we got the software patents in the first place!
      • Change senator to a judge and you will be a hit.

        Congress didn't give us software patents. A judge did. Congress gave us a special court to argue it out though.

    • So far these folks have their heads up their arses (Score:4, Interesting)

      by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @01:19AM (#22614034) Journal

      Take the ten thousand dollars, multiply it by ten thousand, and use that to fly congressmen and women and senators to luxury resorts; buy the kids and grandkids of same tuition to ivy league universities; get them jobs on the boards of major corporations that pay big money with little or no responsibility... etc. etc. etc. If that doesn't work use the remaining money to find the weaknesses of same and exploit them. Just like the people who are paid to advocate software patents to legislators. Then you will get rid of the software patents. You have to fight fire with fire.

      Nice polite little information campaigns and essay contests talking about giving it to the 'man' won't do squat. The only people who will listen to those are the people who already agree with you.

  • Defining software patents (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rumblin'rabbit ( 711865 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @09:54PM (#22613250) Journal
    Here's what the web site suggests for changing patent law.

    Patents should be allowed for: * 1) devices with mechanical components * 2) physical compounds that can be weighed on a scale. Patents should never be awarded to: * 1) Ideas * 2) processes, recipes, software programs
    This prohibits far more than software patents - some types of medical treatments, manufacturing processes, and so on. That might be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

    This confirms what I already suspected - it is brutally difficult to define a software patent. It's one of those problems that seems easy at the onset, but gets more and more complicated the more you think it through.

    • This prohibits far more than software patents - some types of medical treatments, manufacturing processes, and so on. That might be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

      How would that be a bad thing? It would mean, A) Cheaper medicine (because you can buy the generic ones rather then the patented name-brand ones) B) Cheaper goods (because they could use more effecent manufacturing methods) and of course C) We might (actually) innovate past 2000 in software. I really don't see how that can be a bad thing.

      • Re:Defining software patents (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rumblin'rabbit ( 711865 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @10:11PM (#22613344) Journal
        Never said it was a good or bad thing. But if the goal is to only disallow "software patents" then this proposal seriously overshoots the mark.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by superwiz ( 655733 )

        A) Cheaper medicine (because you can buy the generic ones rather then the patented name-brand ones)

        complete drying up of AIDS research (who the hell wants to spend their life researching or fund researching it if there is not money in it?)

        Feel free to insert some blurb about people's good nature, goodness, good intentions and whatever else you think they work for other than the money.

        complete drying up of Alzheimer's research

        complete drying up of obesity research... ok, that might be a plus since we might reconsider our diets.

        no development of anti-biotics that would fight the newly emerging strai

        • Oh no.. The research will go on. Instead of patenting, it'll be copyrights, NDA's and trade secrets.

          Patents are only 20 years. Copyrights are 100+ years. What do you want your drugs to be under?

        • I remember previous discussions here on this topic mentioning that a lot of drug development funding currently comes from the government. Assuming the private research disappeared completely, there would still be pharmaceutical research, albeit less.

          I am not sufficiently familiar with the topic to argue about it myself, but some googling found a blog post with arguments similar to those I have seen here in the past [blogspot.com] (with references).

        • >complete drying up of AIDS research (who the hell wants to spend their life researching or fund researching it if there is not money in it?)

          I'm sorry, but lots of people. As it is now there is little money in it, there is way more money in baldness research. So there really wouldn't be that big of a change.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dvice_null ( 981029 )
          > who the hell wants to spend their life researching or fund researching it if there is not money in it?

          Who the hell wants to spend their life on developing free open source software? That's right, lots of people. Some people actually can and will care more about the human kind than themselves. And some people might even want to find a cure for someone they know.

          Optimal solution would be that all countries would give money into same pool, where money would then be shared for research projects that would

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )
        No, I think medicine would be a compound you can weigh on a scale.

        It would mean you could not patent something such as radiation therepy, only the machine that does it. I could come along and develope my own machine that does it and do the same treatment.

        It actually looks like a pretty strait forward test that makes sense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) *
      Perhaps we should go back to the old method of patenting stuff that was done in the early days of the patent office. Every patent application needs a working prototype to be sent in with it. This case, if someone patents warp drive, the USPTO better be getting a flux capacitor via UPS.

      Of course, this has its issues, a manufacturing process would be hard to send a prototype of, other than perhaps the before, during, and after stage.

      • Re:Defining software patents (Score:4, Interesting)

        by snl2587 ( 1177409 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @11:24PM (#22613694)

        What does this have to do with software patents, though? The problem isn't so much that ideas are patented (since one could send in source code of a program using the idea) but the insane crap that gets patented. Theoretically no patents are supposed to be awarded for obvious extensions of previous patents, but it seems more and more software patents are being awarded for things that are simply a different way of looking at things.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • This confirms what I already suspected - it is brutally difficult to define a software patent.

      Luckily, that's an implementation detail that can be sidestepped in a number of ways. For example, we could allow patenting things mostly as is done now, but make patents unenforceable against software by adopting the following rule: If something would not be infringing if its software were removed, then it is not infringing.

  • This wasted half of my day on Friday. But the pulled me back in. Fine. I'll just post my final conclusion: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=470808&cid=22612730 [slashdot.org]
  • I'm sure they are in violation of my patent on Method and Apparatus for Advocating Political Viewpoints using a distributed computer network, whereby arguments for said Political Advocacy are stored on a server, and are accessible to interested clients via a web browser using a standard web browsing internet protocol.

  • Unique time to be alive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Saturday March 01, 2008 @10:44PM (#22613528) Homepage Journal
    We live in the only period of history where it is possible to get a patent on something you discovered without claiming you invented it. If I found a piece of farming equipment that did some novel thing and I went and applied for a patent on it, I would be asked to declare that I invented it and it is not the work of someone else - to satisfy the no-prior-art test. If, however, I am pulling apart a bacterium or some other living creature, the patent office will happily grand me a patent on its genes - they won't even ask me if I invented these genes because it is assumed that I am just patenting a discovery.

  • Is there a fund that I can contribute to that will specifically go to the effort to end software and business patents?

  • A web site? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fear the Clam ( 230933 ) on Saturday March 01, 2008 @10:51PM (#22613564)
    Well fuck me with a shovel, those folks are serious.

  • Why not just enforce the rules already in place? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sssssss27 ( 1117705 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @12:54AM (#22613952)
    I think it would be a far simpler solution if patent examiners just enforced the rules already in place, that is you aren't allowed to patent ideas. Then you wouldn't be able to patent "A program that translates text from one language to another" but instead would be able to patent the code that does do that. Obviously you would have to release your code so other people can learn from and build upon it, which is why you get protection. Isn't that the whole point of the patent system? If you expose your trade secrets we grant you a limited time for a monopoly on it.
  • Dear All, It is with amazement that I read of the polarized debate going on in the US. The present US software patenting system is broken and the proposal to abolish software patenting would throw the baby out with the bathwater. The whole of Europe uses a unified system that permits such patents but forces them to jump through rigorous test to cut the crap that is patented in the US and that clogs up the US patenting system and cause endless costs and angst in the software community. In Europe software

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by kanweg ( 771128 )
      The European patent office grants patents for software illegally, after years of wriggling and twisting by one (Dutch) member of the Board of Appeal, who stepwise expanded the scope of what was deemed patentable. The current chaos in the different European countries on how this should be dealt with is in no small part due to this, as the grant clearly goes much further than the law (your reference was written by a patent attorney of Philips who did an excellent job of presenting a biased story). Even the Br
    • "The whole of Europe uses a unified system that permits such patents but forces them to jump through rigorous test to cut the crap that is patented in the US and that clogs up the US patenting system and cause endless costs and angst in the software community... See for a brilliant simple description : http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/software/epc/ [iusmentis.com]"

      Unfortunately the Ius mentis description is dated and misleading anyway:

      http://webshop.ffii.org/ [ffii.org]
      http://legal.european-patent-office.org/dg3/pdf/t030424eu1.pdf [european-p...office.org]
  • Regardless of the scope of software patents they are essentially useless and only harms the progress.

    If A creates a piece of software and patents it it also means that B can't do it too even if the implementation is completely different and may be more effective unless B also pays A for something that he never will or want to use just because the end result is the same.

    The only persons that benefit from the patents are really the patent lawyers. A will waste a lot of time trying to defend patents and B

  • Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @07:44AM (#22614990) Homepage Journal
    Patenting software is akin to patenting a recipe for food. It's all done within the framework of something that's already been invented (cooking or computing).
  • Some folks don't like me using the IPR acronym, because they define it as a subversive act to undermine the sharing of knowledge.

    FMP - IPR should only be owned by the individual (prevent buying and selling) who created it, and allow lease (agreements/contracts) to institutions (schools, businesses, governments, religions ...). Institutions have no intellect (reality) and have no reasonable claim to intellectual property created by an individual, group, community. Protect the freedoms of the artists, intelle
  • Guess who will win :/

    http://economie.moldova.org/stiri/eng/39281/ [moldova.org] says
    "The U.S. legal system imposes a cost of $865 billion a year on the
    U.S. economy, or $9,800 a family"

    https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html [cia.gov]
    says GDP (official exchange rate): $13.79 trillion (2007 est.)

    So about 6% of the USA's economy is flushed down the drain that is the US legal system.

    It would be interesting to see a chart of how the legal costs have been raising (or falling) over time. Maybe it

  • Software patents are against the nature of .... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Sunday March 02, 2008 @12:46PM (#22616220) Homepage Journal
    .... software.

    A similar slashdot story was just the day before see: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/29/0344258 [slashdot.org]

    Honestly, this call for papers and award is along the lines of asking for more on top of what we already have, proof that going against nature will bring you harm.
    i.e. step off the empire state building...you will fall and die. Drive a car into a solid wall @ 500 mph, you will die.

    Make software patentable and you will suffer the consequence of contradicting nature just the same.

    People are born everyday with a blank slate of knowledge, but do all these new people do things that kill themselves, so to find out it will kill them? NO!

    So how much do we need to harm ourselves with software patents before those making it possible to patent software and contradict nature, learn?

    see:Abstraction Physics [abstractionphysics.net] as the subject matter is fundamentally NOT about politics or economics, as organized crime has both a good economy and politics, but it doesn't make it honest and genuinely in touch with physical reality such that you can drive a car into a wall @ 500mph and live.

    This software patent matter is really getting to be stupid on stupid. Software classification is not a human choice, but a human mental characteristic, and even stupid proves it.

    Has anyone shown proof that driving a car into a wall @ 500mph will kill you, to those allowing software patents?
    If not, then why are they not finding out for themselves?
    If so then someone should point out that they should try 499mph to find out if it makes a difference. (re: all the abstract possibilities of proof for or against software patents) ....use this as an analogy to those wanting proof of software patent damage (uh, err maybe it won't be damaging this way.....)

    Its really amazing how much money is being spent on such distorted efforts rather than producing the proof that software is not of patentable qualities.

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