Academic research by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society has found that software patents have provided no net benefit to the software industry, let alone to society as a whole.

Jobs replied, saying that “[a] patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs now.” The news spread like wildfire. This episode provides a good example of how software patents harm innovation and why they are ultimately incompatible with Free Software. Any program - Free Software or not - is threatened by patents.

Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users – which in our society, is most people – need software to be free of patents.

Our petition aims to unify the voices of concerned Europeans, associations and companies, and calls on our politicians in Europe to stop patents on software with legislative clarifications. The patent system is misused to restrain competition for the economical benefit of a few but fails to promote innovation. A software market environment is better off with no patents on software at all.

"End Software Patents, a project working toward the elimination of software patents, was launched today. The ESP project will initially focus on two approaches: 1) assisting corporations that choose to challenge software patents in the courts and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the basis that patents for software and designs with no physically innovative step have no legal validity, and 2) public education aimed at passing laws to protect software from patent law. [...] In a separate announcement today, ESP released its first report on the current state of software and business method patents. The report covers the economic impact of software patents, including the $11.4 billion that U.S. businesses waste each year on software patent litigation.

The dangers of software patents for free software have always been a hot issue. But with the news that Red Hat and Novell are being sued for alleged patent infringement by IP Innovation, the matter has moved from theory into practice.

« Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every design decision brings a risk of getting sued. Patents in other fields restrict factories, but software patents restrict every computer user. Economic research shows that they even retard progress...»

The debate over patents in Europe is starting to heat up again, just shortly after the patent maximalists got defeated; Sir Tim Berners-Lee explains his opposition to (F)RAND, in addition to software patents

history tells me that if patents were to disappear tomorrow, the process of innovation wouldn't skip a beat.