industryterm:software patents

Difference Engine: Obituary for software patents | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/12/difference-engine-0?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/obituary_for_software_patents

defying expectations, the House of Representatives passed (by an overwhelming majority) the Innovation Act, a bill aimed squarely at defanging so-called “#patent_trolls”. (...)

Second, the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the most contentious issue of all: namely, what inventions are actually eligible for patent protection. In particular, do the #trolls’ favourite cudgels—the ridiculously vague and overly broad business-process and software patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) over the past decade—really qualify?

#brevets

The Private and Social Costs of #Patent #Trolls by James Bessen, Michael Meurer, Jennifer Ford : : SSRN
►http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272

étude scientifique : en vingt ans, mille milliards de dollars ont été perdus à cause des trolls à #brevets … et ça ne va pas aux inventeurs

“patent trolls” who opportunistically litigate over software patents with unpredictable boundaries? Using stock market event studies around patent lawsuit filings, we find that NPE lawsuits are associated with half a trillion dollars of lost wealth to defendants from 1990 through 2010, mostly from technology companies. Moreover, very little of this loss represents a transfer to small inventors. Instead, it implies reduced innovation incentives.

Beware: Europe’s ’unitary patent’ could mean unlimited software patents | Richard Stallman (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/22/european-unitary-patent-software-warning

The battles seen in the US over software patents could spread to the UK and the rest of Europe if the unitary patent is allowed to come into force. By Richard Stallman