[ Thanks to Glyn
Moody for this link. ]
“Most people in the hacking community are well aware
that patents represent one of the most serious threats to free
software. But the situation is actually even worse than it seems,
thanks to the proliferation of what are called patent thickets. To
understand why these are so bad, and why they represent a
particular problem for software, it is necessary to go back to the
beginning of patent law.“The patent thicket As their name implies, patents are about
making something “patent”, or public, so that others can use and
build on an invention – but only after a certain period,
during which time the patent-holder has a monopoly right (what kind
of right is discussed below). Indeed, the origin of British patent
law – and of many anglophone countries that base their law on
this tradition – is the 1623 Statute of Monopolies.“The idea of patents was to ensure that new discoveries were not
kept secret. “