[ Thanks to Nicholas Chase for this link.
]
“Software patents are a disaster for innovation. The
system is asymmetrical, in the sense that it is very expensive to
defend against a patent suit. At the same time, it is very easy to
get a patent on almost anything, including things people have no
business getting patents on. I have a friend who was given a patent
on a number, for example. Fred Wilson called my attention to a
video that is a great documentary on what’s wrong from the side of
granting bad patents. My friend’s number patent came about because
he followed the letter of the law as described by the video and
described some particularly complex mathematics that defined the
number.“The asymmetrical nature of the expenses is such that there is a
huge disparity in cost to defend versus cost to prosecute. The last
time I was involved in a patent suit with patent trolls (companies
whose sole purpose is to use overly broad patents to extort
payments from anyone they can, trolls don’t make anything except
law suits), our counsel advised us that it would cost us $1M just
to get to trial, so any settlement short of that was
reasonable.”