“The continued success of Microsoft in its fight against the
Eolas browser plug-in patent is causing conniptions among the
godly. Like the Cold War standoff between China and the Soviet
Union, the free world looks on uneasily as monopoly and software
patents stare each other down. Clarity of vision in finding the
real problem is needed.“Software patents are not automatically evil. It makes little
sense to say that if you build something ingenious, non-obvious yet
useful from hardware then you can patent it, while exactly the same
functionality in software cannot be protected…”