I helped convince a book distributor to go with an open source supplier of Adempiere. The cost over 5 years with implementation support wasn't much different than the proprietary competitor. But the selling point that resonated was the ability to switch support vendors at the end of the current contract (something that requires switching products with the proprietary system). The biggest obstacle was explaining to the CEO how they could "own" the installation with no license fee.
If you are building an oil refinery (scratch that, the US hasn't done that for a while), if you are building a nuclear power plant (scratch that - haven't done that for a while either), if you are building a semiconductor fab (there we go), you first search applicable patents, and license them - because it saves you time and money. This is how patents are supposed to work.
If you are building a software application, the industry best practice is to NOT search for patents, and in fact, make sure the programmers haven't looked at any. This is because the patents are useless, don't save you the tiniest bit of time, and damages are tripled for knowingly violating one - and every software application is guaranteed to violate lots of them. In addition, every big company files as many stupid software patents of their own as they can - to have a countersuit if some lame-o sues them over a stupid patent.
This MAD policy works for big companies, but small companies and individuals are out of luck. In addition, even big companies are vulnerable to patent trolls - who can't be effectively counter sued because they don't have any actual products (that would be violating some stupid software patents of their own.).
So tell me again how *software* patents are encouraging innovation?
Authored Comments
I helped convince a book distributor to go with an open source supplier of Adempiere. The cost over 5 years with implementation support wasn't much different than the proprietary competitor. But the selling point that resonated was the ability to switch support vendors at the end of the current contract (something that requires switching products with the proprietary system). The biggest obstacle was explaining to the CEO how they could "own" the installation with no license fee.
If you are building an oil refinery (scratch that, the US hasn't done that for a while), if you are building a nuclear power plant (scratch that - haven't done that for a while either), if you are building a semiconductor fab (there we go), you first search applicable patents, and license them - because it saves you time and money. This is how patents are supposed to work.
If you are building a software application, the industry best practice is to NOT search for patents, and in fact, make sure the programmers haven't looked at any. This is because the patents are useless, don't save you the tiniest bit of time, and damages are tripled for knowingly violating one - and every software application is guaranteed to violate lots of them. In addition, every big company files as many stupid software patents of their own as they can - to have a countersuit if some lame-o sues them over a stupid patent.
This MAD policy works for big companies, but small companies and individuals are out of luck. In addition, even big companies are vulnerable to patent trolls - who can't be effectively counter sued because they don't have any actual products (that would be violating some stupid software patents of their own.).
So tell me again how *software* patents are encouraging innovation?