On Mit, 2008-01-30 at 16:21 -0500, David F. Skoll wrote:
[...] 
> In a previous job, I worked at a company that did integrated-circuit
> reverse-engineering.  When the semiconductor industry was suffering,
> that company did well because struggling semiconductor companies went
> sniffing for patent infringements in competitors' chips to increase
> revenues. :-)  For them, owning a patent portfolio was just another
> strategic business move.  Unfortunately, the free software movement

With real hardware (read: tangible property) you have to face physical
limitations and overcome them (or it won't work) - be it a new
technology as such, a new production process, better layout algorithms
or other means.
And simply e.g. rearranging circuitry may create other (and/or new)
problems.
And the developing of the solution of the problems are much much more
expensive than the costs of the patent (even if you include the cost for
the patent lawyers, translators and the work time to get the patent
application through whatever patent office you want).
So there might be (or at least have been) some good in a system to
protect such investments.

> can't participate in that game, and patents really are nuclear weapons
> against FOSS.

Actually against all software[0] ("software as such" and all other;-).
You have in software no problems putting ten lines of code instead one
in a "while" loop. And the "while" as such will not just work
differently just because there are more statements in there.
And creating "new" solutions in software is usually relatively cheap
compared to the patent costs.
So the patent system is just used to get the competition from the market
into court.

	Bernd

[0]: MSFT reported ca. 2 years (IIRC) ago that they face 30-40 patent
litigations in parallel permanently against them (hey, why sue a small
company if you can sue a rich company!). I don't know what the number
currently is. Not that their own vast amount of patents will help as
these 30 to 40 are almost all are so-called "patent trolls".
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