High noon for software patent directive

For me the final outcome of this will be a clear indication if the EU, where it matters, is either democraticly or rather commercially lobbied in nature.

It's all bollocks anyway. I'm still going to get the bus the morning after. It's a bit like the G8 thing, I'm in favour of it but it wont really change anything.

I love patents. It forms the basis of innovation. Pity to all who go against it.

"I love patents. It forms the basis of innovation. Pity to all who go against it."

Explain how stopping someone using a certain software method in a new and imaginative way encourages innovation.

"Explain how stopping someone using a certain software method in a new and imaginative way encourages innovation."

For one thing, the software that is protected will have a continuous development by the original authors. No other third party will mangle the code and produce bad software. Second, new patentable ideas will be created from scarcity of familiar programming methods. This can be viewed as evolution.

To Anonymous Patent Manager.

"For one thing, the software that is protected will have a continuous development by the original authors."

Unlikely, why risk burning R&D budget if no-one else can compete. Revenue earned thanks to software patents is better spend on legal services targeted to try keeping anyone smaller then you small and anyone bigger then you of your chest. Or, as we've seen plenty of examples for already, to find and drag customers and competitors labeled as patent violators to court and see how much money can be made that way.
So in short, software patents are more likely to lead to stagnation then towards innovation since a company can only do so much with their budget and thus tends to pursue the most sure and rewarding way to spend that budget.

"No other third party will mangle the code and produce bad software."

Mangled code and bad software are only purchased from companies with great and/or well funded PR departments (in the land of the blind one eye is king). The average business however will have to resort to deliver quality goods that actually deliver on their promises given their PR budget.

"Second, new patentable ideas will be created from scarcity of familiar programming methods. This can be viewed as evolution."

Patentable ideas are for the most part creative creations of laywers talk with a lot of funding behind them. Take for example the one-click patent. There are likely thousands of ways, good and bad, to program a one-click functionality. But a single well worded patent would defeat them all. In other words, a few patent officials that are obviously clueless about the finer arts of software development would be more then capable to ruin plenty of developer's days, weeks and years as well as the businesses that depend on them.
Or in another example. There's a limited number of programming methods that are capable of reaching the same functionality but in robust, reliabel, usuable and good performing ways. So it wouldn't take long before all good methods for a certain functionality are patented after which developers working for companies with smaller budgets would be forced to resort to less ideal ways thus resorting in lesser quality of their software products overall and thus the beginning of the end for that company in question.

Concerning your evolution remark. Sudden limitation to previously plentyfull available resources usually leads to mass extinction. People, and certainly markets, are not that adaptive. Especially in cases where some have already stock-piled the remaining resources in well defended bunkers and most others are left empty handed to fight over crumbles with one hand tied to their back.

Corporations may leave 1 or 2 lines of unoptimized code from time to time because they defend their ideas simultaneously from theft. Patents greatly help them by giving them protection and to produce better code. After protecting their ideas, they can in turn fine tune patented code and create better products.

I don't believe that there will be shortage of ideas because with scarcity, quoting from my previous post, will force coders to create better patentable algorithms.

Extinction only comes if you want it. If something is patented, create a better one and patent it also. That's the start of an idea evolution.

To Anonymous Patent Manager. It's great that you believe that everything will turn out right. In the mean time we've seen software patents getting approved that are highly questionable. Thing is that if things don't turn out quite as you picture them then it's people like me, and not you, who are expected to 'creatively' clean up the mess. And quite frankly, so far you've only demonstrated an unrealistic view towards what makes the software industry as a whole tick.