Compliance Toolkit

Story: Despair greets software patent bill

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Your analogy breaks down when you get to cost of development. For a soccer club, developing a new move happens as a matter of course. Suppose that the cost of developing a software product far exceeds the cost that could be borne by any single customer (or even the first 20 for argument's sake). If there is no patent protection on the business process or its implementation in software, as soon as it hits the street it can be copied by someone that has lower design costs. If they already have deeper pockets, they can outspend the small company on marketing and sales and bury them. I already had that happen earlier in my career on an unprotected product at a software startup. There has to be a way to generate license fees commensurate with development costs or the original innovation costs can ony be borne by the larger companies. I know that is not your intent but you are cutting the small player out of the game. Going "open source" won't provide a revenue stream unless you want to go into the services business instead of the software business.

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