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Story: Irish developers protest against patents

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What does not make sense, Mr ceo (previous poster)?

I believe what Mr Daxx was saying, is that when Microsoft was a small company, there were no software patents allowed at that time. This permitted Microsoft to innovate and grow, building on the ideas of others, whilst respecting copyright protection of intellectual property.

Then, some years later in 1991, when Microsoft was a larger company, its co-founder Bill Gates recognised that software patents would be a threat to Microsoft if it did not have any. This is evidenced by this now famous quotation, which came from an internal strategy memo of Mr Gates to his staff. Subsequent to this, Microsoft began to acquire software patents, when they were legalised (1994). Microsoft now (2005) owns many software patents, including some issued in Europe by the EPO.

Most people would agree that Bill Gates is very clever, so it is interesting to read this candid quote - which holds as true now as it did then.

The point is that an innovative software-producing small company could now be blocked from growing to become like Microsoft, by software patents alone. Patents favor the big, incumbent companies, who by now hold large portfolios of patents. Small companies don't stand a chance.

Even if a small company does acqire a software patent themselves, it is really only of interest to them if they do not intend to produce any software - in other words if they become a pure patent company and their business model is based on suing and collecting royalties. That hardly promotes innovation! If the small company does produce software themselves, it is likely that in doing so, they will infringe upon someone elses patent(s) and be required to cross-licence. If they only have 1 patent, and Microsoft has 5000, who do you think will win?

This is just ONE of the reasons why software patents in Europe are a bad idea. There are many others, but I just wanted to explain this one, as you didn't understand when it was expressed earlier.

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