SME Toolkit
Story: SMEs don't get their fair share of EU patents
Posted by: Aaron Trevena (Friday 10 June 2005, 3:48 PM)
In the case of Software it simply is not worth patenting most of the work SME's do for several reasons.
1) A project that costs 1 to 5 thousand euro's may contain a patentable idea (or several trivial patents like those awarded to Microsoft and IBM) that would require more time, cost and effort than the project itself. Examples of this can are the webshop patents by amazon and others at http://webshop.ffii.org/
2) a business with less than 100 employees would be hard pressed to pay for the patents lawyer that would required to apply for, appeal, and defend any patents. Even if they did not retain a lawyer full or part time the costs of litigating and processing a patent would not be returned for years if at all.
3) patenting any software will immediately make you a target for larger patent-holding rivals and patent trolls, it will also restrict your ability to work with open source and other small business who sensibly don't want to pay licenses or subsidise your legal expenses in order to work with your software.
4) the entire software industry in europe with a handful of misguided and greedy exceptions does not want the patenting of software because copyright works well. why would they add to the problem?
Full Talkback thread
Story: SMEs don't get their fair share of EU patents
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So while big companies all around the world are in... Arthur B. -
So this report is supposed to prove that more SME´... Roderick Klein
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The reason multinationals have a greater numb... Anonymous -
In the case of Software it simply is not... Aaron Trevena
