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Clogging up the legal system

(Redirected from Clog up the legal system)

Software patents create litigation. This means:

  1. Occupying the time of judges and all the legal infrastructure involved in court cases, thus clogging up and slowing down the legal system, and creating long delays which interfere with people trying to develop software and run businesses.
  2. University educations are being wasted working on something with no social benefit. Lawyers with technical knowledge are needed to help developers develope, distribute and commercialise software. They shouldn't be working on something as socially/economically useless as obtaining, licensing, and litigating software patents.

If there was a good reason, then this economic cost would be ok. For example, having a law against kidnapping clogs up the legal system too, but that's fine because kidnapping is really bad, so society accepts paying that price. But mountains of studies on economics and innovation show that software patents are bad for society, so there's no reason to let them clog up the legal system. As Lord Justice Jacob said in the Aerotel ruling by UK Court of Appeal on 27 October 2006:

If the encouragement of patenting and of patent litigation as industries in themselves were a purpose of the patent system, then the case for construing the categories [of excluded subject matter] narrowly (and indeed for removing them) is made out. But not otherwise.

Related pages on ESP Wiki


Why abolish software patents
Why abolish software patents Why focus only on software · Why software is different · Software patent quality worse than all other fields · Harm caused by all types of patents
Legal arguments Software is math · Software is too abstract · Software does not make a computer a new machine · Harming freedom of expression · Blocking useful freedoms
High costs Costly legal costs · Cost of the patent system to governments · Cost barrier to market entry · Cost of defending yourself against patent litigation
Impact on society Restricting freedom Harm without litigation or direct threats · Free software projects harmed by software patents · More than patent trolls · More than innovation · Slow process creates uncertainty
Preventing progress Software relies on incremental development · Software progress happens without patents · Reducing innovation and research · Software development is low risk · Reducing job security · Harming education · Harming standards and compatibility
Disrupting the economy Used for sabotage · Controlling entire markets · Breaking common software distribution models · Blocking competing software · Harming smaller businesses · Harming all types of businesses · A bubble waiting to burst
Problems of the legal system Problems in law Clogging up the legal system · Disclosure is useless · Software patents are unreadable · Publishing information is made dangerous · Twenty year protection is too long
Problems in litigation Patent trolls · Patent ambush · Invalid patents remain unchallenged · Infringement is unavoidable · Inequality between small and large patent holders