I don't think the first comment is particularly controversial, though the speaker was being diplomatic in his use of the term "innovate." It makes more sense if you replace it with "rip off."

The fact of the matter is that a lot of people paint this idealized picture of the morally virtuous techie, where the only people who own patents are big bad patent trolls, and the only people who get sued are innocent innovators who independently arrive at an invention.

That's not the actual story, or at least that's not the whole story. Like in every other field, there is a gaussian distribution of business ethics at various companies. Look at how many companies get nailed for using GPL-ed software without releasing source. You think those same companies don't also copy competitors' designs wholesale? When our company was doing business with an American telecoms supplier, a manager there mentioned that a Chinese telecoms supplier was ripping off their designs wholesale, down to the silk-screening on the PCBs.

There is a difference between "let's innovate on top of this idea" and "oh this idea is good, let's just copy it."

Now, NPE's in their current form are clearly just rent-seeking. However, I think there is a role for NPE's that create value by serving to create a market for patents. Not every innovator wants to get into the business of making products. ARM wants to design microprocessors, they don't want to design and manufacture iPads. Patents facilitate that division of labor, and NPE's can make the whole system more efficient by creating markets for patents.

I agree that wholesale copying is an issue. However patents are almost never going to be the appropriate response to that for software companies. With software you can always go for copyright violation and/or misappropriation of trade secrets. By contrast, given that it can easily take the better part of a decade to actually get your patent assigned to you, you are very unlikely to have patents that cover the innovative parts of your technology.

Instead software patents seem to be mostly used to sue people who independently invented the same thing. They enable rent-seeking and provide no educational value to spread innovation. (Which naturally arises and spreads in our industry on a time scale that is too short to get patents assigned.)

How do I know this? Because the one has happened based on my work, and the other came close to happening. At one of my employers, a rogue employee cloned the code base and then took it to some Eastern European programmers to reimplement the website. It was litigated based on copyright and trade secrets - no patents were available for that lawsuit.

However a different employer of mine took out two patents based something I did when I was there. Since then a number of companies have infringed on those patents, and could be sued for large sums. By luck the patents have wound up owned by an organization that is unlikely to ever let them go to a patent troll. But I've spent years fearing that that work will get used to stifle independent innovation.

> I agree that wholesale copying is an issue. However patents are almost never going to be the appropriate response to that for software companies. With software you can always go for copyright violation and/or misappropriation of trade secrets

Only if software is the product you're selling. I worked at two companies that had patents on software algorithms, but our software was just a reference implementation. Explain to me how a company like ARM would operate relying on just copyright and trade secrets. I think ARM represents a great and valuable business model, and patents enable that business model.

> Instead software patents seem to be mostly used to sue people who independently invented the same thing.

I don't think you can point to any statistic to back this up.

>> Instead software patents seem to be mostly used to sue people who independently invented the same thing.

>I don't think you can point to any statistic to back this up.

I think that was already clear from the word 'seem'. To me, the same thing seems to be true, actually. That /might/ be caused by the number of software-patent cases I see that fall into this category, or are about trivial inventions, while I simply don't see the cases that do have some merit.

On the other hand, I've never yet seen a software patent related case where I could actually relate to the suing party.

I think grandparent's point was that ARM can patent their hardware designs, and thus avoid the whole issue.

This is one of the strengths Europe has right now: a somewhat less maligned patent system.

Out of interest, who was the lawyer?

Much of the time lawyers are there to present a worst case scenario to push you into using their services. I wouldn't place much store in what they say (speaking as a lawyer myself).

In terms of the entrepreneur discouraged from starting a business, I'd be interested to hear about what the business ideas were.