The Oracle-Google law suit highlights another problem with software patents. Many folks who are opposed to software patents (either entirely or at least to their current breadth) work for companies that have to play by the existing patent rules - which means filing lots of patents so that you have some bargaining chips when you inevitably get sued down the road. The net result is that inventors who work at these companies wind up on patents that are sometimes later litigated by entirely different parties (post merger or acquisition or change of management)! So what started out as contributing to a defensive move can be turned by someone else into an offensive weapon. My name is on a couple of patents that have since been acquired by AOL and Yahoo respectively. So far so good and none of them have been used offensively (as far as I know), but given my position on software patents it would be quite ironic if that were to happen. This definitely poses a dilemma for inventors, where one is caught between supporting a necessary evil (defensive patents) and proliferating the very practice one would like to get rid off!

The Oracle-Google law suit highlights another problem with software patents. Many folks who are opposed to software patents (either entirely or at least to their current breadth) work for companies that have to play by the existing patent rules - which means filing lots of patents so that you have some bargaining chips when you inevitably get sued down the road. The net result is that inventors who work at these companies wind up on patents that are sometimes later litigated by entirely different parties (post merger or acquisition or change of management)! So what started out as contributing to a defensive move can be turned by someone else into an offensive weapon. My name is on a couple of patents that have since been acquired by AOL and Yahoo respectively. So far so good and none of them have been used offensively (as far as I know), but given my position on software patents it would be quite ironic if that were to happen. This definitely poses a dilemma for inventors, where one is caught between supporting a necessary evil (defensive patents) and proliferating the very practice one would like to get rid off!