Software Patents

Overview

What are the ethical implications of having businesses devoted solely to acquiring, holding, and enforcing patents through lawsuits? What are the costs and benefits posed by allowing these “cottage industries” to exist?

Often groups will not enforce patents through lawsuits due to the risk of their patents being found invalid. They have found that it is often more wise to acquire and hold patents as a deterrent to competition. These actions pose a risk to software developers that do not have patents of their own to balance the threats. Examine the ethical considerations of this practice and of the responses to counter patent litigation threats.

Google Patent Search [1] has made it easier to locate patents to determine if a work to be created may infringe on an idea an existing patent covers. However due to the broad specifications included in patents (and that are sometimes encouraged by legal advisors to make patents more valuable), having quick access to patents still does not provide much peace of mind for software developers. Even operating systems adopted on millions of computers have been accused of infringing on hundreds of patents. What are some ethical considerations of developing software that likely infringes on patents?