Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users – which in our society, is most people – need software to be free of patents.
The patents that threaten us are often called “software patents,” but that term is misleading. Such patents are not about any specific program. Rather, each patent describes some practical idea, and says that anyone carrying out the idea can be sued. So it’s clearer to call them “computational idea patents.”
The U.S. patent system
doesn’t label patents to say this one’s a “software patent” and
that one isn’t. Software developers are the ones who make a
distinction between the patents that threaten us – those
that cover ideas that can be implemented in software – and the
rest. For example: If the patented idea is the shape of a
physical structure or a chemical reaction, no program can
implement that idea; that patent doesn’t threaten the software
field. But if the idea that’s patented is a computation, that
patent’s barrel points at software developers and users.
[...]
Continua qui:
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/richard-stallman-software-patents