Can patents contribute to innovation in the information technology sector?
DOI:
10.16928/2316-8080.v2n1p.45-72Keywords:
Patents Innovation Software patent Patent trollsAbstract
The free software movement has expressed its firm position contrary to the said software patents as a threat to the spread of open platforms and stated this publicly in an open letter at the end of the XIII International Free Software Forum held in Porto Alegre in July 2012. The patents granted by the USPTO to companies like IBM are presented as evidence that so many patents do not serve to promote innovation, but rather to block it, since these companies act like trolls, especially against small companies. Knowledge as a non-rival good, which does not wear out, cannot be seen as a commodity, but should be free. According to this criticism, in the field of information technology patents are particularly inadequate because of their abstract content and overly broad scope of protection. This article seeks to address these issues and to show that this criticism does not hold, since it fails to take into account important aspects of the current economics of innovation.
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