ESP Wiki is looking for moderators and active contributors!

Damages copyright

Patents conflict with copyrights in various ways.

Prevents use of your own work

When someone writes software, they usually want to distribute it or sell it. Patents allow a third-party who contributed nothing to the writing of the software to block such distribution or sale.

(Many anti-swpat people say "We have copyright, that's enough" - how can that be explained here??)

Patent applications can violate copyright

This is obviously a particularly big problem for fields of development such as software which focus on producing copyrightable works.

External links