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Difference between revisions of "Clogging up the legal system"

(Related pages on {{SITENAME}}: * Patent lawyers)
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Software patents create litigation.  This means occupying the time of judges and all the legal infrastructure involved in court cases.
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Software patents create litigation.  This means:
  
It also means that university educations are being wasted working on something with no social benefit.
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# Occupying the time of judges and all the legal infrastructure involved in court cases, thus clogging up and slowing down the legal system, and creating [[Slow process creates uncertainty|long delays]] which interfere with people trying to develop software and run businesses.
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# University educations are being wasted working on something with no social benefit.  Lawyers with technical knowledge are needed to help developers develope, distribute and commercialise software.  They shouldn't be working on something as socially/economically useless as obtaining, licensing, and litigating software patents.
  
Abolishing software patents would free up resources in our legal systems, making them more efficient, and would free up lawyers to work on useful topics.
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If there was a good reason, then this economic cost would be ok.  For example, having a law against kidnapping clogs up the legal system too, but that's fine because kidnapping is really bad, so society accepts paying that price.  But mountains of [[studies on economics and innovation]] show that software patents are ''bad'' for society, so there's no reason to let them clog up the legal system.  As Lord Justice Jacob said in the [[Aerotel ruling by UK Court of Appeal on 27 October 2006]]:
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<blockquote>
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If the encouragement of patenting and of patent litigation as industries in themselves were a purpose of the patent system, then the case for construing the categories [of excluded subject matter] narrowly (and indeed for removing them) is made out. But not otherwise.  
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</blockquote>
  
If there was a good reason, then this would be ok.  For example, having a law against kidnapping clogs up the legal system too, but that's fine because kidnapping is bad, so society accepts to pay that price.  But mountains of [[studies on economics and innovation]] show that software patents are ''bad'' for society, so there's no reason to let them clog up the legal system.
 
  
 
==Related pages on {{SITENAME}}==
 
==Related pages on {{SITENAME}}==
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* [[Patent lawyers]]
 
* [[Patent lawyers]]
 
* [[Why abolish software patents]]
 
* [[Why abolish software patents]]
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* [[Slow process creates uncertainty]]
  
  
 
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[[Category:Arguments]]
 
[[Category:Arguments]]

Revision as of 17:50, 21 January 2014

Software patents create litigation. This means:

  1. Occupying the time of judges and all the legal infrastructure involved in court cases, thus clogging up and slowing down the legal system, and creating long delays which interfere with people trying to develop software and run businesses.
  2. University educations are being wasted working on something with no social benefit. Lawyers with technical knowledge are needed to help developers develope, distribute and commercialise software. They shouldn't be working on something as socially/economically useless as obtaining, licensing, and litigating software patents.

If there was a good reason, then this economic cost would be ok. For example, having a law against kidnapping clogs up the legal system too, but that's fine because kidnapping is really bad, so society accepts paying that price. But mountains of studies on economics and innovation show that software patents are bad for society, so there's no reason to let them clog up the legal system. As Lord Justice Jacob said in the Aerotel ruling by UK Court of Appeal on 27 October 2006:

If the encouragement of patenting and of patent litigation as industries in themselves were a purpose of the patent system, then the case for construing the categories [of excluded subject matter] narrowly (and indeed for removing them) is made out. But not otherwise.


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