Banning software patents

There are two ways to write a law that would protect software developers, users, and distributors from patents:

• Excluding software from patentability
• Shielding software from litigation

The latter is an alternative, suggested in 2012 by Richard Stallman. A third way would be to abolish the entire patent system, for all domains, but this would require many times more work and there's no consensus on whether it's a good idea. There are advantages in focusing only on software.

For advice about terminology, see:

• Choosing words to use in legal proposals
• How other domains are excluded from patentability