Insurance against patent litigation

During debates, people sometimes suggest that insurance companies could protect software developers against the sometimes astronomical costs of patent litigation.

Misses the point

This idea assumes that it's ok to add a price to software development and distribution. This ignores the reality that a lot of software development is done with no price directly attached to the act of development or distribution. Free software is an obvious example.

This confusion probably originates from people who look at industry-only activities such as mass production of cars and pharmaceuticals. In those fields, adding one more cost is an economic decision. But in software, there is no inherent cost, so adding a cost removes a lot of current software developers from being able to continue to participate in software development.

Economically non-viable

The 2004 EU study

Document: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/studies/pli_report_en.pdf