Software patent quality worse than all other fields

Quality problems can happen in any category of patents, but the quality of software patents is particularly bad.

Possible reasons

1. Abstract algorithms can be described in so many ways
2. Jargon and lack of tangible components can make a mundane software idea sound technical
3. Professionals working in the patents industry only see the ideas submitted for patenting, and therefore fail to realise that they are not qualitatively different from the ideas that good software engineers come up with every day of the week, most of which are considered too obvious to write up and publish

Examples

• Unbelievable software patents
• FFII's webshop which uses 20 ideas patented in the EU
• Microsoft developer's internal comments about his own patents indecipherable by anyone but a patent attorney
• Some Kodak patents

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• Raising standards is not our goal
• The disclosure is useless
• Silly patents
• Software patents are unreadable

External links

• http://www.ffii.org/Why_software_patents_are_trivial