White House Petition to End Software Patents Is a Hit ⇥

There are lots of good reasons to end the practice of patenting software, including the fact that software patents are primarily a vehicle for transferring wealth from the innovators who create it to patent trolls whose sole “product” is litigation. (Software patents are also sometimes used by big companies to take their rivals down a peg or two, in what seems like an effort to pile up so many cross-licensing fees that they all cancel each other out.)

I think this is the crux of the current patent war(s) between companies. The current patent system is broken. That isn’t to say that everything shouldn’t be patentable, but there are thousands of patents covering arguably obvious ideas and vague, generic software features.