software patent

(legal)A patent intended to prevent others from using someprogramming technique.

There have been several infamous patents for softwaretechniques which most experienced programmers would considerfundamental or trivial, such as the idea of usingexclusive-or to plot a cursor on a bitmap display. Thespread of software patents could stifle innovation and makeprogramming much harder because programmers would have toworry about patents when designing or choosing algorithms.

There are over ten thousand software patents in the US, andseveral thousand more are issued each year. Each one may beowned by, or could be bought by, a grasping company whoselawyers carefully plan to attack people at their mostvulnerable moments. Of course, they couch the threat as a"reasonable offer" to save you miserable years in court."Divide and conquer" is the watchword: pursue one group at atime, while advising the rest of us to relax because we are inno danger today.

Compuserve developed the GIF format for graphical imagesmany years ago, not knowing about Unisys's 1985 patentcovering the LZW data compression algorithm used in GIF.GIF was subsequently adopted widely on the Internet. In1994 Unisys threatened to sue Compuserve, forcing them toimpose a sublicensing agreement for GIF on their users.Compuserve users can accept this agreement now, or face Unisyslater on their own. The rest of us don't have a choice -- weget to face Unisys when they decide it's our turn. So muchtrouble from just one software patent.

Patents in the UK can't describe algorithms or mathematicalmethods.

See also LPF, software law.

patent search.

单词	software patent
释义	software patent software patent (legal)A patent intended to prevent others from using someprogramming technique. There have been several infamous patents for softwaretechniques which most experienced programmers would considerfundamental or trivial, such as the idea of usingexclusive-or to plot a cursor on a bitmap display. Thespread of software patents could stifle innovation and makeprogramming much harder because programmers would have toworry about patents when designing or choosing algorithms. There are over ten thousand software patents in the US, andseveral thousand more are issued each year. Each one may beowned by, or could be bought by, a grasping company whoselawyers carefully plan to attack people at their mostvulnerable moments. Of course, they couch the threat as a"reasonable offer" to save you miserable years in court."Divide and conquer" is the watchword: pursue one group at atime, while advising the rest of us to relax because we are inno danger today. Compuserve developed the GIF format for graphical imagesmany years ago, not knowing about Unisys's 1985 patentcovering the LZW data compression algorithm used in GIF.GIF was subsequently adopted widely on the Internet. In1994 Unisys threatened to sue Compuserve, forcing them toimpose a sublicensing agreement for GIF on their users.Compuserve users can accept this agreement now, or face Unisyslater on their own. The rest of us don't have a choice -- weget to face Unisys when they decide it's our turn. So muchtrouble from just one software patent. Patents in the UK can't describe algorithms or mathematicalmethods. See also LPF, software law. patent search.
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