Questions about software patenting

[Nicholas Clark]

This was the list of questions that I was asked to answer. I'm not sure
of some of the best answers to these.  As to the last question - "widely
known" - I don't know what he's meaning by a legitimate circumvention
method.


* Can you say something briefly about yourself and your business?

* What would be a one-sentence description of the open source philosophy,
and why that philosophy is opposed to the patenting of software and business
methods?

* Does the open source movement support the use of copyright to protect
software? If so, how does this differ for them to the use of patents?

* What does the open source movement see as the dangers of patenting
software?

* Is the fact that by filing for a patent a software owner has to put
details of their invention into the public domain a source of concern, or is
that the whole point of the open source?

* What about business methods: are the issues here the same or different?

* Do you have any concrete examples of any way in which the patenting of
software has had any negative impact on the open source movement?

* Have you personally ever been effected by the patenting of software? If
so, how?

* Have you or your company ever been involved in patent litigation, or
received letters demanding royalties for patented software? If so, can you
outline how and why that happened, and what the outcome was?

* Do you know of any research that has been done to establish the impact of
patenting on the open source movement?

* IBM takes the view that any company should be free to either patent its
software, or to throw it into the open source pool, and says it does itself
support the open source movement, and is now developing open source
products. Do you feel this choice approach is workable? If not, can you
explain why it is not?

* As you know, there is move to remove the exclusion from the EPC that
currently says software should not be patented as such. However, it is
widely known that patent applications can be written that make these
exclusions irrelevant. It could be argued, therefore, that the removal of
them would only be accepting the status quo and make the situation more
transparent. Would you agree? Why? Why not?