[Aldo_MX]

I honestly disagree with your stance against patents, disregarding dull patents and the issues they bring like patent trolls, I really believe that the industry needs patents to prevent unfair competition.

The issue is the length of patents, the Software industry doesn't need 20 year-long patents, it's too much time, at most a patent should be valid for 5 years...

And well, we also need mechanisms to punish people who abuse the patent system with dull patents.

[Tenhundfeld]

I don't understand exactly what you mean by "dull patents". Is that a standard term? I'm not well versed in this space, but Google's not returning much for that phrase.

I'm guessing you mean overly broad or generic patents, i.e., not sharp and specific. I'm thinking something like a patent for adding an item to a virtual shopping cart. Am I inferring correctly?

[Aldo_MX]

I used `dull patent` as a synonym of `stupid patent`[1], so you are right with the meaning you inferred.

[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month

[incepted]

Agree that software patents but to me, the issue is patent trolls.

Patents should only be applicable if the company can show it's actually working in a domain that will apply this patent.

With rules like this, patent trolls would cease to exist and software patents would go back to being extremely useful to software innovation, like they were designed to be.