[Empedocles99]

Premise: a) Many (most?) small software outfits, and software developers don't agree that software should be patentable.

b) Some of us would be willing to pay an insurance premium against patent trolls

Proposal: Form an organization (or convince an existing one like the EFF) funded (donations, I'd presume) by all of us to:

a) Lobby for changes to to the patent process and law.

b) Aggressively challenge obvious software patents as being obvious, or using prior art.

c) Serve as a communal defense fund/legal help for small businesses against patent trolls.

d) Maintain a community database of bad patents and potential prior art (to be used in defensive or offensive legal actions)

[flipbrad]

you can presumably purchase before-the-event insurance anyhow. There just isn't a big market. But can you seriously EFF/etc to be that insurance, and have any money left over to lobby government (have you any idea what financial scale we are talking about? in the UK, the pro-patent lobby just got our government to reduce corporation tax on patent-derived income from 37.5% to 10% ! that takes some serious lobby clout) ?

[clavalle]

There are over a million software engineers and computer programmers in the U.S. Say, 15% were convinced to give $30 a month (or their employers). That would be over 50 million a year for operations. That is not including other donations that would be solicited, or fees payed by other interested parties such as hardware manufacturers, venture capitalists and the like.

Now will $50 mil. be the death knell for the pro software patent lobby? No, there are big companies with very deep pockets that would fund the other side well, but it is a fine start.

Of course, my hope would be that the $50 mil. would mostly go to crushing trolls in court, sucking up tasty patents, building and maintaining a solid resource of precedent and prior art in this area and setting good precedent and leave the bulk of the lobbying to donations above and beyond the collected fees.

[raymondh]

If the SAP/Oracle case is any guide, then even having a well-funded defense won't save you from massive losses.