[ajj]

Until recently, I thought that the patents issue was a PITA, but not that big of a deal, and something that would eventually pass after a lot of damage is done.

Now, I really believe that unless things change, the US is going to have a lot of trouble attracting new businesses to start at home, or foreign companies providing services in the US. Spotify will run their own cost benefit analysis of fighting the lawsuit versus attracting future revenue. Many small services that cannot afford an upfront lawsuit in the hope of future American revenue will just not open shop or services for the US.

It hurts me to see how the patent system is screwing with every damn thing. As they say for startups, competition from other countries won't hurt America, but inefficiencies and bad decisions within would. And IMHO the risk is not hypothetical anymore.

[SkyMarshal]

Agreed. Usually when these threads pop up there's some speculation on getting rid of software patents, but I'm afraid that's no longer in the relam of possiblitity.

Way too much money has been poured into buying massive patent portfolios by the big boys, from Apple & Co. to Paul Allen. If some upstart Congressman suddenly tried to pass a law to invalidate them, you can bet multi-millions would be spent to prevent that and get him/her unelected.

A compromise that protects startups in some way may be the best we can hope for at this point, I'm afraid.