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Copying is only easier if you can reverse-engineer what they did. Sure, you can't always copy something just by inspecting it. For example, if I invent a way to laminate baseball cards extremely well, you're not going to be able to inspect the laminated card and figure out how I did it, all you're going to see is that it's a really great lamination. And this is where the other aspect of patenting comes into play. If I never tell anyone how I did it, and I die, then my invention is lost. But if I patent it, then I've publicly documented for the world what my invention is, and anyone that wants to use it can license it from me (and, eventually, it will pass into public domain). So basically, the patent system works quite well for physical products or processes. But, as you say, when you're talking about software patents (or really, business method patents in general), everything becomes really fuzzy. What's the difference between a business method and an idea? Why is one patentable and the other isn't? The more I think about this sort of thing, the more I'm convinced that all software patents should be invalid, period. If I write an instruction manual, I can't patent that. Copyright is what covers me there. So if I write instructions for the computer (i.e. software), why is that suddenly patentable? The fact that all software patents need to describe a computer executing the operations (which is what turns it from an idea into a patentable process) just shows how absurd the whole idea is. |