| > Never going to happen; too much investment. Because of the nature of software patents the investment is worthless anyway. One of the biggest problems with software patents is that they're unreasonably broad or ambiguous and then the claims read on arbitrary software the authors of which have never even heard of the patent. Another is that companies purposely patent interfaces that are needed for compatibility, and then the patent isn't needed because it's so great, it's needed to interoperate with existing systems and thereby offers no ability for competitors to design a better alternative because better is different is incompatible. You have to license H.264 even if you build something better yourself -- or you've already licensed H.265 -- because you still have to be able to interact with media and clients that use H.264. Then as between large companies, they all need each others' patents and just end up cross licensing everything. All the effort is for nothing because it just cancels out. As between large companies and small companies, the large companies can sue the small one, but the small company probably doesn't have any money anyway and the suit makes the large company look like a bully and creates PR losses that likely outweigh any benefit from filing the suit. The small companies, on the other hand, can't sue the large ones because the large company would just file counterclaims and (at best) force the same cross-licensing that exists between large companies. So that's worthless. Which leaves the only entities that really like software patents: Patent trolls. Eliminating them is a major economic benefit of eliminating software patents. |
As you explain in the next paragraph, that creates a moat the protects the large companies from the small ones.
They compete against each other but they also collectively defend their own kind.