[Aloisius]

Would it matter if it was? Even if it could be reverse engineered, so can physical inventions.

Just like with physical inventions, the issue of trade secrets isn't just that it can slow down innovation by wasting resources reinventing an existing invention, but also that inventions can be lost altogether just because the inventor failed to popularize or commercialize it.

I really doubt the average delay for improving upon a patent into something novel is very long. I rarely see software patents that don't cite more than a few recently issued patents.

Nor have I seen much evidence of software patents actually stiffing invention, except for overly broad idea patents (thankfully neutered by Alice). Most of the issues with software patents instead seem to be around wanting to use the specific invention rather than improving upon it - which is rather the opposite of innovation. The LZW patent, for example, was an issue because it was used by GIFs, not because no one could invent a novel derivative of LZW - those took less than a year to appear.

That's not to say software patents don't have issues of course. We'd be better off if patent terms were shorter or required compulsory licensing, if applications were detailed enough to actually reproduce the invention rather than vague descriptions (the LZW patent, as annoying as it was, contained actual source code) and if the standards for what was considered novel were based on more than just abstract descriptions.

[Dylan16807]

> I rarely see software patents that don't cite more than a few recently issued patents.

How many are patents by unrelated companies? That's where the real delays are.

> Nor have I seen much evidence of software patents actually stiffing invention

Video encoding has been held back a lot. And it's a bit different but troll lawsuits keep happening over super basic website features. And I'd call instruction sets software and those keep getting piles of patents, doing things like severely limit x86 competition.

And software patents get weaponized so often, there's a million stories about it.

If we have all this hassle and the best we can cite for advantages is RSA, then software patents are not promoting the progress of sciences and the useful arts. Unlike copyright, a more limited duration doesn't really fix anything. Just get rid of them.