[powertower]

Software patents are here to stay. Don't fight a battle you can't win, the Patent Office is not going to throw away the billions of dollars they make on this... But you can make it so they get to keep their revenues, but we get to add rules that help invalidate patents, or limits how much the troll gets.

[wheaties]

I disagree. If we can reclaim that algorithms are mathematical and therefore unpatentable we can regain our ability to actually innovate without fear.

[codygman]

How would you propose we do that? Write mathematical equivalents that are equal to patented algorithms then claim we didn't infringe on a patent but instead implemented the mathematical formula we wrote?

[geofft]

The Patent Office makes billions of dollars?????

There are some five hundred thousand applications filed per year, about half of which (so same order of magnitude) are granted [1]. In order for them to make a single billion dollars, there needs to be a few thousand dollars _profit_ on the fees -- I assume, since you said "make", that we're talking about profit and not revenue.

If we're talking about revenue, then it is somewhat close to believable, but there's no reason for them to be reluctant to cut revenue if it also means that they get to cut expenses (on employing reviewers). The top patent holders for the last several years running [2] are all in the software industry, so it's reasonable to expect the USPTO's expenses to drop significantly if software patents were disallowed.

(Finally, the patent office is not a private corporation, but an entity of the government, so the battle is absolutely winnable by merely outlawing software patents.)

[1] http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_paten...

[mayneack]

The patent office isn't the entity with either the most say or the most desire to keep things the way they are. Congress determines whether or not the patent office even gets the fees or they go straight into the treasury.