[simonh]

Concur. It's not just that the legal regimen in the USA is much worse that elsewhere (though there's a credible case that it is). It's that the way the legal and political systems are locked together in a death grip that makes meaningful reform seem very unlikely. The legal and political systems in Europe aren't ideal by any means, but for example we've been able to stave off the worst excesses of the software patent lobby fairly successfully.

It's possible the SOPA protests and the furore over the treatment of Aaron Swartz will make a difference and the US can turn a corner on these issues after all. We can hope so.

I've worked at two companies now where there were graphical methods of displaying data that previously existed on paper, but we could not implement them in software because they were patented in the USA. One was in celular radio network planning and something to do with interference calculation, the other was in displaying a 'ladder' of bids and offers in financial trading systems. You could use these methods to display data on printed paper, or in a PDF on a screen for example, but if you generate the results in software and you're breaking the law in the US. Insane. But it's not practical to have one version for inside the US and another for the rest of the world.