I’m glad to see in today’s Wall St. Journal that a determined group of software developers and others from the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure are successfully fighting a lobbying effort to create a European software patent court. If software is going to continue to be a dynamic, high-growth industry, driving productivity and economic growth, innovation can’t be constrained by companies with patents who effectively block other companies’ development through the threat of litigation.

Software innovation tends to happen in small companies, who have no budget for legal battles. The U.S. government has already made the mistake of allowing too many and overly broad software patents, which has transferred more power to the largest software companies, which tend to be U.S.-based. The last thing that Europe (or the U.S.) needs is to further that shift by providing another lever for the large companies to take advantage of. Competition between software vendors is spurs steady increases in quality and improvements in functionality and user experience. Software patents do the opposite – they lead to entrenched forces with no need to invest significantly in increasing value for the user.

Software is not a commodity, nor is its functionality easily replicated by a separate team starting from scratch. It’s hard to write good software, and the fact that someone else has already done so doesn’t make it that much easier. Innovators are protected by copyright laws. Patent laws protect the large and powerful, and hurt those who drive software innovation.

Europe, please listen to the voices of FFII and others who really care about innovation. Stay away from enabling patents. Instead, create an environment in which it’s easy for small companies to form and operate. That’s how to support your software industry.

Posted by Roger Greene
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