Re: [Patents] pooling patents, version 2

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

>Patents in software is the death of SMEs .............

Nonsense.  Easily for the last ten years, over 10,000 software patents
have issued each year in the United States.  And yet the United States
has more SMEs than Europe.  Maybe a few SMEs went out of business 
because of software patents (but no more so than SMEs in other
industries have gone out of business ebcause of patents in their
industries).  There is little connection between the existence of
software patents and the death of SMEs.

On the other hand, many more SMEs have gone out of business because
of bad business models, bad marketing, bad R&D, for offering software
no one wants to buy, for relying on the false economics of open source
(i.e. offering software open source, but losing the maintenance and
upgrade business to companies offering cheaper rates).

So I suspect if many of you worried less about the false fears of software
patents, and spent more time trying to act like real businessmen, your
software businesses wouldn't die.  But if you keep on exaggerating the
dangers of software patents, your businesses should die.

There is much that hurts software SMEs in Europe.  But it is not software
patents, but many other government policies that affect a business,
such as employee benefit policies, government paperwork, etc.

Greg Aharonian