Patent Thicket

Description

1.

"Thoughtful observers are increasingly expressing concerns that our patent (and copyright) system is in fact creating a patent thicket, a dense web of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology. With cumulative innovation and multiple blocking patents, stronger patent rights can have the perverse effect of stifling, not encouraging, innovation." (http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/thicket.pdf)

2.

Glyn Moody:

"Patent thickets are probably worst in the world of software, because by its very nature, software is made up of hundreds of smaller components, many of which have been patented in some jurisdictions. Indeed, it is probably the case that it is now impossible to write any moderately complex piece of code without infringing on some patents in those countries. In theory, it would be necessary to obtain licences from all of those patent-holders in order to write that code. In practice that doesn't happen (yet), but we are definitely seeing the deleterious effects of patent thickets." (http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Hacking-through-the-Software-Patent-Thickets-1006091.html)

Examples

"One domain where this is becoming a serious problem for everyone is in mobile telephony. We now have the situation where Nokia, Apple and HTC are suing each other in various permutations, alleging infringements of their respective patents. That's bad for free software because the Android system – and hence Linux – is caught up in the crossfire. But the threat posed by patent thickets is perhaps most evident in the world of video codecs." (http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Hacking-through-the-Software-Patent-Thickets-1006091.html)

Information

3 page article by Glyn Moody starts here at http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Hacking-through-the-Software-Patent-Thickets-1006091.html