Report on National Public Meeting on Software Patents
Report on National Public Meeting on Software Patents
2008-10-08T10:44:57
After Prashant was Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat. He spoke on the practical benefits and harms of software patents, and spoke at length about the difference between legal protection of software in the form of patents and via copyright. He pointed to data showing that lawyers are the ones who benefit most from software patents, and that software developers were the ones who suffered most. Pointing to such practical issues such as how does one go about coding a simple e-commerce transaction when more than 4000 patents have already been granted in that area, he brought down the level of discussion from abstract notions of laws and legalities to practical experiences of software programmers. Report on National Public Meeting on Software Patents