Software patents: rewarding the wrong things

When a system rewards the wrong things, it's only a matter of time before any company gets desperate enough to play the system, even if it's wrong.

Forbes Reports
Microsoft says free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. Will seek royalties against users.

Microsoft has always despised patent aggressors, going back to its dealings with IBM and Apple in the 80s and 90s, because they knew the patent system (as applied to software) was arbitrary and stood in the way of innovation.

But it was only a matter of time before the company had more to gain by using the system to impede innovation themselves. That time has been coming, and the interviews with Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrezthis in this Forbes article show that the sad day is here. The conversion to the dark side is now complete. Microsoft has become what they previously despised.

Patents are a bureaucratic, intentionally anti-market mechanism. They are a government-enforced temporary monopoly that we choose to grant, to encourage innovation. If they're no longer serving that purpose in an area, it's our responsibility (through our legislators) to change the system.

For some time in the software market, the patent system has been broken. Broken for everyone -- the small guys and the big guys like Microsoft. They stifle, not encourage, innovation. The system needs radical reform, or the software market will become much more of a legal battlefield and much less of a innovation battlefield, to the detriment of all.

Support patent reform. And consider supporting the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.

Update: In response to the uproar, Microsoft has made a statement to try to distinguish themselves from SCO (who sued users directly): "We're not litigating".