Software Freedom Law Center - End Software Patents

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"There is no authority that we know of which permits software per se to be considered statutory [patentable subject matter]." —-Patent Office board of administrative judges, October 2007 (source PDF)

Portion of patents granted every year by the Patent Office that are software patents: 15% (Bessen and Hunt, 2004)

Websites that may be violating a software patent as of January 2007: 155,583,825 (Netcraft)

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." —Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft (cited in this New York Times op-ed.)

Estimated annual cost in legal fees incurred by software patents: $11.2 billion. (2008 State of softpatents)

Estimated economic benefit from software patents, as calculated by several pro-software patent economists: $0. (See the list of null results on the resources for economists page.)

Software Freedom Law Center

We provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. Founded in 2005, the Center now represents many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects.

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