Comment Re: I have mixed feelings about this. (Score 1) 225
Well if ones creations are not protected the group that invests (often large amounts of) money in creating something new and unique then Joe Schmuck will purchase the product when it is first available then copy it and sell it (usually cheaper) and the creator is then unable to recoup their development costs. This the discourages the creation and money put into creating new things.
This is a good summary of the arguments for the benefits of patents. However, the same reasoning applies to software patents:
Actually it doesn't. Patents are supposed to protect the implementation, not the idea. For example the one click patent, I should be able to implement one click patent myself, if I do it differently than the way Amazon does it. But I don't really know how Amazon does it, cause I can't see their code. Nor can I truly understand the patent itself.
The other issue with software patents is the majority of them are not really patent-able, as they are not novel or they have prior art.