Software patents are Evil. Read this and get scared...

If you are still not convinced that software patents can be EVIL, just see this patent. It seems like corporate juggernaut Symantec has been granted a broad patent that covers something as simple as the delivery and apply of software patches (incremental updaters) over a network, although with a specific method of grouping patches together to make it easier to jump from one version number to another.

I´m not really a legal expert and I'm not accusing Symantec of anything (they applied for a patent and it was given to them). What I´m simply saying is that the SYSTEM of granting patents to SOFTWARE PROCESSES is EVIL and rotten, and has the potential to end up hurting development and hampering innovation.

On a slightly related note and speaking of patents and "patches"... the other day I installed a trial version of RTpatch, and saw the dreaded "patent pending" message on its "splash screen". The trial version I installed (6.5) is a few years old so I don´t know now if the patent has been granted already. I suspect anthing they applied for should be granted or denied by now (the trial was dated 2003).

In a blog entry on Joel on Software, he says that a license for RTPatch reportedly costs $2750 greenbacks (US dollars :) now, but that some years ago the same licence had a cost of $5,000 greenbacks. The price drop for RTpatch , at least the post seemed to imply, was coincidental with the introduction by folks of Red Bend Software from Israel of a competing product dubbed vBuild which, the same report says, sold for $2500 dollars.

Now, speaking hypotetically, what would happen if the folks that make RTPatch one day need new revenue desperatelly, wake up in "trigger happy" lawsuit mode a la Darl McBride of SCO fame, and starts taking everyone who does a "delta patcher" or "binary differential updater" to court, demanding payments for breach of their patented design?. This is pure speculation, in fact, I don´t know if the Israeli software conflicts with RTPatch´s patent, I'm just using these examples to highlight the implications of widespread patent grants covering about anything imaginable. The whole thought of it should scare everyone that has ever written a single line of software.

The potential of software patents to prevent software innovation is amazing, and largely unreported in the mainstream press. How can you be serious that routing you've written doen't step in to someone else's patent?. Are you scared already? You should...