The Age of Brains
Pieter Hintjens, the president of the FFII, is the author of this remarkable quote:
“The day when I, as the owner of a tiny software company, seek to buy patents like I buy domain names and trademarks, will be the day that the patent system has finally made the jump from the age of steel to the age of brains.”
December 11th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
It’s only remarkable if you assume that people like myself have some inherent hostility to the notion of patents. I’ve no objection to patents. I have considered buying them. But the current patent system offers no benefits to me, only dangers. What I need are patents I can register online, immediately, at very low cost, and very high certainty, and which last for 3-4 years, proper to my business cycles.
Turning patents into an attractive proposition for tiny firms like mine is, I think, the key to solving the software patent debate, and the wider problem of quality in the patent system.
What is completely unacceptable is to try to force the software industry into the current patent system. This works wonderfully for Microsoft and SAP, and is disasterous for the rest of us.
I hope that clarifies my quote.