On the other hand, when the question you're facing is the existence of your company or your product at your company, that decision is a lot harder than "might this patent be used unethically in the future?"
I think James Gosling has a blog post about the huge number of defensive patents they started filing at Sun after losing some lawsuits over low-quality patents to make sure they would be protected in the future. Now all of those patents are owned by Oracle.
Of course, if Sun had been more successful, those patents might still be a net positive in the market, so it really isn't that simple. I do agree that the market incentives for companies are perverse (in terms of the constitutional purpose of patents), which is exactly why software patents desperately need reform.
Incidentally, Red Hat is a good example of an actively anti-software-patent company with a number of patents. It's unlikely that their policies will change, but it is possible. I don't, however, think it's a net negative when Red Hat employees file for them in the system we are unfortunately stuck with.
Ya, we basically agree. The whole system has awful incentives and is in desperate need of reform. Unfortunately I don't see that happening anytime soon. One can certainly hope though!
I think James Gosling has a blog post about the huge number of defensive patents they started filing at Sun after losing some lawsuits over low-quality patents to make sure they would be protected in the future. Now all of those patents are owned by Oracle.
Of course, if Sun had been more successful, those patents might still be a net positive in the market, so it really isn't that simple. I do agree that the market incentives for companies are perverse (in terms of the constitutional purpose of patents), which is exactly why software patents desperately need reform.
Incidentally, Red Hat is a good example of an actively anti-software-patent company with a number of patents. It's unlikely that their policies will change, but it is possible. I don't, however, think it's a net negative when Red Hat employees file for them in the system we are unfortunately stuck with.