At Techsummit 2005 one of the big topics was software patents. Pretty much everyone knows there are problems with them; for example, a British firm recently tried to patent hyperlinks (I believe that one was rejected by a court), and many dubious patents have been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the most famous of which are probably Amazon’s One Click Shopping patent and one for online credit card authorization. Such patents promote monoply and thus monoculture, which makes software, computers, the Internet, and the economy brittle and at risk. You can fight such patents after the fact, as EFF is doing, or perhaps more radical solutions are called for.

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