Is there a good argument for software patents?

Posted by David Nehme on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by David Nehme
Published on 2008-10-31T00:08:35Z Indexed on 2010/04/15 12:53 UTC
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Now that it looks like software patents are going to be severely limited, does anyone have a good argument for keeping them. It seems like copyright law serves software fine and patents just add overhead to what should be an almost frictionless process. Are there any examples of software that wouldn't have been written if not for patents?

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