Patent Licensing
Leading open-source figures and companies have complained that software patents are overly broad and the USPTO should reject most of them. Bill Gates has said "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today".
Read more about this topic: Software Patents And Free Software
Famous quotes containing the word patent:
“The cigar-box which the European calls a lift needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the mans patent purgeit works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)