Paper Presents an Explanation on Corporate Point of View

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The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has been carrying a pan-European campaign agains patentability of software in the European Union for some years now. The opposition of free software communities to this kind of patents, as found in the USA and other countries, has often been asserted; it is due time to look at the issue from the point of view of corporations: what they stand to win, and how.

This is what Why Say "No" to Software Patents does: it explains why big companies like IBM and Microsoft, or even regional giants like SAP and Nokia, favor software patents.

Recent news items about software patents, like this FFII press release or this news update article on LWN, take for granted why software patents are bad; while background pieces like Dan Ravicher's interview on LWN, or this Richard Stallman's editorial, explain the issue of software patentability from the point of view of the small company and/or the independent developer. The reasons expressed (that software patents favor big companies, that free and open source software is left out in the cold, that silly patents abound), while true, are not clear enough. The author explains the motives of the pro-patent field in this step-by-step exhibition, which should stand out as a reference for those uninitiated in the black arts of free software.