Software Patents
 

What do you think of software patents? Should they be legal? Are there abuses?

Are there abuses?
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Umm, ya...
look at the whole SCO case.
They are granting patents on thoughts now, not on methods of doing things. Look at the webpage case against microsoft. There's another case. There was prior public domain stuff that was there, and yet MS still lost.
There will always be a different method of doing something, so putting a copywrite on the something not the method in my opinion is a bad thing.

Well the SCO case isn't really a software patent issue; it's about their contract with IBM and copyright (you do seem to know the difference between patent and copyright but it's important to keep the distinction). But there are plenty of other cases that are and it's ludicrous that many of these patents are being granted even under the current rules, and I'm inclined to say software patents shouldn't be allowed in the first place, but perhaps if the USPTO actually did its job they wouldn't be so bad. I understand the difficulty in thoroughly reviewing every patent application, but this is getting ridiculous. The way the patent system is being (ab)used now hardly encourages innovation; it encourages greed and litigation, the new American values. What if someone had patented digital logic for computations or the use of sockets for networking? We might be posting on BBSes now if we were lucky.

Software patents?
No.
Copyright?
Yes.

I find that some companies out there don't necessarily want to patent something because they're looking for someone to sue. They generally get patents on software they create simply because they're worried their rival company (or even some Joe off the street) will pick up the patent and sue them.

As long as a company uses a patent as a sheild, and not as a sword, I'm okay with that.

Ok, I agree with the patent Idea as a shield and not a sword.
I'm going to be putting something out into the market quite shortly, and I'd sure as hell be pissed if someone took a patent on it AFTER the fact, and then tried to sue me..