[Sussex] Some Good Will Come From Software Patents

[Steve Dobson]

I just posted this to Groklaw but thought I would post it here too
for your amusement and comment.

Okay, I made the title up to be provocative and grab your attention, but
one can view software patents as a good thing.

Let us assume that software patents become the norm in the Western 
Industrialised Nations, not just the US & the EU, but also in Canada,
Australia, and the rest of the rich countries.  The software patent
war we all fear ensues and Western Companies spend millions (if not 
billions) suing each other and paying licenses fees.  Even companies
with large software portfolios find that there is a net loss in the
licensing business as there are far more licenses that they have to
be paid than one gets back in royalties.  This all goes to increases
the costs of doing business in the West, not only are labour, building
and tax costs higher, now software costs are higher too.

Enter the Internet.  If you have a IT need that requires technology
that is expensive to license in the West why not locate it in one
of the developing nations where software patents laws have not been 
introduced?

If you were Amazon, for example, in the "new world order", and you were
faced with a large increase in you IT bill, do you think you would be 
considering all options?  Do Amazon have to have the computers that take
your orders close to the warehouse that picks and packet them?  Of course
they do not.  So if Amazon where to move their IT departments off shore
how many other office based jobs would go with them?  It maybe an 
advantage to have the warehouse in the same geographical area as you
client for postal cost and delivery time reasons, but the computers and
admin staff don't have to be in the same building, or the same state or
on the same continent.

India is currently do a very nice business in outsourcing call-centres,
software development and the like.  If the cost of the basic tool of
business, the computer, is much cheaper there too, how much more of an
incentive will that be to Western companies to off-shore larger slices of
their organisations?

This will move more capital from the richer western nations to the poorer
developing ones.  The developing nations will be able to plough more money
into their health-care, education and other social programmes, with the
result that, over time, the quality of life for their people will be risen
to that currently enjoyed in the West.  Isn't that a good thing?
So while software patents, in and of themselves, are not a good thing, they
may well contribute to something that is: the distribution of wealth around
the world.

This comment is not a troll, or at least it is not meant to be one.  I'm not
even sure that I full agree with everything I say here, but it has been a
fun mind game to think it through.  If you think that, generally,  Capitalism
is a good thing when done lawfully, as I do; they you have to accept the
exploitation of labour price differences that come with it.  I do not mean
here exploitation of the labour force itself.  If one was to build a facility
and pay the locals higher than average wages (for that community), provide
a better health-care system etc, then that is *not* exploitation of
the workforce.  All that one is exploiting is the cost of doing business in
different regions.

I put it to you that a world where the wealth is more evenly spread, where 
everyone has, more or less, the same quality of life, will be a more peaceful
one.  And we must all want that, surely.  How we get form here to their will
require some pain on the way.  Maybe software patents is just one of those
pains.  In that light, aren't software patents a good thing?

Of course there are other ways to that utopia, so I still oppose software
patents on principle.

Steve