On Good and Bad Software Patents

This has to be one of the better interviews/opinions I have ever heard in regards to Software Patents,

I don't think there is a fundamental problem with the concept of patents. The purpose of patents is to recognize the value of intellectual property. The intent of patents is to encourage inventors to share their discoveries with the world: in exchange for documenting and making available publicly their discoveries, they are granted a protection, limited in time, by the government. It seems like a fair bargain, in principle. I think there are several points worthy of discussion about software patents, though. First, is the scope of their protection appropriate? While a protection of 20 years may be reasonable for an industrial application, does the same scope make sense in a field that is barely 50 years old and evolving so quickly? One can reasonably argue that a shorter protection period would be more appropriate.

The above comes from Arno Gourdol, formerly with Apple, now with Adobe, and inventor of several patented techologies.

More goodness can be found @ http://arno.org/blog/2006/10/are-software-patents-detrimental-to.html