Fighting Software Patents (Software Inventions Index)

[Gerard Vignes]

Fighting Software Patents (Software Inventions Index)

1. Stop being outraged. It is happening, and it is being sanctioned.

2. Stop being reactive and get proactive. The majority of patents will
appear in the future. We are in the early stages of adoption. The
worst is yet to come. We need to act now.

3.  Start laying the groundwork to fight future patent claims. We must
provide a global, public index to document when and by whom something
has already been invented. This is not the same as a code repository.
This is an index of software inventions (concepts, architectures,
designs, algorithms, data structures, ...) with structured references
to existing code which has implemented those software inventions.

4. With a carefully implemented software inventions index, we can
prove IN ADVANCE that an idea for a software invention has already
been created and implemented in an acceptable manner.

5. With a carefully implemented software inventions index, we can
compel those agencies which issue and enforce patents to recognize the
existence of prior software inventions and reject patents on existing
inventions.

6. Turn their weapons into paperweights. We need to outmaneuver future
software patents and render them dead on arrival (DOA).

7. Once we succeed in fighting future software patents, then we can
turn our attention to nullifying existing software patents.

Gerard Marshall Vignes