The former President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, has written an interesting piece on patent racketeering Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. The comments are well worth a read as well. If you think software patents encourage innovation (overall) then I have a bridge to sell you. Software patents are not only wrong, wrong, wrong … they don’t even achieve what they set out to. On a less serious note, I liked this quote from a comment:

(deep voice here) It’d be a shame if that pretty idea got into a legal “accident”.(end voiceover)

[Follow-up 31/3/2010]
Thumbs down for software patents in NZ – Thank goodness. So far, so good.