Software patents are slow to acquire and extremely expensive to litigate. They are mainly used either by large companies to block competition or by non-practicing entities (a company consisting of only a few lawyers) to gouge the industry for money. Some startups do acquire patents, with the hope that a large company will pay more to acquire them. As a startup without venture capital, we decided to focus on actually creating something instead.
The first patent threat we had to deal with (since expired) was actually written by a lawyer (Sitrick). From a technical perspective it can only be described as vaguely-worded garbage. Regardless, patents have the force of law behind them. We've looked at a number of other possible (and one actual) threats. All can be described as obvious combinations of ideas already existing at the time of filing. On a separate note, software patents destroy innovation both by preventing competition and sucking money away from R&D. Of course what else could you expect of a government bureaucracy whose job is to hand out monopolies on trivial ideas. It's very Orwellian. -- FaceGen: Award-winning 3-D face creation software. Visit http://www.facegen.com to download a free copy of the Modeller! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FaceGen" group. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/facegen?hl=en
