El coste de averiguar si algo está patentado

Timothy B. Lee y Christina Mulligan desmontan en Ars Technica algunos de los (falaces) argumentos de Nathan Myhrvold (Microsoft) al hilo de las patentes de software (de las que estos días ya hemos hablado). Justo para cerrar el artículo comentan:

«Who needs to worry about infringing software patents? The Green Bay Packers, OfficeMax, Kraft Foods, Aeropostale, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo productions have all faced software patent lawsuits. Indeed, virtually every medium and large firm in the United States performs activities—like maintaining a public website, using a computerized point-of-sale system, or using an Internet-based invoicing system—likely to infringe some software patents. So all of these firms are part of the software industry, at least as far as patent law is concerned.

In our paper, we estimate it would take at least 2,000,000 patent attorneys, working full time, to consider whether all these software-producing firms have infringed any of the software patents issued in a typical year. Even if firms wanted to hire that many attorneys, they couldn’t; there are only 40,000 registered patent attorneys and agents in the United States.

So Myhrvold is wrong to suggest firms ignore software patents because they’re trying to «get something for free.» They ignore software patents because it’s mathematically impossible for them to do anything else. The patent system simply doesn’t scale up to an industry as complex and decentralized as the software industry. And if it’s practically impossible for firms to avoid infringing software patents, it’s unfair to punish them for their failure.»

Ooops. Añádanlo a la batería de argumentos contra las patentes: no sólo es el coste de patentar (que puede ser muy elevado), sino el coste de saber si esa aplicación web sencillita que se me ha ocurrido no viola patentes existentes. Los pequeños estamos, una vez más, vendidos ante el músculo financiero de quienes pueden pagar legiones de abogados, abrir infinitos litigios y retrasar la puesta en marcha de un negocio de forma ilimitada.

Por cierto, en el post anterior hay una buena discusión en comentarios, con algunos aportes muy valiosos.