Software and Intellectual Property

There is a well known tradition of protecting the so-called intellectual
property of persons. It is undeniable that this has helped technological
advance enormously.

Let us take the well-known example of the pharmaceutical industry.
Development of one new medicine costs about 1 billion dollars. Nobody
would develop medicines if the discovery was not guarded, so that the
company can earn the money back.
Even worse, for one successful development program, there are many
failed ones. The protection of intellectual property, we are talking
here about patents, is therefore very fruitful in those industries.

However, I want to discuss the question of profitability of intellectual
property management in the software industry. The question therefore
is: "Is it necessary to protect software with a patent?" My short answer
to this question is: "No!". But I will elaborate on the long answer now.

Software is a completely different domain compared with tangible
technologies. For many tasks you want to perform, you can find an
open source project which just does what you want. Trying to protect
any precious algorithms makes no real significance, except probably
for certain specific areas. My opinion is that it will be far more
profitable for companies to deliver services, than to deliver
specialized software. Software can very well be developed in open
source projects, but not all software is easy to use. A services oriented
company would add much value, to help businesses implement a
suitable IT solution based on open source software.