Patent protection is important because it protects 'non-literal' duplication through the doctrine of equivalents and other established principles.
What is this doctrine of equivalents and other established principles? I'd like to know if it is reasonable for software or was developed for other fields and then misapplied to ours.
Also, can anyone point to an example of a small inventor who made a groundbreaking software contribution, patented it, and then profited from that patent as it was applied by big players on a large scale? Since that's the use case that's supposed to justify software patents, it would be interesting to see some examples. Given how many counterexamples there are (basically, all the ones we hear about), it seems likely that this argument is a straw man, or whatever one calls a straw man when somebody's arguing in favor of it rather than against.
What is this doctrine of equivalents and other established principles? I'd like to know if it is reasonable for software or was developed for other fields and then misapplied to ours.
Also, can anyone point to an example of a small inventor who made a groundbreaking software contribution, patented it, and then profited from that patent as it was applied by big players on a large scale? Since that's the use case that's supposed to justify software patents, it would be interesting to see some examples. Given how many counterexamples there are (basically, all the ones we hear about), it seems likely that this argument is a straw man, or whatever one calls a straw man when somebody's arguing in favor of it rather than against.