Software Patents

Economic Impacts and Policy Implications

New Horizons in Intellectual Property series

教授克努特盲目创新Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Technische Universität Berlin and Head of the Business Unit Innovation and Regulation, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Jakob Edler, Executive Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI and Michael Friedewald, Senior Researcher, Department of Emerging Technologies, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany

The European debate has shown a severe lack of empirical analysis on the possible impact of software patenting that goes beyond interest-driven rhetoric. This book seeks to address this shortcoming by taking a two-fold approach. Firstly, a survey of German software companies provides a representative overview of both general strategies to protect inventions and opinions regarding the future IPR regime in the context of innovation strategies – including the importance and use of Open Source software. Secondly, a series of case studies illustrate the varying impacts that patents and other protection strategies can have in specific contexts.

‘. . . this book contains an interesting empirical study of the state of opinion in the European software industry. . .’
– David Rogers, European Intellectual Property Review