Microsoft pushes for single global patent system

There are certain Americanisms that have infected other countries patent systems over the years (e.g. software patents) that have done far, far more harm than good AFAICT, especially to the smaller countries that have been strong-armed into efficiently hamstringing their own nascent technology ventures.

The appearance that patent law in America is only about leverage against all your competitors with patent lawsuits rather than protecting truly original discoveries (especially those of smaller companies who can't adequately defend themselves against the super-corp's) is an utter travesty.

It puts me in mind of the same erosion that allowed us to become part of a worldwide debt economy (i.e. hardly enough real resources to back the debt).

This is the main issue Microsoft wants to change making an universal system, in fact what they want is to export the American system over the other countries.

Patents favor the powerful, witch get a monopoly, witch makes money to the powerful, who spends money on new patents, new monopolies. That works great for Microsoft(witch was created when USA software patents didn't exist),and maybe some USA states(all world software needs to be done on Seatle or California), but is bad for the rest of the world, we became a colony, like USA were from Britain.

Imagine you are not American, you are an intelligent, smart person of the rest of the world. Would you give external people the monopoly over what you make? Am I not going to think because you bought the exclusive right to it?.

1. "a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the 3.5 million pending patent applications around the world": er, no, obviously that isn't what he said.

2. Look how they pair the FSF up with the Pirate Party. Is that because c|net thinks the UK Pirate Party is a vital force to be reckoned with in international politics? Or is it because they hope to make anti-software-patent positions look silly by associating them with marginal-sounding groups? Hmmm, tough one.

3. Wanting a globally unified and more efficient patent system is not, in fact, at all the same thing as wanting patents to cover more things. No one benefits from having patents take years between application and grant, for instance. No one benefits -- at least, not in ways any reasonable person could approve of -- from having lots of crappy patents pass examination. (Note: this latter is one of the things Gutierrez complained of. Being from Microsoft does not imply never getting anything right.)

I've no idea whether the particular changes Gutierrez wants make any sense, either for Microsoft or for the rest of the world. His blog posting (linked from the c|net article) is a bit too much oh-and-everyone-should-get-a-pony for my liking. But the c|net article seems to me to consist mostly of digressions.