Steve Ballmer would like to see patent reform

In a speech yesterday, Steve Ballmer reiterated his desire to see software patent reforms in the US.

“The thing I worry about is that people will want to throw the baby out with the bath water and say: ‘Let’s just get rid of this.’ That would be a terrible thing for innovation in companies large and small,” he said.

“Reform makes sense, but we should make sure that it facilitates innovation in our industry as well as others.”

Actually, the industry did quite well with software patents before they became mainstream and I would predict the industry would do as well without them or if they were significantly marginalized.

This go round in patent reform it doesn’t appear that any significant changes will take place–and for those in small software companies the reforms may be less in their favor.

Considering that reform is the most likely outcome, I’d like to see software patents pretty much converted to something akin to the old copyright status. I don’t mind software patents in principle, but I think they should be reserved for significant new ideas. The reality is that many software ideas are constant evolution and the software patent process should keep this in mind.