A New Paradigm for Intellectual Property Rights in Software

A Winter 2004 article by Bradford L. Smith and Susan O. Mann of Microsoft published in The University of Chicago Law Review suggests that the development and growth of the software industry in the U.S. is a direct outgrowth of the implementation of intellectual property regimes, specifically copyright and patent, with respect to software in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This paper suggests that such patents were neither the sole nor the principal factor for the development of the software industry, that concerns about patents manifested prior to or soon after their application to software have proven true, and that patents are, in fact, not serving the interests of either the U.S. software industry or the consuming public. To that end, this paper advances recommendations for reforming the U.S. patent system as well as consideration of a new schema for protecting software