The negative effects of software patenting
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/SPE/2021/119/11Keywords:
intellectual property, software patents, intangible assets management, industrial property lawAbstract
Background: The approach to protecting software, which is a key issue of intangible asset management in many companies.
Research purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine certain IT companies’ assessments of software patentability and to compare them to the literature.
Methods: This is done through qualitative research by interviewing managers from ten different software companies. Comparing their reasons for not patenting their software with the generally stated reasons gathered from a literature review made it possible to identify the relationship between the theoretical and empirical findings.
Conclusions: The qualitative research also provides empirical data about the strategies that are used in certain small- and medium-sized software companies to deal with software patenting problems, especially patent thickets. Different aspects of the inadequacy of legal protection for software that may be solved at the company-level are also explored in the paper.
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