The negative effects of software patenting

Abstract

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.