New Zealand                   1

Source: Forbes

Source: Forbes

Patent Trolls                   0

In the world of bits and bytes, the above score means a lot. If you have been following my chain of thought, I believe Software is going to run everything we use. I have written about it before, the biggest hurdle in the exciting development is a cog in the wheel called the Patent Trolls ie. companies setup to just acquire the patent rights and basically bulldoze startups or any company trying to innovate by seeking high patent infringement fees. No-one is immune to this problem. If you want to understand how this whole software patent things has become convoluted and how to solve it read the post by Nick Grossman from Union Square Ventures. Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson, Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson have been writing (here, here and here), educating and lobbying for a better way to address this challenge. However, I think New Zealand has shown the way by completely abolishing Software Patents, in my opinion we need something as bold as that in Iceland. I don’t believe Software Patents work. In addition, since the patent process is so structured anyone with enough money and backing could define a problem and a possible solutions and patent it thereby prevent/block anyone else to approach or address the problem. This is silly. I think we need common sense to define laws and not allow laws to trump common sense. IMHO, Software Patents are for loosers! there you go I said it. I have worked in the software business long enough to say that there is nothing patentable in Software, it is like me patenting my thinking what good is that if we cannot create something of value that solves a real world problem? There are many ways to solve a problem using software and I think it behooves us as a community to allow anyone to solve it better and allow the consumers to vote with their feet.  Look what happens with Software Patent troll:

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