Doc Searls' Christmas wish -- an end to software patents

Little chance this will happen, but I also like the idea.

All I want for Christmas is death to software and business method patents

It is anti-productive, anti-competitive, anti-market, anti-freedom, anti-liberty and simply wrong for the U.S. (and for any country) to continue instinsting that 1) ways of doing business, and 2) the ever-growing periodic table of natural building materials we call software, should be patentable. They should not. We should write business method and software patent laws out of existence and start watching growth and progress happen all over the place.

Yeah, I know. Patents expire and all that, but aside from the techie issues, there is also the crazy idea that genetic tinkering and other results of scientific research, notably new drug formulations, should be denied those in need because R&D costs must first be recovered. So they say. I can't recall any instances of global drug giants filing for Chapter Eleven protection.

While we're on the subject, Google now has a patent search capability, still in BETA.
So if you have a great idea and want to do a patent search, go there and find out how many others beat you to the punch.