Richard Stallman on Patent Absurdity (2010)

Let's imagine that
in the Seventeen Hundreds

the governments of Europe
had decided to promote

the progress of symphonic music,

or as they thought, promote it

With a system of
musical idea patents.

Anybody who could describe

a new musical idea in words

could get a patent which would be
a monopoly on that idea,

then he could sue anybody else

that implemented that idea
in a piece of music.

So a rhythmic pattern
could be patented,

or a sequence of chords,

or a set of instruments
to use together,

or any idea you could describe

in words.

Now imagine it's 1800

and you're Beethoven

and you want
to write a symphony.

You're gonna find it's harder

to write a symphony that

you won't get sued for,
than write

a symphony that sounds good.

Because to write a symphony

and not get sued,

you're gonna have to tread
your way around

thousands of
musical idea patents

And if you complained
about this,

saying it's getting in
the way of your creativity,

the patent holders would say :

"Oh, Beethoven
you're just jealous

because we had
these ideas before you.

Why should you steal our ideas?"

More than 200,000 software patents
have been granted in the U.S.

Programmers find it
increasingly difficult

to write software they
won't be liable to be sued for.

Now imagine...