IBM Corp has been doing it for some time, and now Wordperfect Corp is doing it too – applying for patents on their software rather than relying copyright law: reason is that, as the Wall Street Journal explains, a patent can provide a company with exclusive use of its patented programs for a fixed number of years, even if another company develops the idea independently; copyright, which is created as soon as an idea is expressed in an original way, protects only the expression of the idea, not the idea itself, and it doesn’t confer exclusive use if someone else develops the same software independently; downside is that getting a patent costs big – in both time and money – and once it expires, the technology it describes is free for all.
