[Fsfe-ie] Morning Ireland piece on Software Patents

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

I'm going to rebut this morning ireland thing in some way - but I'm missing
(at least) one piece of info: why would a venture capitalist want software
to be patentable?

Laura Creighton, a european venture capitalist, gave testimony at the ffii
software patents hearing in the European Parliament in May 2003.  She said
that investing in small companies would be risky if software patents existed
because a cash injection would simply draw the attention of parasitic IP law
firms.

The only possibility I can imagine is that the VC's want the companies to
fail so that their patents are transfered to the VC as renumeration.  Sounds
pretty sinister though, hard to swallow for the public, is there a simpler
answer?

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
Irish Free Software Organisation: http://ifso.ie