Misconceptions abound. You cannot patent "operating system software" because it is an abstract concept with no embodiment, like "flying car" or "hyperdrive spaceship".

And people did patent "media player with music in the cloud", or more accurately, various aspects thereof. Spotify famously got sued over a patent on a specific way to do DRM for streaming music, for example, when they entered the US. They just licensed it and moved on. The streaming music industry is growing all the time, despite tons of patents in the field.

Conversely, if you think weak patent rights means unbounded innovation, I haven't seen any particularly impressive tech originating in China or India.

Things are patented left and right in the US, and always have been, and I don't see innovation here slowing down any. And it would not be surprising if people understood the realities of patents instead of believing what tech media tells them (insert reference to pg's "Submarine" essay here).

> You cannot patent "operating system software" because it is an abstract concept with no embodiment, like "flying car" or "hyperdrive spaceship"

Exactly why I started my sentence with _take it to the extreme_.

Innovation in the US may not have slowed down (I would argue that it has, although I'm not in the US), but it has definitely become quite expensive. In my opinion, that's a barrier for independent software developers.

Actually, small players like startups and independent developers are the least likely to get hit with patent problems. It's only because the few trolls that sued a lot of small guys got a huge amount of publicity that it seems like a big problem. These trolls are abusing the cost asymmetry of patent litigation, and something needs to be done about this, but they are still relatively rare. Unfortunately, this problem shows signs of growing fast.