Two good articles in today's NYT on the whole e-commerce patent absurdity.
On the good side, under pressure and threats of boycott by activists of the Internet community, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com has come out in favor of restricting e-commerce patents, even calling for a wholesale revision of the law to restrict software patents to five years. see http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/biztech/articles/11patent.html
As well, James Gleick has a good article on the costs and absurdities of many patents in the new economy and their costs. A key paragraph, at http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000312mag-patents.html, he writes:
"Patent battles have become a strong catalyst for mergers, reducing competition in various domains. The largest corporations, with gigantic patent portfolios, routinely enter into cross-licensing agreements with their largest competitors. Companies without portfolios of their own have to pay cash, representing a hidden tax within the high-tech economy, and the costs are skyrocketing: revenues in the United States for patent licenses were about $15 billion in 1990; eight years later they had soared to more than $100 billion. I.B.M. alone took in well over $1 billion from licensing last year and received a record 2,756 new patents."
Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu