From The San Francisco Chronicle
Patents seen as low priority for software firms
By Tom Abate
Biotech, medical device and hardware startups almost always use patents to protect their prospects, but young software companies generally do not, according to the first quantitative study of how small firms use intellectual property protections.
The study was conducted by researchers with the UC Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.
"More than 80 percent of the biotech, medical device and hardware firms we surveyed have or have applied for patents," said study co-author Pamela Samuelson, a law [and information] professor at UC Berkeley. "About two-thirds of software firms have no patents and have not applied for any."...