"Prabhir Purkayastha, secretary, Delhi Science Forum, said a regime of software patents could pose a grave threat to indigenous software development in a country like India. In essence, patenting software was to own a piece of algorithm, he said, and that amounted to patenting the fundamental math. For the U.S., software patenting had compensated for dwindling revenue from a weakening manufacturing sector, he said. The patenting regime was dominated by a form of lifelong royalty levy in which software was equated with any other artifact—one could patent just about anything: from a single-click buying business method to drop-boxes on a website. “India should avoid the mistakes of the U.S.” "
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/22/stories/2008092259841200.htm
