Software Patents Considered Harmful

This post by Paul Vick is, I think, a very honest and representative take on software patents -- and in particular the over-the-top IsNot patent -- from the point of view of an innovator.  I find myself agreeing with him wholeheartedly:

Microsoft has been as much a victim of this as anyone else, and yet we're right there in there with everyone else, playing the game. It's become a Mexican standoff, and there's no good way out at the moment short of a broad consensus to end the game at the legislative level.

And we all know how Mexican standoffs typically end.  Paul, my name is on a couple of patents which I'm not proud of either.  But in the current environment, there really isn't a choice: We're all locked in to locally 'least bad' courses, which together work to guarantee the continuation of the downward spiral (and in the long run, make all companies worse off -- other than Nathan Myhrvold's, of course.)