Richard Stallman (GNU operating system; Free Software Foundation), has an interesting piece in The Guardian in which he claims that if patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. He uses Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" to illustrate his points.
Full article here. Stallman says that patents covering software [color:"orange"] "would restrict every computer user and tie software developers up in knots." [/color]
