Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--bf7a82-So the patent typically lasts/en

So the patent typically lasts for 20 years, which is a fairly long time in our field. Twenty years ago there was no World Wide Web&mdash;a tremendous amount of the use of computers goes on in an area which wasn't even possible to propose 20 years ago. So of course everything that people do on it is something that's new since 20 years ago&mdash;at least in some aspect it is new. So if patents had been applied for we'd be prohibited from doing all of it, and we may be prohibited from doing all of it in countries that have been foolish enough to have such a policy.