Very well said, this article is misleading to say the least.

I take issue with article suggesting that all anti-patent views want that patent system abolished. That is absolutely not the case. The patent system should be brought into line with the rate at which industry is capable of innovating today. Furthermore, software patents need special treatment in their own right. They are simply not specific enough, and it is the generalisation that stifles innovation.

Again, I refer to Martin Fowler's excellent blog post on the subject of software patents http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwarePatent.html

I suggest that it's because of patent law. Martin Fowler wrote about it in his blog recently, and I certainly couldn't put it better myself. Although he is discussing software patents, I believe the same arguments apply across technology these days. http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwarePatent.html

I don't really buy the patent argument. A 30 or 40 year old trend over the entire economy is supposed to be explained by patents? There's a seriously strong argument which requires equally strong supporting evidence. Patents don't even apply to much of the economy like education, and even within particular sectors like health care/medicine, the patents tend to be heavily concentrated in things like pharmaceuticals.

So shouldn't we be seeing outsized differences between sectors and sub-sectors, where the patent-free area is growing like gangbusters and the patent-encumbered one is static or negative?

As far as I know, this has not been shown, and sectors which ought to be suffering the most (like software) are still doing pretty well...

A good developer cannot be the cause of their bosses redundancy.