Future development in the european software industry: Patentability of computer programs or open source software?

Economic literature has treated the patent system as an indispensable tool to incentive inventive activity and to foster diffusion of technological improvements, but recent developments have brought at the center of the stage the Open Source phenomenon which is based on completely different mechanisms among which the free disclosure of the inventive steps. This work analyzes changes that are taking place into patent literature in order to give account of the desirability of patents in software sector. In addition some ideas on empirical analysis are put forward: the possibility of measuring the relationship between patents and input of innovation process in the software sector and the influence that private firms will have on Open Source developers motivations.