Patents are hampering innovation in the software industry. Firms that create and use software products are facing frivolous lawsuits from non-practicing entities and anti-competitive lawsuits from large companies. As a result, the patent system is hindering innovation in software, the opposite of the effect patents are supposed to have.

As the nation's leading digital civil liberties organization, EFF ought to be leading the charge against patents on software. On a new site called defendinnovation.org, EFF suggests several ways to make the patent system work better for software. But conspicuously missing from the list is software patent abolition. Instead, EFF says that "Congress should commission a study and hold hearings to examine whether software patents actually benefit our economy at all."

But the time for study has passed. There's overwhelming evidence that software patents are broken beyond repair. So we call for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to clearly oppose patents on software.