On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I wonder if there are things that we've developed in house here at Wikimedia that we should patent, just to license our patents freely of course, and also to make fun of the patent system.
This is not necessary, since we publish our source code making our methods "prior art", and (in theory) impossible for other people to claim patents on.
The only reason I could see to get patents would be to use them as muscle for cross-licensing if we get threatend by some big bad company.
I don't think it's Wikipedia's role to start doing this. I'm sure the FSF and other organisations have considered this - and if or when they decide to go ahead with it, we can join in as part of a concerted effort.
But just going ahead and registering patents would IMO be going against the Wikipedia tradition of not focusing on problems that aren't real yet.
-- Daniel