Silicide ApS: Software patents also affect hardware design companies
Our skills include RF and mixed signal ASIC design, PCB and multi-chip-module design, RFIC test, prototyping and high volume production preparations.
Carsten Rasmussen
Technical director of Silicide
Although Silicide is a microchip company and does not sell software, we strongly rely on open document formats for interchangeability, and base much of our development on open source software, centered around the open platform Linux.
Our productivity is partly based on open source software, much of it has great value for us because it is software written for technicians, by technicians.
Silicide doesn't sell software, but often software is released with the products to aid customer development; lowering their time to market is in everyones interest. Sometimes when software source code is released, 3rd party programmers create great applications. Silicide encourage every developer to write code interfacing our hardware, and we are worried that software patents will discourage sharing these great contributions.
Even though our business is based entirely on knowledge, we do oppose software patents simply because they are bad for our business.
If open document formats and open source software is restricted by software patents, then Silicide's business will be too."
