Editing Software patent debate (section)

===Cost and loss of R&D funds===
*Should a software developer hire a [[patent attorney]] to perform a [[clearance search and opinion|clearance search]] and provide a [[clearance search and opinion|clearance opinion]], there is no guarantee that the search could be complete. Different patents and published patent applications may use different words to describe the same concepts and thus patents that cover different aspects of the invention may not show up in a search. The cost of a clearance search may not prove cost effective to businesses with smaller budgets or individual inventors.<ref>Mulligan, Christina and Lee, Timothy B., Scaling the Patent System (March 6, 2012). NYU Annual Survey of American Law, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2016968</ref>
* For the U.S. the economic benefit is dubious. A study in 2008 found that American public companies’ total profits from patents (excluding pharmaceuticals) in 1999 were about $4 billion, but that the associated litigation costs were $14 billion.<ref name=economist>{{Cite news|url=http://www.economist.com/node/21526370 |title=Patent medicine - Why America's patent system needs to be reformed, and how to do it|publisher=Economist |access-date=2011-09-26|date=2011-08-20}}</ref>
* Software developers and hardware manufacturers may be forced to pay license fees for standards that are covered by patents (the so-called [[essential patents]]). Some examples are [[H.264]], [[MP3]] and [[Graphics Interchange Format#Unisys and LZW patent enforcement|GIF]] (that uses the patented [[LZW]] compression algorithm) and [[JPEG]] for graphics.