I've invented a highly complex machine which prevents me from ageing. It's extremely useful, but I only have one of them. If you want to use it, I will either have to lend it to you, which means I don't have it any more, or I will have to spend a lot of money to manufacture another one. The machine is functional, but it's hard to copy.

I've also written a novel. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it's very well-written (you can decide whether this is more or less believable than the anti-ageing machine). If you want it, I can easily e-mail you a copy of the file. But, no matter how much pleasure you might get out of reading it, doing so doesn't actually achieve anything concrete. The novel is easy to copy, but it's functionally useless.

Since Adam and Eve, almost everything humans have created is either like my machine or my novel. Functionality and copyability have been mutually exclusive. But software is the exception. It has the ability to turn a general purpose device (your PC) into a specialised machine for doing one of thousands of different tasks. Instead of having a typewriter, an adding machine and a slide projector, you have a PC with a copy of Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. Software is as functional as a typewriter but as easy to copy as a novel.

Software is also much easier to build. A car with ten thousand parts is a complex machine taking months or years of work by a large team. A piece of software of 10,000 lines is a few weeks' work for one person. That means that the software industry has extremely low barriers to entry. But humans respond to the reduced complexity of each part by increasing the number of parts – a 3 million component machine is unimaginable; the Firefox browser is a 3 million-line program.

In my last column, I mentioned that there were two big issues facing Andrew Gowers as he conducts the government's review of intellectual property (copyrights, patents and trademarks). After copyright term, the second of those issues is that of patents on software.

A patent is a limited time monopoly on an idea. While you hold the patent, no one else can do the same thing, even if they came up with it independently, unless you grant them a licence. Patents on software ideas are legal in the United States and not legal in the EU (theoretically; in practice, the unaccountable European Patent Office has granted tens of thousands anyway).

The uniqueness of software means that software and patents have unique interactions. For example, a drug is usually covered by a single patent. But high complexity means a piece of software may use thousands of different ideas and so is potentially subject to as many different patents – the holders of any of which could force the software to be made less functional to avoid their patent or take a percentage of your earnings.

Easy copyability has led to the rise of free and open source software which is distributed in an unlimited and untracked fashion at zero cost for the public good. However, this idea is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of patent royalties. If you aren't tracking, how can you even calculate a fee? And if you aren't charging, how can you pay?

Since the rise of easily available general purpose computers, the low barriers to entry have led to a large and thriving community of sofware development businesses. Compare that to the number of drug companies, for example. In Europe, history has shown that people will innovate in the software space without the artificial stimulus of monopoly. And introducing unnecessary monopolies distorts markets.

Uniquely high complexity; uniquely easy copyability; uniquely low barriers to entry. These are just three ways in which software is special. Patents would hinder, not help, the software industry. I hope that in the Gowers review, common sense will prevail.

Gervase Markham works for the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the internet. His blog is Hacking For Christ

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