Software patenting in the United States has been a relevant and well regulated phenomenon since the 1980s. On the contrary, the European Union lagged behind for a long time. This work gives an account of the above mentioned topic. The fact that European Patent Convention expressively prohibits...

A large number of studies has been canvassed by the growing rates of diffusion of Open Source Software. However, a formal analysis of the process of competition between open–source and proprietary software is still missing. We propose an epidemic model of innovation diffusion to deal with the...