Can you point to a clear, major innovation software innovation that they are currently being sued for? I can't think of any.
I'm also not seeing the difference between "It's nearly impossible to write a nontrivial program that doesn't infringe patents" and "I do not believe I could write any significant program that was entirely patent free."
"Can you point to a clear, major innovation software innovation that they are currently being sued for? I can't think of any."
Java ("everything else sucks" - Google), miscellaneous mobile innovations belonging to all sorts of companies via proxy (because they don't actually ship phones). They haven't been sued over VP8 yet but it's likely coming barring licensing.
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"I'm also not seeing the difference between ..."
Well now you're putting words in your own mouth. What you originally said was:
"point to a single nontrivial piece of software that doesn't infringe on someone's patents."
And I pointed to every piece of software over 20 years old, /hangs mission accomplished banner. Again this is excessively derailing...
Java: it's far from certain Google is in the wrong here, and they could potentially win a court case. (Likely they'll settle out-of-court, sadly.)
VP8: the fact that Google has been using VP8 in WebM for 14 months now, with no clear allegations of wrongdoing, kinda kills your "willful" argument. If Google was fully aware they were infringing on patents, don't you think someone would have brought this up and/or sued them by now? (I could also start ranting about submarine patents, but I'll leave that alone.)
The parent poster also didn't really ask the right question. "Point to a single nontrivial piece of software that doesn't infringe on someone's patents" may indeed be solved by pointing to anything written over 20 years ago, but how is that a useful measure? We're not going to just say that we only need software written by 1991 and everything written in the past 20 years is useless. So sure, maybe "mission accomplished", but that's like saying "mission accomplished" for successfully going to the bathroom. Sure, well done!
The more useful question is -- "can you write a nontrivial piece of software today that infringes no patents?" I don't know the answer to that, but I suspect it's hard to do.
The answer is no. More interestingly, even 20+ year old software was not necessarily disclosed in a way that meets the legal requirements for "prior art", so you can be sued for using it.
I believe exceptions for prior usage are one of the things being messed with in the current "patent reform" legislation, though, IIRC, they're being influenced in a negative direction disappointingly and unsurprisingly.
Java (the language) isn't something that is patentable. They are reportedly being sued over the implementation of the VM, but the core ideas used in the VM (both Oracle's implementation and Google's implementation) are something like 30 years old. Sun just happened to be the first to try patenting the old ideas.
VP8 was designed to avoid patents, but there's so much stuff patented in the audio and video fields that it's nearly impossible to avoid infringing.
I'm also not seeing the difference between "It's nearly impossible to write a nontrivial program that doesn't infringe patents" and "I do not believe I could write any significant program that was entirely patent free."