profits from patents (excluding pharmaceuticals) in 1999 were about $4 billion, but that the associated litigation costs were $14 billion. 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 GIF (that uses the patented LZW compression algorithm) and JPEG for graphics. Copyright It is argued that traditional copyright has provided sufficient protection to facilitate massive investment in software development. Copyright is the right of an author(s) to prevent others from copying their creative work without a license. Thus the author of a particular piece of software can sue someone that copies that software without a license. Copyright protection is given automatically and immediately without the need to register the copyright with a government, although registration does strengthen protection. Copyrighted material can also be kept secret. Software is different Software programs are different from other electromechanical devices because they are designed solely in terms of their function. The inventor of a typical electromechanical device must design new physical features to qualify for a patent. On the other hand, a software developer need only design new functions to create a working embodiment of the program. Software is a component of a machine. The computer’s hardware is generic; it performs functions that are common to all of the software that is capable of being executed on the computer. Each software program that is capable of executing on the computer is a component of the computer. Computers "design" and build the structure of executable software. Thus, software developers do not design the executable software's physical structure because they merely provide the functional terms. Trivial patents Anecdotal evidence suggests that some software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made. Patent examiners rarely have a comprehensive knowledge of the specific technologies disclosed in the patent applications they examine. This is in large part due to the enormous number of micro-niches in the software field and the relatively limited number of examiners. So, patents are sometimes allowed on inventions that appear to be trivial extensions of existing technologies. Open source disadvantage The free and open source software community, and many companies that use and contribute to open source oppose software patents because they can impede or prohibit