the distribution of free software. They contend that patents threaten to undermine FLOSS, regardless of innovations produced by FLOSS collaborations. Software patents' usefulness as an information source is limited Some patent disclosures in the software field are not readable to some programmers; as a result, patents are rarely used as a source of technical information by software developers. Long patent pendencies In the software industry, product lifecycles churn rapidly; a product can run through its entire lifecycle and become outdated during the time it takes a patent filed on the invention underlying it to issue. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s official statistics for 2015, the average pendency for patent applications categorized under “Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security” was approximately two and a half years, exceeding the pendencies of all other patent categories. The average total pendency of European technology patents in 2015 was approximately two and a half years. Technology patents in China, Korea, Japan, and Europe had first action pendencies of approximately one year compared to those in the United States, with first action pendencies of under two years. Europe and the United States have the longest total pendencies of around 26 months, while China, Korea, and Japan have shorter total pendencies from 15 to 21 months. Patent trolls Software companies are becoming patent hoarders, spending billions of dollars on accumulating patents and even more on litigations and settlements – resources could be better put to use in creating new and innovative software advances. Too many patents are given out, making it difficult for developers to create new software due to possibility of accidental infringement. Engineers say it impedes their creativity. In 2016 IBM earned 8,088 U.S. patents; thus earning the most grants from the U.S. Patent Office for the 24th year in a row. They bested their closest tech rival by more than 2,500 patents. Behemoths like IBM, Google, and Oracle gather as many patents in the fields considered 'hot' such as Artificial Intelligence to limit the innovation potential of smaller firms. Patent claims were part of the Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc. case, where Oracle claimed that Google's implementation of Java within Android violated Oracle's copyright and patents. Duke Computer Science Professor Owen Astrachan was involved in the case. Not only large companies are patent hoarders. NPEs (Non-Practising Entities) are businesses that assert patents through litigation to achieve revenues from alleged