Sounds like a new business opportunity to setup hosting SAS hosting in New Zealand.

The EU and half of the world forbid or severely limit software patents. This is why VLC (a European team) doesn't pay for codec patents.

You mean SAS as in the products made by bigco sas.com ???

If your talking about writing your own SAS competitor which infringes on SAS patents, thats one thing. But your comment seems to indicate your talking about software piracy, which does not seem to be what this NZ proposal is about.

I do believe he meant Software as Service (aka, Software As A Service aka SaaS), not SAS Institute, Inc.

Or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Special_Air_Service

Obviously. If he was suggesting outright piracy, Windows Server and Oracle would be much more profitable.

Not sure if a universal ban on software patents is ideal, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. Rather think NZ has just set itself up as a potential software development mecca.

But not an R&D mecca . . .

Xerox PARC manged to do a lot of good before the prolifieration of software patents.

My point is if you are an investor or large corp where are you going to put your money? In the country that won't allow you to control your "IP" or the one that will?

Eh, it's still a comparative advantage, in macroeconomic terms. It isn't such a hypernarrow specialization that they'll be particularly vulnerable to market changes.

So would this mean we could sell software that technically infringes US patents, in NZ?

You can do that anywhere in the world that the US does not have a patent agreement with.

Correct. Most of Europe already have that approach.

Would you have to revoke your US citizenship and become a European citizen to do this legally?

I don't think your citizenship matters, it's where you carry out your business. This is probably more difficult to nail down than you think, e.g. if you advertise to US customers, are you actually doing business in the US?

If you're business is incorporated in Europe then you personally have zero liability. Similarly, if your business assets are solely outside of the US governments hands then they cannot do anything to you. You can readily sell your software to the US without any risk of personal liability or corporate liability.

It's not a question of doing business in the US, it's a question of the US' ability to access your companies assets.

Of course if you're an American citizen operating a sole-trader in Europe it is you violating the patent, no company officially exists. You would be fully liable in the US for everything from your house to the current pair of underwear you have on. If a court decided you were liable, you're screwed. If you're incorporated in a foreign country, you'd never be liable and the courts would never be able to argue jurisdiction.

you might end up paying tax in 2 countries though. I think NZ has some tax agreement with the USA but I'm not sure on the finer details.

If you're an American citizen, you'll be paying tax in two countries anyway.