10.18.07
An Age of “Intellectual Monopolies” Thrives in a Broken System
Free Software Magazine has published an article that explains why patents — poor patents in particular — are doing great harm to innovation.
Whether or not hardware patents in the past have encouraged invention, it seems clear that software patents today are harming innovation and progress. Obvious and overly broad patents are being used to either prevent competition or as a way for patent trolls that produce nothing valuable to extract rents from companies that do. Maddeningly, they’re not even needed for their stated purpose. Progress in the software arts does not depend on granting such an extreme form of intellectual monopoly. Let’s throw the damn things out.
Acacia/IP Innovation say it best:
Acacia/IP Innovation has gone on the record as saying that it’s not trying to kill open source: it just wants to suck anyone and everyone dry of cash,
So here we have a system that was designed to either defend monopolies or to allow a few companies pull money from other businesses, much like ‘intellectual leeches’. Here is a press release that its publisher takes pride it. It’s an item which shows that Microsoft is indeed part of the problem, which was mentioned a couple of days ago.
Destruction is all around us. One needn’t look further than a week ago to find (at least) two more high-profile examples:
Research In Motion (RIM) has reached an agreement with Eatoni Ergonomics, a little-known developer of predictive text input software for mobile devices, who claimed the Canadian company’s BlackBerry incorporated technology it had no right to use.
Internet phone company Vonage Holdings settled a patent lawsuit filed by Klausner Technologies, the privately held company specializing in voice-messaging technology said Thursday. Klausner said it granted Vonage a patent license related to voice messaging. It did not disclose any financial terms of the settlement.
Who actually benefits from this, other than the solicitors?
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.