10.23.07
Acacia’s Lawsuit Must Face the ‘Acid Test’ of a Broken System
All your one-click shopping with clean URLs are [sic] belong to Amazon
In Slashdot, the absurdity of the US patent system is put up for show.
On Tuesday, Amazon search subsidiary A9.com was awarded U.S. patent no. 7,287,042 for ‘including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.’ In the Summary of the Invention, it’s explained that ‘a user wishing to search for ‘San Francisco Hotels’ may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system.’
No, it’s not a joke. It’s real. It’s unbelievable.
According to the following source (assemblage of several others), patent litigation by Acacia could actually face the peril which is patentability of software. Several months ago we saw cases where this type of patentability was tested and failed.
Before open source-specific issues can be decided, however, the court will have to decide a broader question: Is software even patentable?
This case can apparently go on for years, which brings to mind the bogus SCO litigation. It lasted for more than 4 years, essentially serving as long-lasting and free-of-substance FUD. Questions remains about Microsoft’s connection to Acacia, but evidence is still very compelling.
Is all this smoke [Acacia-Microsoft links] just coincidence? It may well be. But the smoke gets thicker by the day.
Korea has meanwhile revamped its patent system.
With the quality of its administrative service, education and patent security revamped to keep abreast of global standards, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) is winning international recognition as a world-class intellectual property agency
Speaking of patents, Boycott Novell is actually being cited in Wikipedia (e.g. [1, 2], even on software patents.
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.