11.05.07

Quick Mention: Recent News on Patents and IP

Posted in GNU/Linux, Mono, Videos, Intellectual Property, Patents at 4:07 am by Roy Schestowitz

Here is a quick roundup covering news that directly or indirectly relate to software patents.

The first is somewhat of a rebuttal which argues that patent trolls are here to stay and grow in terms of impact.

Dennis Crouch reports that patent filings in the Eastern District of Texas are, or soon will be, waning.

I strongly disagree. First, the statistics that Dennis reports are strongly to the contrary. He notes that almost one in six patent cases in the US filed in the last two months were filed in Eastern Texas. In fact, the number of cases filed in 2007 in EDTX has already shattered all previous records. As I will soon report, there have been 309 patent cases filed in EDTX this year already, through 304 days. CDCA is a distant second.*

Here is a good letter to Wired’s editor. It complains about the misuse of the term “Intellectual Property”.

The world has been brainwashed by the concepts of “Intellectual Property” far too long, and this line has proven the point exactly.

A loosely related article from The Register: Shills protest Paris Convention on IP

The protection of trademarks is always a tough issue at ICANN meetings - whether Delta Airlines get preference over Delta Faucet where some kind of “delta” domain is concerned is a typical problem, since the domain space leans heavily toward abbreviated, or at least shortened, forms.

The monopoly abusers are at it again. They just won’t let sanity be restored.

The new patent rules, which were criticized as stifling American innovation by limiting the scope of patent protection to inventors, were set to go into effect on November 1, 2007. On the eve of the rules’ implementation, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline won a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (”PTO”), temporarily blocking the enactment of the new patent rules. The patent rules were largely criticized in solicited commentary to the PTO because the new rules would increase the cost of seeking patent protection and limit the rights of applicants.

Microsoft’s mythical patents, which it claims are infringed on by Linux, give no reason for hesitation. We all knows it’s bogus and strategic. There may be an exception however. A certain someone, whose name ought not to be mentioned (ad hominem attacks to be avoided), mimics Windows. Here he is talking (in Spanish) about software patents (not for the first time).