10.24.07
EFF, GNU, FSF, and OIN Address Patent Problems
The following may be interest to those who are concerned about the sorry state of the patent system. A bogus patent will soon be reexamined thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s involvement.
Patent Office to Take Second Look at Meritless Claims Threatening Mobile Information Access
A patent issue has just led a GNU project to removing a component. This illustrates the great problems introduced by software patents, especially where Free software and standards are involved.
GnuTLS, which released version 2.0.2 last week, removed the TLS Authorization capability, due in part to an effort to circumvent the IETF standardization process.
Here is an interview with Jerry Rosenthal, CEO of OIN. He talks about Linux and patents, among other things.
A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to OIN’s CEO, Jerry Rosenthal, who was with IBM for 37 years before setting up OIN. His comments about patent trolls – companies whose business is based purely around suing others for alleged patent infringement, rather than on making and selling things – and how to deal with them, are particularly interesting in the light of what has happened since the interview took place.
