01.16.08
Patents Roundup: Microsoft Steps in Somebody Else’s Territory, Again
If news about software patents is of interest to you, then you are encouraged to visit digitalmajority.org, which regularly picks excellent stories. Here are some of the latest which are relevant to our Web site.
Microsoft is accused of patenting somebody else’s business software.
“Indeed, this raises some serious issues for Microsoft. I feel that they should do the right thing, play fair and withdraw these patent applications”.
It’s far from the first time. This is just like BlueJ [1, 2]. Microsoft stole and patented somebody else’s idea and only when accusations started flying it let those patents go.
The following sums up the purpose of the existing system fairly well. As we pointed out a few days ago, the system protects the rich and it’s also constructed by the rich.
The post-grant review process is seen as just another way for the big boys to string out the process and force the little guy out of the game by raising the costs.
Recall this oldie (and goodie):
A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking almost any participation by the small business community.
Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by large corporations and the patent industry.
[...]
The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report. But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the report in any way
[...]
Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community, said that he found the report useless: participants were told that all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
The emphasis (using bold fonts) was added by us.
Look again at the sort of stuff which is being patented at the moment, e.g.:
WordLogic Corp. announced that European Patent No. 1356368 has been granted by the European Patent Office for the invention Data Entry Method And System For Personal Computer…
Even tax planning is seen as patentable. That’s just business methods.
While the Senate’s proposed “Patent Reform Act of 2007” (S.1145) will likely wait until the early months of 2008 for further consideration, lawmakers have introduced an additional proposal that may be offered as an additional amendment to S. 1145.
Things get worse before they get any better, but this isn’t particularly surprising.
…the patent total represents an increase of 31 percent over patents awarded to Xerox in 2005.
So there. You’ll find many more depressing news like this in digitalmajority.org. Looking away from the problem won’t help it go away. █
