Bonum Certa Men Certa

Bilski Interpretation From Patent Lawyers

"The Justice Department also renewed its request that the court fine Microsoft $1 million a day for contempt and, in an unusual move, asked the judge to give the government new authority to review any new operating systems or browsers made by Microsoft at least thirty days before release."

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul



Summary: How today's patent lawyers have further subverted patent law and turned it into a monopoly enabler which does nothing but inhibit science

Eben Moglen is a unique lawyer in the sense that he views copyright and patent laws with a different contextual knowledge in mind. Moglen studied legal history when he was earning his doctoral degree and in this new interview with The Prior Art Professor Moglen explains how the Bilski decision relates to the history of patents. "The job of patent law was an eighteenth-century job—encouraging people to immigrate to the U.S., bringing skills with them," he explains. Here is the whole answer:



Q: What's your opinion of the Bilski decision?

The decision is one of those that clearly shows why it has come down on the last day of the term after being argued early. When you see a case like that come down, one of the things that occurs to you is that a majority has fallen apart. The justices agreed about less than they thought.

Everybody has to adjust to the fact that a question we believed was going to be decided didn't get decided after all.

In the case of Bilski, the question was: "How does patent law work in the twenty-first century?"

The job of patent law was an eighteenth-century job—encouraging people to immigrate to the U.S., bringing skills with them. This was a big continent which the white people here thought of as "empty." Patent law—the way the Continental Congress wanted to make it, the way the Constitutional Convention saw it—was a way of rewarding inventors.

In the nineteenth century, that eighteenth-century system worked well. America filled up with people who used technology to tame the natural environment.

Right now, we have a patent system that's extensively used only by two industries: information technology and pharmaceuticals. Anybody else, the patent system doesn't help them that much. Most of the world's manufacturers now use trade secret law. [And] the two industries that use patent law heavily use it for reasons irrelevant to its formation.

In the information technology [IT] industry we live in now, where software [is often] made by people who want to share rather than own, patent law imposes very significant problems for innovators. That patent law doesn't maximize innovation in software has been the observation of engineers and lawyers who work in the part of the world I work in, sometimes called the free and open source software community. But what it really is is part of science. Knowledge about the world is collected and organized for other people to learn from. Unlike almost all other forms of science, because writing it down in computer terms can also be writing down a program a computer could execute, basic scientific communications are made the subject of ownership by current patent law, unintentionally.



Unlike Moglen, many lawyers make a living out of agitating (suing) companies for so-called 'inventions' which these lawyers never had anything to do with. Some lawyers help create ammunition with which to agitate other companies. In that regard, these lawyers' contribution to society is largely negative (we do not make sweeping statements about lawyers, just particular types of lawyers).

“Funny how those who promote software patents are rarely computer scientists, just monopolies and parasites.”One example of a vocal patents parasite is Gene Quinn with his Patent Watchtroll blog, which continues to lobby in favour of software patents, this time by giving a platform to yet another patent lawyer. Separately, in a legal site which entered Google News there is another patent lawyer doing this type of lobbying just yesterday (but for business method patents). By stating that the Bilski case endorses software and business method patents (which is does not, at least not directly) they hope to encourage more people to come to lawyers like themselves and pay extraordinary amounts of money to create an unjust monopoly. Funny how those who promote software patents are rarely computer scientists, just monopolies and parasites. Sometimes they (Microsoft for example) hire AstroTurfers to pretend to be small businesses in favour of software patents.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
 
The Relationship Between IBM Red Hat and Microsoft, Visualised
This metaphor goes a long way (projects, collaborations, and outsourcing
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part III - Spying on Reporters' Families, Chaining Cases for Microsoft Employees Who Demand Censorship of Facts (Even Politely Expressed)
the time seems right to wrap up this introductory series
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025