In light of some of the recent developments (e.g. the success of Linux being hinged on the failure of patents), it is clear that patent wars are a present reality. "A rational observer would now predict that a further outbreak of patent wars, and portfolio-bolstering acquisitions, now are likely," says one report. "Some observers also are starting to say that the software patent process is broken, costing jobs and threatening innovation as well, and there also is some growing talk that reforms are necessary. Patent system is broken, read the book and complaints that the patent system is broken,while criticism is growing." These are the words of one of the latest articles on the subject.
The Economist blog ‘Democracy in America’ covers the lamentable state of IP. The problem is particularly bad with software patents because they are both so unnecessary to encourage innovation and also because there are potentially so many software patents – software is such an easy medium in which to embody productive ideas. The recent purchase of Motorola Mobile by Google apparently to get itself a stash of patents is truly alarming, because, having spent $12 odd billion on getting the patents and with only a few parties able to marshall sufficient defensive patents to protect themselves against Dark Lord’s like Nathan Myhrvold, Google is then obliged to its shareholders to maximise the value of those patents and to maximise its profit from any mobile phones it makes. And, because of the IP nightmare only a handful of firms will be able to make such products – though only by warding off marauders with threats of counter claims for breaching their own patents.
Since our last update on the reexaminations of the Oracle (Sun) patents being asserted against Google, two additional first actions on the merits have issued, one [PDF] on patent 6,125,447 and one [PDF] on patent 6,910,205. In each case the examiner has rejected all of the claims for which Google has requested reexamination.
With respect to the '447 patent, the examiner cites to two principal items of prior art as each anticipating all of the claims of the '447 patent. In other words, the examiner has found two separate patents that establish that none of the claims of the '447 patent were novel.
With respect to the '205 patent the examiner found a single item of non-patent literature that anticipates all of the challenged claims of the patent. That is, the non-patent literature establishes that none of those five challenged claims were novel.
Apple Loses Court Battle In Europe, Samsung Free To Sell Galaxy Tabs
Justice will prevail. The European Courts have once again reinstated the faith in justice. Apple today lost its monopolistic battle against Samsung and Android.
Jan Wilderboer, a FOSS evangelist, writes on his blog, "Apple has LOST all claims wrt the European patent 2098948. The court thinks that the European patent 1964022 is worthless and will be thrown out in reexamination anyway. The only thing that remains is the european patent 2059868. And the claims of that patent can be circumvented in trivial ways."
We recently wrote about a surprising Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruling that might open the door to invalidating a lot of software patents. We received an an interesting comment on the post a few days later from John Pettitt:So I was thinking - great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it - then I realized the idiot in question was me :-)Pettitt is now running an interesting operation called Free Range Content, which helps companies syndicate content easily. However, a while back, he was the named inventor on patent 6,029,154, describing a "Method and system for detecting fraud in a credit card transaction over the internet." We reached out to Pettitt to ask him a few questions about his views on the patent system and he kindly agreed.
Not sure how I feel about this.
John - inventor of the patent in question.