Summary: The patent debate in the United States and a mention of NZ and Europe as well

THE US patent system penalises programmers for programming. Soon enough, based on this new analysis from Timothy B. Lee, it might also penalise doctors for saving lives by legalising yet more medical patents.

Also see this article which says: "Computer, drug and biotechnology companies have a message for the U.S. Supreme Court as it prepares for arguments this week on patents for diagnostic medical tests: Be careful."

America (US), wake up. The freedoms, the human rights, and the democracy are rapidly going away.

Maria Korolov, who "belong[s] to a business group... that recently expressed interest in setting up a virtual space for its members" says that all the pieces are in places but like others in this field she expresses concerns about the patents situation:

In fact, SpotOn3D’s plugin would work, if the other pieces were there. This particular organization doesn’t have a position one way or another about software patents, so the controversy would be a moot point. They’d even be willing to pay extra for the license.

We wrote about the sad state of patents in virtual worlds on numerous occasions before. Some companies claim to have invented the digital equivalent of life (e.g. Second Life). Patents on life and software at the same time. A lot of it boils down to software and business methods. Kill those patents and much of the problem quickly goes away.

Over in Europe the situation is still debated (more on that in a separate post) and over in NZ where the situation is eerily similar to Europe we learn that:

Patents – the legislation that would remove software patents is gathering dust and, as was clear at the InternetNZ election debate, there is cross-party support to pass the Patents Bill. Time to get this through the house toute de suite. An ICT minister wouldn’t want to see the government accused of holding back legislation to facilitate the passing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

This 'trade agreements' are like a form of imperialism, so seeing them abolished would be fine. Those are profitable for large corporations that operate internationally, but they harm human rights. ⬆