TrollTracker has put some numbers together and s/he concludes that, even though fewer patents are filed for, more litigation ensues.

At long last, here are my January 2008 patent litigation statistics. In total, PACER/ECF showed 230 patent cases filed in January 2008, compared to 210 in January 2007. This is a 10% year-to-year increase.

This is not the first time that TrollTracker contradicts other claims whose purpose is probably to hide the scale of this trolling epidemic.

You may also wish to know that the company which is responsible for harming and actively attacking OLPC has come under attack by patent trolls. Intel was sued by a company without products, just pointless licensing.

The patent covers a method in which certain instructions that would normally have to wait for other instructions to finish processing before they can move forward can be processed in part while waiting for the other tasks to finish.

Interestingly enough, Akamai, which uses GNU/Linux very extensively, has entered the patent maze as well. To make matters worse, it is the offensive party.

Akamai earlier this week agreed to a judgment that Limelight does not infringe on another patent, No. 7,103,645. Akamai also stated it is no longer alleging willful infringement by Limelight and would not allege, as part of its infringement case, that Limelight had copied any of the allegedly patented features, according to Limelight officials.

The next post will cover (in part) the effect of software patents on GNU/Linux and Free software development. ⬆