THOSE who have followed Techrights for a while may already know, based on this Wiki page at least, that the BSA's attacks on open standards in Europe are nothing new. We are surprised to see so many people around the Web referring to this new sort of leak (mentioned already in [1, 2, 3, 4]) as a real revelation given what we documented a couple of years ago. Robert Pogson chimes in:
The BSA is at it again. Now they are trying to make sure they can patent standards and still call them “open”. What part of “open” don’t they understand? They want standards containing patents to be recommended by the EU Commission in the Interoperability Framework.
Here is a letter they wrote advocating watering-down a proposal for the EIF. Here is the analysis by the FSFE. How is a standard “open” if someone has a monopoly on it? Isn’t the definition of patent a monopoly?
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Patents on software or even modern technology (programmable/electronic) just makes no sense.
Making use of codes or software that are ratified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) such as the GNU General Public License (GPL) will ensure peace of mind for developers and help prevent lawsuits from patent holders, industry watchers say.
Charles Lemaire, a veteran software patent attorney at Lemaire Patent Law Firm, said big IT vendors, particularly those that have obtained open source patent portfolios through acquisitions, are unlikely to initiate legal action against developers that have either made use of free software in the past or continue to develop software based on past open source codes.
Palmer Patent Consultants perhaps needed a trademark consultant in connection with its attempt to register the mark INVENT! INVENT! INVENT! PATENT IT! for "intellectual property consultation" [PATENT disclaimed]. The Board affirmed a Section 2(d) refusal, finding the mark likely to cause confusion with the registered mark PATENT IT! for "legal services." In re Palmer Patent Consultants, LLC, Serial No. 76673151 (October 7, 2010).