Justifying monopolies on mathematics

Summary: Where and how people manipulate the debate about software patents (short roundup)

Patent lawyers and software patents boosters such as the outspoken Lundberg continue to exploit the voices of people who do not represent the consensus among software developers. This is actually a big deal because unless software developers become more vocal, their interests will be undermined by those who wish to take part of their salary if not their job. Pamela Jones has this new article about an ongoing attempt to throw away patents which are used against Linux. To quote just the summary, "Samsung has been given leave [PDF] in Apple v. Samsung II to depose Toshiyuki Masui [PDF] in Japan regarding prior art. Specifically, it's about POBox software, which it believes is relevant prior art."

Software should never be patentable in the first place -- a point so commonly overlooked these days because of the shift of attention to patent trolls. And it is not as though anything is being done about the latter, either. Despite promises from president Obama, we learn that regulators hardly do a thing except talk. Or as one opinion piece recently put it:

US antitrust regulators have recently developed great interest in patent trolls, which they have taken to calling "patent assertion entities" or PAEs. But it seems like they still haven't decided what to do about trolls. At recent hearings, critics lamented extortion-like demands, while supporters proclaimed trolls’ benefits to "invention markets."

What about cartels of large corporations, such as CPTN? Do those entities do a service to society? It is a rhetorical question. The USPTO should be challenged as a whole, not merely reformed very slightly. This evening I chatted to a good friend of mine who is a professor that's afraid of patents in his field and whose friends are patenting software in the UK. It has become clear that more and more people become have familiar with the drawbacks of many kinds of patents. Now is the time to do something about it . ⬆