"when the patent quality bar is so low, everyone loses"Ever since the aggressive saber-rattling of May 2007, one of our goals here has been to show that patents are not to be dreaded. Many of them deserve to be mocked and their potential impact dismissed. How so? For starters, some of the companies that have a history of patent abuse have themselves asked for a reform. With proper reform, FUD surrounding Linux will most likely just vanish.
Here are some of the latest examples of patent abuse, harassment, and trolling.
NetApp files suit against Sun over ZFS
[...]
The patents in question include methods and techniques for error correction, software RAID and, according to the NetApp complaint, the method for maintaining consistent states of a file system and for creating user accessible read-only copies of a file system. "We want them to stop developing ZFS, stop distributing [it] and stop doing derivative works with it in particular," Warmenhoven said.
Broadcom wins antitrust appeal against Qualcomm
[...]
Broadcom's lawsuit accused Qualcomm of breaking a pledge to the standards board to be fair when licensing patents for technology it owned. That technology has been adopted as an industry standard to promote interoperability among handsets and carriers.
The firm alleges the companies have breached patent 7,009,655B2 - catchily titled "method and system for direct recording of video information onto a disk medium".
The present invention relates to an information system, comprising an input device, a presentation device, a processing unit and a database with an address register for storing address information, such as name, address, telephone and telefax numbers, for legal and/or natural persons, said system providing structured access to said address information.
"Last week, the USPTO published a rather odd Microsoft patent application for Content Ratings and Recommendations, which describes how religious-based communities and other 'subcultures' can use the patent-pending process to prevent their members from viewing undesirable television programs and movies."
Google owes its success to putting advertising into parts of our lives where no one has ever put adverts before. Now a new patent illustrates the extent of its ambitions.
"We've spent three Congresses on this," said Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist for the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group of technology companies, such as Microsoft, Apple Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., that favor the legislation.
Microsoft Corp.'s success in reversing a $1.52 billion trial loss was the latest in a series of court victories that may undermine its chance for broad changes in U.S. patent law this year.
For sure I don't want any patents getting approved that might be used against FOSS someday because I wasn't paying attention. My worry is that because we have been busy elsewhere, the Microsoft patent submission might slide by, get approved by default despite there being prior art we neglected to mention, and then the FUD machine can start up about how it's now a super strong patent that made it through a FOSS community examination.