Shopping for monopolies

Summary: Novell has just received yet more software patents and the situation inside the USPTO keeps getting worse as scope of monopolies expands

The CPTN transaction is a case of Novell passing patent monopolies to Microsoft. CPTN remains a barrier even if Novell chooses to pretend this barrier does not exist and for more background on the subject see:

• CPTN Shows Microsoft Becoming a Patent Agitator Like Kodak, Whose Time is Long Gone
• Microsoft-run Patent Cartel Retreats Following Formal Complaint, But Why? (Updated)
• Microsoft Patent Cartel (CPTN) Dodges German Federal Cartel Office
• Benjamin Orndorff From Microsoft/Gates and Ellis Represents the CTPN Patents Cartel
• OIN is Very Different From CPTN and UNIX Risk is Revisited
• In Defence of OIN and Android
• SCO, CPTN, and UNIX
• From UNIX Battles to .NET Battles
• Free Software Foundation's Statement on Microsoft/Novell/CPTN Patent Attack Against Software Freedom
• A Paralegal's Take on Microsoft's Latest Anti-Google (and Anti-FOSS) Moves
• Maneuverers of Microsoft in an Age of Software Patents

According to this new roundup from Utah, Novell carries on filing patent applications and receiving some (even while the company sells them to some shell). Here are three of the latest:

Method and apparatus for controlling access to portal content from outside, Patent No. 7,890,639, invented by Shawn Matthew Holmstead, of Lehi; Olin Sayre Atkinson, of Orem; Dale Allen Lowry, of Springville; and Christopher Jean Seiler, of Pleasant Grove; assigned to Novell Inc., of Provo.

[...]

Receiver nonrepudiation, Patent No. 7,890,757, invented by Gosukonda Naga Venkata Satva Sudhakar, of Bangalore, India; assigned to Novell Inc., of Provo.

Heterogeneous normalization of data characteristics, Patent No. 7,890,938, invented by Nathan Blaine Jensen, of Spanish Fork; Stephen R. Carter, of Spanish Fork; William Street, of Orem; Michel Shane Simpson, of American Fork; William D. Peterson, of Provo; and Scott Alan Isaacson, of Woodland Hills; assigned to Novell Inc., of Provo.

Will any of these be sold to an entity that is hostile towards Linux, such as the Microsoft-led CPTN? Will AttachMSFT decide to sell them at a later date? And if so, to whom? Their neighbours from Microsoft? Novell ought to know the trouble which is caused by patent trolls; after all, according to this report, Novell is still among the victims:

Lodsys is a Texas limited liability company with its principal place of business in Marshall.

The defendants are Brother International Corp., Canon U.S.A. Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Hulu, Lenovo (United States) Inc., Lexmark International Inc., Motorola Mobility Inc., Novell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics America Inc., Samsung Telecommunications America and Trend Micro Inc.

According to this other new report, nanotechnology patents also spread:

According to the report, as of March 2010, 6,000 patents for nanotechnologies had been awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office alone. The US government was the “largest patent patron for 2008,” with research and development funded by the Department of Energy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, Army, Department of Defense, Food and Drug Administration, and National Cancer Institute.

Patents on nanotechnologies may make some people rich, but they will not promote innovation. Quite conversely, patents will impede future work on nanotechnology because barriers are never intended to somehow create even more incentives to innovate. "David Plouffe Gives Preliminary Response Concerning Obstacles To Innovation" says this new post:

The problem is that his suggestions for patent reform do not fix the system, and in some cases make it much worse. In fact, I pointed to numerous studies and research in my response that explained this.

The patent system is harming one field at the time. Patent lawyers allow this to happen and even lobby for it because this is profitable and the same applies to large companies that have a lot of monopolies. What Novell is doing is selfish and detrimental to innovation. ⬆