07.30.12
Gemini version available ♊︎Software Patents Protest Spreads Everywhere
Serving power, not justice
Summary: The legal system in the United States and elsewhere loses the hearts of the people
THE cartel of patent lawyers is trying to sell us a war. It has been trying to market patent wars and also encourage practising entities to gather ammunition, not products. Here is one new example of the propaganda.
Simon Phipps, the president of the OSI, says that even the ITU is now concerned about patent litigation:
Even the ITU is beginning to think RAND terms are a problem in the modern technology market.
It’s about time. In an article we mentioned before, “slowing patent lawsuit rush”, IDG pushes nonsense which contradicts simple observation. The patent wars are worse than ever, certainly worse than in 2006 when this site began. The USPTO is now ” Issu[ing] Four Patents to IOCOM for Video Conferencing, showing that software patents are being given in bulk. Even US judges are fed up with the USPTO and with SCOTUS that defends USPTO interests (SCOTUS is pro-mgacorporations [1, 2]):
The nation’s top patent court has stopped a lower court from throwing out four patents on financial software, used to sue a bank dealing in foreign currency exchanges.
Recently, Judge Posner pretty much called for ending of software patents. He let Motorola go free, whereas in Germany of all places Motorola had its products banned due to software patents (which are illegitimate).
In light of a small company getting hit by software patent trolls, game sites too express anger at software patents and ask readers about the subject:
In this week’s episode of Super Podcast Action Committee, EZK and I discussed software patents and whether they’re beneficial to the games industry, detrimental or somewhere in between.
Now it’s your turn to chime in.
A lovingly hand-crafted poll sits on the right side of this very screen, nestled snuggly underneath the LOGIN box. As of this writing, over 200 readers have made their opinion on software patents known and so far opinion is split between “software patents can take a long walk off a short pier” and “Gentlemen, we can reform them. We have the technology. We have the capability to make software patents beneficial to all mankind!”
Guess the outcome. At least a dozen news sites covered the litigation against Minecraft’s maker. This helps raise awareness of the harms of software patents. The protest is clearly growing.
To end with the words of Judge Posner:
Hon. Posner, the Judge who recently questioned whether patents should cover software in a Reuters interview, recently authored an article for The Atlantic on the very same topic. Once again he voiced his concern about software patents and the patent system as a whole. Compared to the Reuters interview, the Judge’s opinion, assumingly written in his own hand, comes across less radical absolute [than] previously.
In Reuters, Posner compared Apple to animals. Our next post will talk about Apple. The misuse of patents is well exemplified by Steve Jobs’ mob. █
ᶃ Gemini Space
This post is also available in 
Content is available under CC-BY-SA