"A Patent Caution Notice
which appeared on 2010-09-29
in the Times of India" - By sankarshan

Summary: Another quick report on the malignant atrophy known as software patents and how it can be inoculated against

ABOVE the summary we put a wonderful new example of what patents -- including software patents in India -- may bring about. It's a reign of terror for software developers and the original can be seen in full size right here. Today in the news we learn about yet another software patent lawsuit, which proudly gets announced in a press release. Is this the future of so-called 'innovation'? Suing one's potential competitor rather than sharing and collaborating? Writing up some papers rather than typing down better code? It's really sad. Here in IDG's CIO "Advice" section we have a booster for software patents. That's the type of message that they get across:

I've worked with software patents on and off for roughly twenty years, but sometimes a different environment stimulates fresh thinking. In this case, as I sat there trying not to giggle while several teeth were ground to nubbins, it struck me that this experience resembled, in a surprising number of ways, the experience of software professionals working on patents. The dental analogy even struck me as potentially useful to IT executives trying to get their teams to work on patents. So what do patent and dental work have in common?

It's rarely as bad as you expect. It's very unlikely that you'll be jumping for joy as you walk into the office of the dentist or patent lawyer. More likely, you'll be dreading it more than it deserves. Neither activity is a goal you're pursuing, but more of an inevitable necessity for pursuing the larger goal of a healthy mouth or a prosperous software company.

IDG's pseudo-open source blog [1, 2, 3] has two of its Microsoft apologists/partners/boosters write about software patents today and yesterday [1, 2]. The latter one seems to be embellishing Microsoft's image, just as Microsoft lobbyists (aka "mobbiyists") do at the moment using stories like this one, which they conveniently take out of context (a rebuttal to it was mentioned just hours before this post).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed an amicus brief in support of Microsoft today, asking the U.S. Supreme Court for a ruling that would have a major impact on patent litigation.

This is about Microsoft trying to help itself. Here is an overview of posts about that. As Henrik Ingo put it, "When it hurts themselves, they start pushing against #swpats [software patents]. At least a little. [...] More trolls for MSFT, ORCL etc please!" ⬆