Patent lawyers show their nasty face again

Summary: Patent lawyers continue to sidle with the monopolies in their fight for more intellectual monopolies, which include software patents

SITES such as Groklaw may wish to deny it, but lawyers are rarely if ever friends of software freedom. There's almost nothing for them in it. Even Red Hat's lawyers who deal with patents are expressing their stance poorly at times, only to be criticised by "good lawyers" such as Carlo Piana (latest example can be found here).

WatchTroll's pro-software patents site (for patent lawyers) is at it again. It's that annoyingly syndicated-by-Google-News blog where there is disdain for what they call ‘open source community’ (in scare quotes) in relation to New Zealand's stance on software patents. To quote: "The Committee appears to have accepted submissions from the ‘open source community’ that, with the possible exception of the category of ‘embedded software’, computer-implemented technology is inherently non-inventive, that software patents can be obtained for trivial advances, and that they generally stifle innovation. Stakeholders with a contrary (or at least more nuanced) view on the matter were, for the most part, unaware that they needed to step up and make submissions to the Committee, since there had been no suggestion of a software exclusion at any earlier stage of the process."

“Linux has had that sort of innovation for ages.”The arguments made in this piece are weak and the explanation given is not accurate, either. Did the ‘open source community’ (as they insist on putting scare quotes around it) really claiming that the combination of hardware merits a patent? That's highly doubtful. Software developers mostly argue that patents make their job a lot harder (it's not just free/open source application developers who say this) and the "embedded" trick simply remains as a sort of loophole for the patent monopolies-greedy. It keeps them happy, just like the F/RAND clauses which leave ambiguity. How about this new example? "Montrose man among team receiving patent for market analysis software," says the headline. Microsoft fans also rave about what they call a Microsoft patent on "fast-boot dual-boot hybrid" (software patent), carelessly saying nothing about the fact that Microsoft is by no means first to have thought of it. Linux has had that sort of innovation for ages.

Anyway, the UK-IPO is looking for feedback about its policies and since it's going to get stuffed by British patent lawyers, there's reason to show them that there is another side in this debate -- one to whom the vested interest has nothing to do with actually taxing innovation like many lawyers and the monopolies they represent do. The EPO, UK-IPO, and also IPONZ (Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand) have ambiguities to address when it comes to their patent law. ⬆