Newsforge: Software patents are bad, but the end is not nigh -- that's the gist of this article. The author goes a fair way to backing this up, based partly on the bad press that arises from suing open source and partly from the fact that open source software will remove any patent-infringing code...and patents that are too open-ended are doomed to failure in the courts.
InformationWeek: Meanwhile, Red Hat has spun off the Fedora Foundation into an independent organisation with the view to creating a software patent commons, modeled after the popular Creative Commons. "As part of the transition, the Fedora open source project will transfer development work and copyright ownership of contributed code to the foundation but Red Hat will continue to provide substantial financial and engineering support." Red Hat is keen to change the patent regulations...
BusinessWeek: Meanwhile, Microsoft has lost a patent infringement case. This is the sort of story I like, because it involves a Guatamalan inventor succeeding in an intellectual property lawsuit against one of the giants of the industry...Carlos Amado won $8.96 million in the settlement for a patent "covering technology that linked Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program with its Accel database". This is remarkably similar to Microsoft's recent XML patent, and it's possible they made the patent to avoid someone else doing it later. They haven't actually indicated anything like that, though.
InformationWeek: Meanwhile, Red Hat has spun off the Fedora Foundation into an independent organisation with the view to creating a software patent commons, modeled after the popular Creative Commons. "As part of the transition, the Fedora open source project will transfer development work and copyright ownership of contributed code to the foundation but Red Hat will continue to provide substantial financial and engineering support." Red Hat is keen to change the patent regulations...
BusinessWeek: Meanwhile, Microsoft has lost a patent infringement case. This is the sort of story I like, because it involves a Guatamalan inventor succeeding in an intellectual property lawsuit against one of the giants of the industry...Carlos Amado won $8.96 million in the settlement for a patent "covering technology that linked Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program with its Accel database". This is remarkably similar to Microsoft's recent XML patent, and it's possible they made the patent to avoid someone else doing it later. They haven't actually indicated anything like that, though.
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