Software Patents Roundup: Ambush, Reform, and Lobby

By Roy Schestowitz A summary of news about patents with particular focus on software patents and FOSS.

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How do professional developers deal with software patents?

Summary: What is the impact of software patents on a developer's plans to ... I have a set of my own PHP scripts ... his clients on that level. ...

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Bill Gates Ridicules the GPL While Novell Mops Up with Software ...

Novell role in helping Microsoft made more apparent as Microsoft's portfolio gets discussed, Gates reveals anti-GPL sentiments.

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oyun on Questioning Steve Ballmer: What, you mean he didn't say "a ...

oyun on Questioning Steve Ballmer:. What, you mean he didn't say "a software patent is a cancer, that attaches itself, in an intellectual property sense, to anything it touches"????

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Industry Committee study on Science and Technology is underway

In other words, the only way I could access the audio from this parliamentary committee is to potentially infringe software patents. ...

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How do professional developers deal with software ...

What is the impact of software patents on a developers plans to market, or even use, his/her work I have a set of my own PHP scripts that I want to use for building my clients sites, but I am not sure if any of the routines violate ...

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Virtualization - Patent Reform Bill Stuck in Committee

The patent reform legislation that companies like Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and Cisco were hoping would reduce litigation and improve patent quality hit a ...

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Legal injunction bars Dish Network from selling 4 models of DVRs

A little over a week ago, an appeals court determined that Dish Network (formerly Echostar Communications) had indeed violated a software patent held by ...

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Legal injunction bars Dish Network from selling 4 models of DVRs

By Erica Ogg

A little over a week ago, an appeals court determined that Dish Network (formerly Echostar Communications) had indeed violated a software patent held by TiVo on digital video recorders. (Credit: CNET Networks) ...

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A Soft Introduction to Software Patents

By BRRayve@aol.com (Brian R. Rayve)

Software patents have a very recent history as the first software patent granted was in 1981, in the legal case of Diamond v. Diehr. The claimed invention is a heat treatment of rubber, wherein software code is employed to compute the ...

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Software Patents and Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS ...

Software patent issues specific to FLOSS : While it is important to differentiate software from other subject matter, we also need to ask just how different FLOSS is from non-FLOSS when it comes to patents. ...

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Software Patents: Follow The Leader

By Rowan Wilson

Red Hat argues that its stock-in-trade contributes greatly to the American economy but has achieved its current level of success despite a background of uncertainty over potential software patent ...

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Out of Beta: Argunet 1.0.0 released!

By cvoigt You will reconstruct a small debate about software patents. You can take a look at the final state of this example debate at the Argunet Server of the FU Berlin. Just login and open the debate "Software Patents" with the reader password ...

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Worse Than a Licence to Kill: Licence to Practise Mathematics

By Roy Schestowitz A look at the latest situation regarding software patents and Europe.

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IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues=85

People are confusing whether or not there is legal recognition of software patents with the reach of something like the OSP. Those are different concepts and worth separating in your thinking. Should standards organisations change their policies ...

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GPL Project Watch List for Week of 04/18

By Antony Tran ... around the GPL v3 when it was released, concerning its requirements, the LGPL v3 may be better for those who are looking for a little more licensing freedom, while retaining the protection against software patents of the GPL v3. ...

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Panelists mix it up at ReMIX08

By Brian Finnerty.

In particular, I thought Anil Dash from Six Apart and Jeff Attwood of Coding Horror fame had much to say about what defines open source development, community participation, and the messy tangle of software patents and copyright limits. ...

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Dual-licensing with patents: It's bound to happen

It would be very easy to do as Novell did: Enter into an agreement to make a version of one's software "safe" from patents. It makes Microsoft happy. Presumably it makes one's users happy ("I'm safe from...my vendor and its partners?!").

But it doesn't fix the downstream problem, and it doesn't fix the broken software patent problem. It trades off FUD to make a sale. Myopic and ultimately damaging to one's customers, one's peers, and oneself. This isn't even remotely ...

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O'Reilly Says "Publishers Beware"

By Maya Reynolds

O'Reilly invited readers to join him in urging Amazon to "clarify your intentions with regard to software patents, and avoid any attempts to limit the further development of internet commerce on the basis of the patents you have already ...

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By Steven Hodson

Closely-watched case may spell trouble for software patents :: Ars Technica - this is a slightly older story on FriendFeed that came back to the surface today and it was a comment by Chris White that caught my eye - Wow, ...

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Brief History of Software Patents

By timm

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor for a fixed period of time in exchange for disclosure of an invention.

• 1970s and Before: No Software Patents
• 1980s: Software Patentable as Part of Process/Machine
• 1990s: Software Patentable
• Today: Anything Goes

The patent enables the inventor to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the invention.

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The Scramble for Software Patents

By Brian R. Rayve

Have you come up with an idea, or an innovative process, or developed a neat little prototype around it? Are you totally excited about it and want to release it in the market and test it out? Hold on a bit, because you need to first protect your intellectual property.

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Open standards section on fsfeurope.org

There's now an open standards project section on the fsfeurope.org website. Comments welcome there too (that is, unless you're going to say the formatting of the software patents leaflet is horrible . -- Ciar&#E1n O'Riordan, Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship.

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Confusion reigns on software patents

A row is brewing over the lack of consistency surrounding the protection of software rights, and it needs to be resolved if the UK is to stay in step with European law, say experts.

Last month a High Court judge upheld an appeal from software firm Symbian following the rejection of a patent application it made to the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) ­ – an application that had already been approved by the European Patent Office (EPO).

Under UK law, patents can only be issued for inventions using software as part of their operations, not for software that affects the running of computers.

Any changes to the handling of software patents is likely to come gradually, said Kim Walker, partner at law firm Pinsent Masons. ...

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Rules need a re-write, say IP experts at forum

The rules of the road in intellectual property need a re-write, according to speakers at the Intellectual Property Symposium [...] GPL version 3 license has fuelled fears among large corporations who say some of its provisions could put many of their software patents in jeopardy. ...

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