Software Writers Patently Enraged

[Telepathic Industries]

One site to keep note of is:
http://swpat.ffii.org/

And a date for your diary:

UK Patent Orifice: Software Patentability Rally Brussels 2002-06-19

The UK Patent Office, wearing the hat of the British Government, has
entrusted one of its subcontractors to organise a high profile rally in
support of the proposed CEC/BSA software patentability directive. Speeches
will be held by hard core patent movement activists from the European
Commission, the UK Government, the European Patent Office, the IBM patent
department and some well-known patent law firms. At the end of an intensive
6 hour long software patentablity propaganda firework a podium discussion
will be held in which an "open source representative" will be allowed to sit
at the table. The organisers' initial choice was Alan Cox. Alan has
occasionally expressed deep concern about the software patent problem but,
as a core developper of the Linux kernel and other key projects, he never
really had the time to study the legal intricacies. This fact alongside with
his long hair and beard seemed to make him particularly qualified for the
role of the social romantic dissident, generously tolerated by a group of
patent lawyers posing as the businessmen of the real software industry. Alan
immediately understood the game and declined the invitation, handing the
case over to the Eurolinux Alliance. We have meanwhile been put on the
conference program, but our abstract was doctored, our criticism suppressed,
our message distorted, so that now we nevertheless fit into the design of
this rally.

Alistair Kelman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Markus Kuhn" <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Cc: <rms@gnu.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 3:12 PM
Subject: Re: Software Writers Patently Enraged


> After reading
>
>   http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51689,00.html
>
> I wonder, why US companies who suffer substantial legal claims from
> defending themselves against ridiculous patent claims don't try to sue
> the US Patent Office for damages?
>
> Has this been tried?
>
> It sounds to me, like going to court against the Patent Office and suing
> them for unfairly disrupting business by issuing such patents might have
> far better long-term effects than wasting money on defending against
> just yet another single patent. It might even help to correct the
> incentives of and pressures on patent examiners, who currently face far
> more trouble when they want to reject a patent, but can't find quickly a
> prior-art literature reference that documents that an ideas is clearly
> fairly obvious. You just have to find a good lawyer who is willing to
> slaughter the very cow (i.e., Patent Office) that is otherwise his or
> her best source of milk.
>
> Markus
>
> --
> Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
> Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
>
>
>
>