German Parliament decided upon a joint motion to limit software patents urging the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. Software should exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents.

"...In the speech, Eben discusses in depth the origins of the copyright and patent system, and how Free Software interacts with that history..."

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) alleges that Cisco, famous for making equipment used to route data around the Internet, has infringed on the FSF’s copyright in numerous programs used in their Internet routing equipment marketed under the Linksys brand [...] It’s important to note some differences between how the FSF handles copyright infringement and what the FSF does in their everyday work

... the different kinds of objections to software patents, including the point that there are only limited ways of thinking about programming, as Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming shows.

...the practical benefits and harms of software patents, and spoke at length about the difference between legal protection of software in the form of patents and via copyright.

As you likely heard on any number of news sites, Oracle has filed suit against Google, claiming that Android infringes some of its Java-related copyrights and patents. Too little information is available about the copyright infringement claim to say much about it yet; we expect we'll learn more as the case proceeds.

Judge Dale Kimball’s 102 page opinion Friday in the SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc. (available here), has been widely reported on. It is a surprisingly easy read: Bravo Judge Kimball (and clerks). My comments are limited to the copyright aspects of the case.

Two law professors from UC Berkeley have come up with a novel idea to protect open source developers from patent bullies. They call it the Defensive Patent License. They hope the DPL can address the objections FOSS developers have with patents the way the GPL addressed them for copyright.

Carlo Piana seems to have just explained why attempts to work around software patents or use patent pools are probably a waste of time and genuinely good effort

"End Software Patents, a project working toward the elimination of software patents, was launched today. The ESP project will initially focus on two approaches: 1) assisting corporations that choose to challenge software patents in the courts and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the basis that patents for software and designs with no physically innovative step have no legal validity, and 2) public education aimed at passing laws to protect software from patent law. [...] In a separate announcement today, ESP released its first report on the current state of software and business method patents. The report covers the economic impact of software patents, including the $11.4 billion that U.S. businesses waste each year on software patent litigation.