AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...
« Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every design decision brings a risk of getting sued. Patents in other fields restrict factories, but software patents restrict every computer user. Economic research shows that they even retard progress...»
While Microsoft intends to intimidate its Free software rivals using software patents, or at least force the foolish ones among them to pay ‘protection money’, the company also gets to grip with the fact that software patents are its enemy.
A look back at Professor Moglen's words about Java and last week's talk about software patents; a Microsoft-fueled agitator attacks Apple, Cisco and other Microsoft rivals using patents
... 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.
"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.
Patent advocates, large successful businesses, and politicians are so enthusiastic about the patenting of software that it’s hard to accept arguments from people like the FFII and Free Software Foundation who claim that the software industry simply does not need software patents and would be far better off without them.
Critics of the misguided scope of patents point to scholarly work that arguably supports the abolishment of software patents; Pirate Party UK promises to abolish software patents
On 23rd August, 2008, a group of Bangaloreans is to gather outside Town Hall to protest software Patents under the aegis of Free Software Users Group, Bangalore at 5.30 PM.
There's quite a bit in the press these days about companies (surprisingly, some very large ones) aggressively investing to expand their IP portfolios by purchasing patents or filing for patents on anything that can be imagined - often without stopping to consider whether the "innovation" has utility and is truly novel and non-obvious.
