It turns out there were two patent cases filed by the Niro Scavone firm on Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Florida. The first was the Scott Harris/James Parker case I wrote about yesterday. The second was none other than the Global Patent Holdings JPEG patent! Adam Heffner again acted as local counsel to Ray Niro. Interestingly, all 7 defendants are Florida corporations. Is Acacia preparing for patent reform by filing in jurisdictions that make sense? Are they planning to sue more companies, in more of the 94 judicial districts?

Software patent law is not for the faint hearted. Now the FSF has funded a new video where top hackers and legal experts explain where the idea came from and just why it is so bad for free software. With increasing evidence that patents harm, rather then help, innovation, is the tide beginning to turn against software patents?

"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.

Jobs replied, saying that “[a] patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other open source codecs now.” The news spread like wildfire. This episode provides a good example of how software patents harm innovation and why they are ultimately incompatible with Free Software. Any program - Free Software or not - is threatened by patents.

Large companies are spending more on patents than on research and development. The number of patent lawsuits is exploding. Software patents are extra toxic to free software because there cannot be per copy royalties. And they certainly are making the end user have less choices as demonstrated by blocking of several products because of patent suits around the world.

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly.

A patent is a powerful thing: it's a legal monopoly on an invention for up to 20 years. In the past, patents were almost universally regarded as essential to the economy. By rewarding innovation, they created an incentive for inventors to invent more. Yet more than any other time in our history, the patent system now is under fire, and enormous change has been afoot to "fix" it.

More resistance to software patents and an example (in video) of patent madness.

“It’s like they tried to patent a time machine, and they told you how big it was, and the color of the seats, but neglected to mention how it travels through time.”
Software patents don't promote innovation, they STRANGLE it.