One of Microsoft's top attorneys on Wednesday called for an overhaul of the patent system to create a single, global patent office that will streamline and accelerate the approval process.

Red Hat and Novell stood up to a patent bully and got a favorable jury verdict in the IPI trial which invalidated some software patents that should never have been issued. It's hard to see how that's not a good thing for open source. It's also good that the particular battle has inspired discussion of the need for fundamental reform of the U.S. patent system.

Last September, the House of Representatives approved the Patent Reform Act of 2007, legislation that would make important changes to America's patent system.

While I'm certainly a big fan of involving more people in the process of reviewing patents, I've been a huge skeptic of the "Peer-to-Patent" program that the USPTO tested over the past few years. As I noted earlier, there's very little incentive for most people to actually get involved in peer reviewing a patent that early on.

The new US-President Obama wants to improve "predictability and clarity" in the patent system as well as "patent quality".

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to overhaul the nation's patent system, overcoming objections by many Republicans, small inventors and some labor unions.

If you're getting sued for patent infringement, you have a right to know who is really behind the lawsuit, and so does the public. So I started digging up publicly available information. What I found amazed me - so many patent plaintiffs, especially in the Eastern District of Texas, make no products, and just try to extract money out of their IP.

Google's head of patents believes the U.S. patent system is "in crisis". Discussing patent reform at the annual Stanford Summit in Northern California, associate general counsel Michelle Lee told conference attendees that the American system is "out-of-balance [and] needs to be remedied".

The black clouds that for the last three months have been hanging over VOIP service provider Vonage parted ever so slightly today, allowing through the tiniest sliver of sunshine as a federal appeals judge raised the possibility of a compromise in its patent war with Verizon.