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

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.

Reform is ahead, Microsoft plays mental games against Linux, Microsoft-affiliated patent harvesters revisited and studied

Chrome comes under software patent attack, Apple to fight back against Nokia over patents, a new (if any) model for protectionism is needed

At the Linux Foundation's annual LinuxCon event this week, Columbia University law professor and Software Freedom Law Center founder Eben Moglen explained that prospects for software patent reform are bleak and that the time has come for the free software community to start finding ways to solve its patent problems by using the patent system itself.

Law firms that supported continued software patents have published critiques of the arguments put forward by those who opposed software patents and asked for an exclusion to be added to the Patent Bill. In this article Peter Harrison, vice President of the NZOSS responds.

Philips might be taken to court after using illegal force to 'protect' patents; US candidates on patent reform; patent trolls watch.

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.

Dave Garrod, a lawyer who leads patent reform group PubPat's initiative against false marking, is now playing the part of the patent troll. He filed a patent infringement lawsuit against a number of tech companies, including a small Texas software company that went out of business years ago.