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.

Here's the press relase from the EU Commission announcing a settlement with Microsoft. As you will see, it's some good, some bad. The patent part is terrible. Worse than terrible. They are not blocked from offering patent deals, only constrained as to how much to charge for a license, which is not and never was the issue. So they'll beef up those initiatives, I'm sure.

" The future of software patents in Europe is uncertain. The Software Patent Directive was rejected by the European Parliament on the 6th of July 2005, after seven years of campaigning by people in FSFE and other organisations - most notably, one of our associate organisations, FFII. This was a monumental victory and displays the legislative competence of the Free Software community. However, the struggle is not over. Information about the current status of software patents in the EU can be found in this November 2007 blog entry: Do software patents exist in the EU?

The software patent issue is likely to return via initiatives such as the Community Patent or the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)..."

Bangalore: While many people take the slogan “Saying no to software patents” to mean the right to usage of free Internet software, the issue of patenting is rooted in a larger milieu, affecting not only users of software, but also those who develop software and service it.

Software patents have long been the source of a great deal of concern in the free software community; patents are by far the biggest restraint on our ability to program our own computers. Those who worry about these things have expected that attacks might come from patent trolls, or from software companies with fading prospects.

The contentious issue of software patents is rearing its head again, both in India and globally. The Indian Patent Office, for instance, invited companies and institutions to comment on its Draft Manual 2008 — Patent Practice & Procedure (software patents included) this April.

Life is never easy for an open source evangelist. The OOXML drama came to a close on 2nd April 2008 and we were on to our next issue -- software patents. The Draft Patent Manual might end up bringing software patents through the back door. this would be surprising because the Indian parliament explicitly rejected software patents in the Patent Amendment Act 2005.

"Brussels, 23 October 2007 -- EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to proceed aggressively against its competitors."

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.