IT organizations that feel safe from open source licensing violations might be wise to check their code, as open source components are rapidly seeping into applications by way of offshore and in-house developers taking open source shortcuts, as well as a growing population of open source-savvy grads entering the workforce.

Shaalu Merhra, an attorney with Perkins Coie, spoke at LinuxWorld 2008 about the legal implications of adopting the GPL within one's organization, and about outsourcing and performing due diligence on the software stack.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is experimenting with a program that calls on the wisdom of the masses to help patent examiners better review applications. The program, Peer-to-Patent, publishes applications on the Web and asks the public to help determine whether the idea already is in use.

The stay on SCO v. AutoZone has been lifted, and the case will resume after December 31. We learn this from the minutes of the status hearing that was held on the 22nd, now listed on PACER. I gather from the minutes that SCO asked for the stay to remain in place, which surprises me, but then again, nothing SCO does should surprise me any more.

Those were the words of Microsoft counsel Tom Burt, regarding the upholding of a previous ruling overturning the $1.5B Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft patent infringement judgment.

In the proprietary production world, what matters about a copyright is who owns it. In the free production world, however, who owns a copyright is relatively unimportant. What matters is what license it is offered under. There is a very simple rule of thumb about the best license to use: use a 'free,copyleft license'

It's hard to compete for attention with the drama of the big bailout and this presidential race. But bubbles are news, at least when they burst. The patent bubble hasn't burst, but judging by last week's Wall Street Journal story on Intellectual Ventures, it's getting pretty big.