After protests from her staff, the public, and following layoffs too Alison Brimelow essentially quits her job as head of the European Patent Office

In response to the controversy surrounding software patents, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has tightened up considerably on granting them, and they are now harder to get than any other type of patent (except for business methods). That’s the view of Mark A.

MS and GE (Microsoft and General Electric) have jointly filed their case in favour of software patents in Europe (de facto banning of Free software) and FFII has made their mockery available as HTML, but what we also have is the submission from Red Hat, which only Glyn Moody appears to have analysed.

Intel's Andy Grove compares patents to toxic loans. Setting aside Intel's many market-bound crimes for a moment, here we have another abusive monopolist saying what he really thinks about intellectual monopolies...

"In recent weeks, a couple New World Notes posts inspired an interesting e-mail conversation with a very interesting figure: Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, and the original author of the General Public License, which the Second Life viewer code (like much software) is licensed under..."

Europe's software patents cartel is rearmed. Another look at the TomTom/FAT case, GE's new role in Europe, and growing opposition to software patents

In the wake of the Open Invention Network challenge to Microsoft’s patents related to Linux, the company’s good cop-bad cop routine has gone into overdrive.