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Domain: bustpatents.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bustpatents.com.
Stories · 4
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Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright
mdielmann writes "CNet has a story about a lawsuit asking for copyright protection to be removed from software, while leaving patent protection in place. Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time. It looks like this would hamstring licenses such as the GPL, which are often based on copyright privileges, while leaving OSS vulnerable to patent infringement. Apparently, he's been working on this for the last three years." -
Losing the War on Patents
theodp writes: "Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly's once-hyped BountyQuest.com takes a beating in a Salon article today that takes note of Amazon's recent decision to license one of the few patents BountyQuest claimed to have found winning prior art for, a patent held by the InTouch Group, who had sued Amazon for infringing on the patent prior to Bezos' reported $1+ million BountyQuest investment. In the article, professional patent buster Greg Aharonian provocatively remarks that "BountyQuest was always a joke...Bezos and O'Reilly were never seriously interested in patent quality...Bezos just used O'Reilly to help Amazon...That Amazon ended up licensing the InTouch patent just shows how stupid the whole thing is."" -
Scientific American On Bad Patents
dltallan writes: "Scientific American has a short article in which Gregory Aharonian presents his picks for the four worst patents granted. I like the patent for training with manuals (1998)." The Bustpatents site is worth spending some eye-rubbing time on. -
Patent Warfare
H310iSe writes: "The California Recorder has an article covering another of the many ridiculous Web patents out there, this one held by TechSearch claims rights for a "'remote query communication system' patent, which covers a method for compressing and decompressing data transmitted from a server to an end user." Basically they're patenting Web servers. What's interesting is their selective enforcement, they are currently suing Greg Aharonian, one of their most vocal critics, for infringement on their patent. He's fighting it. TechSearch has quite a history of aggressive patent enforcement ("extortion" claims Intel's spokesperson Chuck Mulloy), some major players like United Airlines have caved in; Intel, however, has not (surprised?)."