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Richard Stallman making a point against software patents: Everybody has cancer - why not you?

Software patents are useless. Period.

The decision is very risky as the quality of the decision of the Circuit Court was very high.

They will make Bilski fail again.

Well, actually no one so far disputed the case Microsoft makes. Mullar does:

In response to numerous requests for comments regarding a lawsuit filed against me in Washington, I would like to make the following comments.

I am the inventor of U.S. Patent No. 6,411,941 relating to software anti-piracy technology, and Ancora is my company.

I applied for my patent in 1998. In 2002, the patent issued from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In 2003, I approached Microsoft and had several discussions with a Microsoft lawyer and employees of Microsoftâ(TM)s Anti Piracy group about my invention and the benefits Microsoft could realize by using it. Microsoft declined and said they had no interest in my invention.

After 3 years of working at a start up without salary and benefits, and with a first child about to be born, it was time for me to move on and look for a job to support my family. We ceased business operations at Ancora in 2005, and Microsoft was the first company to extend me an employment offer. I accepted. In early 2006, I moved my family to Seattle from Los Angeles, bought a house and focused on my new career at Microsoft. I enjoyed my job very much, and Microsoft commended my work and even promoted me.
When I joined Microsoft, I notified them in writing of Ancora and my patent in both my resume and in my employment agreement. In its complaint against me, Microsoft withheld the portions of these key documents that show this.

At the same time I was employed at Microsoft, but unknown to me, Microsoft was developing what is now known as âoeOEM Activation.â OEM Activation is installed on computers made by HP, Dell, Toshiba and others (called OEMs) to prevent piracy of Microsoftâ(TM)s Windows Vista software installed on those computers. This work was being done in a different department at Microsoft.

Now, I personally find there should not be patents at all. It is a shame to see the defamation campaign of Microsoft. The case shows that the patent system does not have any benefit at all for software. Small inventors cannot enforce them against ruthless big companies:

OEM Activation is a blatant copy of my invention. In fact, the same Microsoft person that I explained my invention to back in 2003 was involved in the development of OEM Activation.

"the fact remains that patents are what drives most research and technological progress in the world"

Which shows that you have no clue about the economic research on the patent system.

Sure, statistic research which measures 'innovation' of a nation by the number of patents granted (or "applied for" as we don't have good data on granting, it takes 4-5 years to examine a patent) will find that more patents mean more innovation but the fact is that the patent system is based on economic voodoo. It is a belief system with the assumption that you can create property.

As it is an incentive system we don't know if an economy is better off with a patent system than without. Therefore a patent system is not "justified". At least in the field of software and business methods and other service sectors the system is very damaging as it was not made for these markets.

The problem is that there should not be a patent at all. Because patents are just slack for the economy as every economist will tell you. The only leftover the free trade revolution failed to kill in the last century.

Patents for software are in particular dangerous.

The fact with patents is that registering a patent is like registering a trade mark. Hire more patent attorneys and you get more patents. And no one asks whether they will produce any return on investment.

An innovative company will bail the lawyers out, invest in real R&D and lobby for patent reform to overcome the madness. Research institutions should not patent at all.

http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/petition

Good catch. This was also reported by Stop Software Patents about a week ago.

Same for copyright and patent law. A lesser evil somewhere in the cloud?

Bruse Byfield is a troll. So why debate his accusations?

Yes, there are many problems: patents, open standards, dmca restrictions and so forth. But open source is still the best of all worlds.

RedHat as a company applies the usual tactics but as a community member gives a lot. Sure corporations are vulnerable to money. Novell is a good example...

Saying what you think your audience wants you to say instead of what your principles are should pretty much disqualify you from running for office irrespective of what party are you in.

True, but it is not all about populism. They also do what the lobby wants them to say...

Well, actually I was quite shocked. I am not a friend of Microsoft in particular but it made me feel very sad for them. What happened to that company. Look, I browsed the Channel 9 website yesterday, the only website where I believed Microsoft understood the net and its now turned into a crappy platform. It was really good and they just messed it up. Then there was this Seinfielf video posted. I don't know Seinfeld and whether he is funny or was funny or whatever (you don't see him on TV here), a friend of mine has a dvd collection with some seasons but I actually have no idea what this Seinfeld humour is about, I read on slashdot that they would hire this comedian to do some spots to turn the Vista image and the agency was praised as beeing really good by the media.

And then this! It's horrible. It is even worse than the worst you would imagine. I don't understand the puns but the acting is awful.

What happened to that company? It is burning from many sides. And this video is like the PR agency was paid to make complete fools of them. I don't get the shoe Vista connection. What is funny here? People don't recognize Bill Gates but know the shoe. Hahaha. Bill Gates is platinum card owner of the shoe shop. hahaha. The card shows this old picture, hahahahaha.

I mean honestly, it made me depressed. I sent an email to friends sayzing this was surreal. I wrote a blogpost about but then stopped. This is mad.

I once say a dvd about Belgium history and in the 90th it was about the child abuse scandal demonstrations and that one prankster put a cake in his face. Today Microsoft does it on its own.

This company is autistic and faces a domino effect. They bullied so many groups, business partners, customers and persons, just think of ISO and open XML and so many people are fed up with their products. They delivered Vista late and it kind of failed. They did one stupid campaign saying: "Vista does not suck, your peers just want to make you believe", and all Pr professionals laughed at them. And then they hired Seinfeld and made even more shit. We are the retards of computers. Computers are boring and nerdy and we are good at this. We hire over the hill comedians to tell the world we suck. Ah, and then there is this Bill Gates we told you before was retired but he just came back, the person everyone like Seinfeld believes is the super brain, and bought new shoes. We don't speak about Vista but about shoes. You don't like Vista? Nobody does. You have the choice and our customers -- corny joke ahead - shoes our stuff.

You think we are bullies, corrupt your government and sent the most ruthless tobacco lobbyists to your policy makers, but in reality we are just autistic nerds, the computer guys with no attachment to reality, come and hug us. Apple and KDE4 is shiny and fun but we are for the boring rest. We aim for the below mediocre market. Come and join us.

Basically it says nothing about validity of the claims, anyone can make the customs raid some companies. In fact when the same company went after Sandisk at a trade fair the troll utterly failed but the public damage to sandisk was done.

It is an Italian patent troll. The way to solve the patent problem is via the political level. Germany is the heart of European patent culture. There is a new campaign Softsoftwarepatents.org

Trolls want to scare you. The whole software patent system is a mess and its time that industry steps up to fight back. Patents are useless and dangerous in software.