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I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.

Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.

Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments and to point out that these other issues exist.

The good news is that there's the Bilski case which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries, most notably Israel, New_Zealand, the EU, Australia, and something starting in . Help sought.

I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.

Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.

Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments and to point out that these other issues exist.

The good news is that there's the Bilski case which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries, most notably Israel, New_Zealand, the EU, Australia, and something starting in . Help sought.

I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.

Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.

Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments and to point out that these other issues exist.

The good news is that there's the Bilski case which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries, most notably Israel, New_Zealand, the EU, Australia, and something starting in . Help sought.

I can only speak for the domain of software development, but there was a period from 1996-2008 when the USA was disproportionately feeling the rewards of software patenting. The rewards were always severly outweighed by the costs ($11 billion in 2008), but there were always people pointing at these rewards.

Now that the companies of the USA's economy will increasingly become the targets of software patents instead of the users, those rewards will diminishing.

Patent policy for other domains can be considered while only looking at the economic effects. For software, the social effects have to be considered too because software development is something that individuals can do and participate in - like writing a book, reporting news, or writing music. So, it makes sense to have economic studies to make our point, but we also have to remember to have other arguments and to point out that these other issues exist.

The good news is that there's the Bilski case which might solve the problem, and there are also initiatives in other countries, most notably Israel, New_Zealand, the EU, Australia, and something starting in . Help sought.

I've tried to figure out Google's stance on software patents, but it's never clear.

The brief they signed for the Supreme Court Bilski case does seem to argue against software patents, so that's the main thing.

On the other hand, they're stockpiling them. But do they use them aggressively? Have they ever argued *for* them being generally allowed by the USPTO?

(I know they support "patent reform", but that's only important for massive corporations, it's got little to do with anything of importance to software developers or users)

Here's what I have so far:

• Google @ swpat.org

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/VoloMedia's_podcasting_patent

The End Software Patents campaign has posted:

• an analysis of the implications for software patents
• A html version of the court transcript

The End Software Patents campaign has posted:

• an analysis of the implications for software patents
• A html version of the court transcript

And how many lucrative patents will this research yield?

When can we expect the next shakedown?

Help in documenting CSIRO and other troll activities is welcome:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CSIRO_wifi_patent
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_trolls
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Litigation_and_specific_patents

And how many lucrative patents will this research yield?

When can we expect the next shakedown?

Help in documenting CSIRO and other troll activities is welcome:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CSIRO_wifi_patent
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_trolls
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Litigation_and_specific_patents

And how many lucrative patents will this research yield?

When can we expect the next shakedown?

Help in documenting CSIRO and other troll activities is welcome:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CSIRO_wifi_patent
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_trolls
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Litigation_and_specific_patents

I've started documenting it here:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/U.S._Ethernet_Innovations_v._many_defendants_(2009%2C_USA)

Help sought. Thanks.

Good. Hit a nerve there. de Icaza's behavior and statements leave no doubt that he acts and talks like a Microsoft shill. It's been obvious for a decade. It's been undeniable by even the most obtuse for years, especially since his anti-open standards statement to hinder ODF.

Microsoft should ask for its money back. de Icaza is a terrible troll.

de Icaza doesn't have to be good, he just has to make noise. That's the role of a troll. M$ only trots him out and yanks his leash when a distraction is needed. His bag of tricks consists of name calling, which works for press dependent Microsoft partner advertising money.

Or to distract from technical issues like quality and performance. Mono is very poor copy of Java and there are many other tools much further along that Mono can never catch up with including Ruby, Python, and Perl.

Maybe a distraction from Lisbon and Software Patents up Europe's backdoor? It's only Europe that is holding out still. Anything to distract from the freedom to use software. Technological independence is a pillar in modern democracy and of national independence. That's been dependent on both open source (inlcuding Free Software) and on open standards.

Richard Stallman from the USA, Edgar Villanueva from Peru, and many others have made the incontrovertable point that Miguel is actively fighting against. There are some very nasty legal names for what Miguel is doing to your country.

Microsoft should ask for its money back. de Icaza is a terrible troll.

de Icaza doesn't have to be good, he just has to make noise. That's the role of a troll. M$ only trots him out and yanks his leash when a distraction is needed. His bag of tricks consists of name calling, which works for press dependent Microsoft partner advertising money.

Or to distract from technical issues like quality and performance. Mono is very poor copy of Java and there are many other tools much further along that Mono can never catch up with including Ruby, Python, and Perl.

Maybe a distraction from Lisbon and Software Patents up Europe's backdoor? It's only Europe that is holding out still. Anything to distract from the freedom to use software.

Technological independence is a pillar in modern democracy and of national independence. That's been dependent on both open source (inlcuding Free Software) and on open standards. Miguel is actively fighting against both and encouraging people to move away from both. There are some very nasty legal names for what Miguel is doing to your country.

Microsoft is pushing software patents and DRM around the world. These are the two main things blocking free software from being compatible, so this is holding back the technical progress and the spread of free software.

MS's policies are getting worse and worse, so I can't see why helping them is in our interest.

I've been documenting Microsoft's patent activity, and I fail to see any change for the better.

• FSF's Amicus Curiae Brief
• FSF's press release
• List of Bilski v. Kappos amicus briefs

    The brief can be split roughly in three. There's the "Interest Of
    Amicus Curiae" section, which is a long description of FSF, to inform the Supreme Court why they should be interested in reading the brief. Then there's the Argument, which has the remaining two parts. The first is about the previous rulings which indicate that software has already been explicitly excluded by the Supreme Court. The last part, which starts at "II. For Many Software Developers, The Patent System Is Unjust.", deals with how software patents have proved to hinder, rather than promote, the progress of the useful arts - which means they have no valid constitutional basis.

Lets hope you do better at editing the wiki than you do posting URLs to slashdot. Do you mean Microsoft's patent infringements?

This is a really expensive way to dodge a tiny part of the software patent problem, and it involves paying Microsoft millions. And for every such trick we win, how many did we lose?

The upcoming Bilski review is the first time in 28 years that the Supreme Court in the USA will review the patentability of software - that's were we can get a real victory. I'm working on an amicus brief which'll have to be submitted within about two weeks. If anyone wants to help, it would be very useful to expand the swpat.org wiki's information about studies which show the harm of software patents:

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies

And to add more info about arguments for abolishing software patents:

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Arguments

This is our big chance and might be the last one for decades.

This is a really expensive way to dodge a tiny part of the software patent problem, and it involves paying Microsoft millions. And for every such trick we win, how many did we lose?

The upcoming Bilski review is the first time in 28 years that the Supreme Court in the USA will review the patentability of software - that's were we can get a real victory. I'm working on an amicus brief which'll have to be submitted within about two weeks. If anyone wants to help, it would be very useful to expand the swpat.org wiki's information about studies which show the harm of software patents:

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies

And to add more info about arguments for abolishing software patents:

• http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Arguments

This is our big chance and might be the last one for decades.

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

No, it was always just a plain patent infringement case about using XML for the reason that the mark up language was created. The sad part is that i4i created a product that uses Word for all of its user interface. That means they are using way more of Microsoft's code in their own product than Microsoft could have ever "stolen" from them.

How is writing a plugin for Word make i4i using "Microsoft code in their own product" ? If Microsoft is not OK with the plugin they could have removed the plugin functionality form Word instead of really stealing from i4i.

Here are his previous comments:

• Andy Grove on software patents

...but there's one more from around 2006 that I'm still looking for. Check back in a few minutes.

No, it was always just a plain patent infringement case about using XML for the reason that the mark up language was created. The sad part is that i4i created a product that uses Word for all of its user interface. That means they are using way more of Microsoft's code in their own product than Microsoft could have ever "stolen" from them.

A "use em or lose'm" rule would be good for fixing the patent troll problem, but it would do nothing to prevent software companies from attacking free software or from ruining standards.

A "use em or lose'm" rule would be good for fixing the patent troll problem, but it would do nothing to prevent software companies from attacking free software or from ruining standards.

I've started a page to document this concept on the swpat.org wiki:

• Unifying international patent systems

    They've ponyed up well over a billion dollars in the last five years alone. Another fine won't change anything.

• Microsoft's patent infringements

Microsoft does support reform. "Reform" means making litigation harder for certain types of companies (small companies and companies that don't have a successful product based on the patents), reducing the time for granting patents, and reducing the amount that an infringer can have to pay (by dropping the incentives for litigation, patent trolls should be less common).

All these measures are good for Microsoft and other dominant players who want to use their portfolio strategically to entrench their positions, but these aren't enough to fix society's problems. We need to abolition of software patents, not any kind of reform.

Microsoft does support reform. "Reform" means making litigation harder for certain types of companies (small companies and companies that don't have a successful product based on the patents), reducing the time for granting patents, and reducing the amount that an infringer can have to pay (by dropping the incentives for litigation, patent trolls should be less common).

All these measures are good for Microsoft and other dominant players who want to use their portfolio strategically to entrench their positions, but these aren't enough to fix society's problems. We need to abolition of software patents, not any kind of reform.

Microsoft does support reform. "Reform" means making litigation harder for certain types of companies (small companies and companies that don't have a successful product based on the patents), reducing the time for granting patents, and reducing the amount that an infringer can have to pay (by dropping the incentives for litigation, patent trolls should be less common).

All these measures are good for Microsoft and other dominant players who want to use their portfolio strategically to entrench their positions, but these aren't enough to fix society's problems. We need to abolition of software patents, not any kind of reform.

    In the case Bilski v. Doll, the Supreme Court is reviewing the patentability of software for the first time since 1981. This is a very rare chance to fix things, and you're exactly the type of case they want to hear.

    For the most part, briefs are being submitted by the mega corporations and the groups of patent lawyers. Ordinary programmers and small businesses are not participating, and they're exactly the groups that are bearing the costs and restrictions of software patents.

    Please help spread the word. I'll be sending out more info about this in the coming days via the EndSoftwarePatents mailing list.

Thanks a lot. Navigating the USA's court system isn't my speciality. I just know enough to know how to ask for help :-)

I've added a link now from http://swpat.org/wiki/i4i_v._Microsoft

If we had the transcript, maybe we could see:

• Did the judge understand the patent?
• How did the judge interpret each concept?
• What misconduct did the judge see?
• Is the exclusion of future products that remove meta data there because the patent doesn't cover that or because the judge wants to give MS a path to avoid future infringement?
• Any hints at what MS's possible grounds for further appeal are?

The court transcript, even though it's a public domain document, is only provided to people by the court if they make an account and pay 8c per page. Once you have the page, since it's public domain, you can post it anywhere. RECAP is a Firefox or IceCat plugin that can automatically post those public domain transcripts to archive.org so that we can all read them and link to them, and that would help with documenting case law in the USA on swpat.org, among other things.

If we could see the court transcript, we'd have more info about why MS were fined x, y, z.

If someone has a PACER account, they could put the transcript on archive.org simply with the RECAP plugin:

* https://www.recapthelaw.org/

And then we could have a more complete picture on http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft

If someone could RECAP the court transcript of the recent i4i v. Microsoft case, that would be very useful.

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Talk:I4i_v._Microsoft

Thanks.

If someone could RECAP the court transcript of the recent i4i v. Microsoft case, that would be very useful.

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Talk:I4i_v._Microsoft

Thanks.

I'm documenting this here: swpat.org/wiki/Bilski. All help appreciated.

If anyone wants to help, I'm documenting this on en.swpat.org/wiki/Blackboard_inc.

AIUI, Stallman's position is not against C# as a language, or implementing C# on Linux. FTA:

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org/ and http://progfree.org./ This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

I wish some knowledgeable folks would weigh in how possible it would actually be for MS to do this for C# in particular. (Do they already hold relevant patents?)

Whether you like MS and think Stallman needs a shave and a bath or not, it is an indisputable fact that MS has threatened to use patents against Linux in the past.

I think Kappos having been brought up in IBM will make him more open to (or at least less skeptical of) open source-type ideas than any of the other former directors, and his computer/engineering background will also make him more critical of our patent system, and not as focused on ratcheting protections up as far as they can go.

I don't know what being "more open to open source-type ideas" means. Nor would I use the term "IP" as you did. Software patents hurt all developers except those at IBM because IBM holds the most patents. Holding the most patents means IBM can cross-license far more easily than any other patent holder. In fact, we know how valuable cross-licensing is to IBM because IBM has told us. IBM has told us cross-licensing outweighs the value of collecting patent license fees by an order of magnitude. IBM got ten times the value of using patents held by others than licensing its own patents. This means IBM alone can skirt the trouble the patent system causes everyone else. IBM can completely undo the alleged advantage the patent system is supposed to give smaller organizations trying to commercially launch their work. You really should read Richard Stallman's examination of the US patent system as it applies to software development for a fuller description of the details on how IBM's statement in 1990 reveals the harm done to all software developers under the USPTO's thumb.

The solution is to completely deny anyone software patents so software developers can go back to relying on trademark and copyright law which is sufficient to avoid defrauding consumers and enforcing licenses, respectively. But I doubt the world's largest patent holder is in favor of disempowerment, and now that they have a man running the USPTO I doubt we'll see that office seeking to make software algorithms unpatentable.

I think what we're seeing here is just another instance of how corporate-friendly President Obama is. The more I read self-identified "open source" adherents saying how good this move is, the more I think that the open source movement is too corporate-friendly as well. Mere affiliation with a movement that isn't fighting for software freedom isn't doing you any favors; raise your critical standards and keep on fighting for the end of software patents.