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Perens on Patents
lewiz writes "An interesting interview with Bruce Perens over at the BBC. He's up discussing the role of HP, IBM, et al and the move towards Linux. However, his main point is about software patents and how they are much more of a problem than SCO: 'We're looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so.'"
In my experience, IBM does attack medium-sized developers with frivolous patent threats. Fortunately, the company I worked for when I encountered this refused to back down. In one case, we spent two years explaining that our code was not infringing on their patent (scaling fonts for print-preview). When they finally accepted that, they hit us with a different one. It was arguably obvious and unoriginal (showing print-preview and the source document at the same time). Rather than fight it, though, we tweaked our product so that you couldn't see the other windows while doing a preview.
I suspect IBM tried this on lots of other companies as well, because I started seeing more and more programs doing the same thing we did, including ones that came from smaller labels. (I guess we should have patented our technique for avoiding IBM's patent.)
US:l
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.htm
Europe:
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
(This link is down right now, hope it gets back up fast).
Hopefully, if either the US or the EU see the light, the other and the rest of the world will follow suit.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The USPTO states in their process manual that they _are_ the ones that should search for prior art before approving a patent.
You can find the exact section here on their website
The main page of their Manual of Patent Examining Procedure is at this link.
To quote the sections that apply here:
1.104 Nature of examination.
(a) Examiner's action.
(1) On taking up an application for examination or a patent in a reexamination proceeding, the examiner shall make a thorough study thereof and shall make a thorough investigation of the available prior art relating to the subject matter of the claimed invention. The examination shall be complete with respect both to compliance of the application or patent under reexamination with the applicable statutes and rules and to the patentability of the invention as claimed, as well as with respect to matters of form, unless otherwise indicated.