Patent Law Ruling Threatens FOSS

savio13 writes "The EFF has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a patent law ruling that could pose a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software projects. A recent Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision required that even the most obvious incremental advances can be patented unless it can be proved that someone else suggested it prior to the patent being filed. As such, many 'bad patents' are being used as roadblocks for legitimate innovators, especially those working for FOSS projects (who have better things to do then search through thousands of technical papers for some mention of the obvious). The full brief is available online in PDF format."

Comments

If you don't vote Libertarian you ASKED FOR THIS!

[Anon. Libertarian]

This is just yet another example of abuse of Government power. If the government weren't as large & powerful as they are today, then corporations such as Microsoft wouldn't have the leverage as they do. The competition would be there, rather than monopolies. Another way of putting it, the government wouldn't even have to go after Microsoft as they wouldn't be a monopoly. That is all the laws in the US does, it protects the monopolies and it eliminates small businesses. The patent laws are no exception.