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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."
Than to sort through yestarday's stories: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/24/15 13218
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
as Greed drives yet more brilliance out of the USA
IMHO, They deliberately try to make it sound like the EFF is at the forefront of this case, appealing it to the Supreme Court.
What really has happened is that KSR has gone to the Supreme Court asking for review, and the Supreme Court granted review.
This happened a few months back, actually.
The EFF has filed a brief in support of KSR.
About 10 other briefs in support of KSR have been filed in support of KSR, besides the EFF one, including some more important ones, like the Solicitor General's (representing the views of the US/Bush Administration).
The Supreme Court generally cares more about what the SG thinks than the EFF.
Think about it this way though, if some part-time OSS developer can stumble on the same idea how non-obvious is it?
There is a difference between "not done yet" and "non-obvious". The non-obvious leap is something where even if you knew about the problem you wouldn't have likely found the solution.
Take LZW for example, it's a rather straightforward addition to LZ78. In my books any competent comp.sci student would try that too. It's obvious. By the same token, it wasn't obvious how to get MP3 like efficiency 20 years ago in encoding audio [given that the state of the art back then was ADPCM, CELP and u-Law].
Most OSS developers couldn't implement an MP3 codec [hence the lack of options in choosing such a lib] but most could implement LZW, specially when given LZ78.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
What really bothers me is not simply that the patent system is being used to protect the obvious these days, because it's a reflection on the general zeitgeist in America.
It seems to me in a very general way that there is no sense of achievement in American business outside of the next quarter. Instead of concentrating on moving forward and doing new things, there's an emphasis on not moving at all and creating wealth by protecting what someone has.
It's become a very different kind of hostile business climate. Not so many years ago a hostile business climate was described as one with high tax burden and many regulations that made it expensive to run a business. I'd say we're well on our way to eliminating both in the U.S. and yet the business climate is even more hostile because of the threat of litigation. Is the country better off for this? For the majority of Americans, I'd say no. Not at all.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html