Obama Taps IBM Open Source Advocate For USPTO

langelgjm writes "President Obama has announced his intent to nominate David Kappos, a VP and general counsel at IBM, to head the US Patent and Trademark Office. This move is particularly notable not only because of IBM's much friendlier attitudes towards open source compared with some of their rivals, but also because Kappos himself is open source-friendly: 'We are now the biggest supporters of the open source development project,' explains David. 'Admittedly this policy is not easily reconcilable with our traditional IP strategy, but we are convinced that it is the way to go for the future.' Not just a lawyer, Kappos earned an engineering degree before working in the legal field. Kappos has been described as 'critical of the American approach to patent policy.' Given his background, could this mean a new era for US patent policy?"

Comments

Morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is one of the worst trivial patent spammers out there.
Anyone who claims that this will mean any change in the USPTO policy is a clueless moron.

I suppose I can't karma whore with

[Nautical Insanity]

saying "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," and expect the automatic stamp of +5 insightful on this story can I.

Re:Change

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It will be spun as a negative because:

(1) 0P3N 50R3Z 1Z F0R C0MMI3Z!!!

(2) He once said that the patent system is better in Europe than in the US. Why does this man hate America?!?

(3) He's an Obama nominee, and everything Obama does is evil, because Obama is a non-natural-born-citizen secret Muslim terrorist-loving socialist.

That about covers it. Of course, the "liberal MSM" will lap this shit up.