Is the Tide Turning On Patents?

Glyn Moody writes "The FSF has funded a new video, 'Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system,' freely available (of course) in Ogg Theora format (what else?). It comes at a time when a lot is happening in the world of patents. Recent work from leading academics has called into question their basis: 'The work in this paper, and that of many others, suggests that this traditionally-struck "devil's bargain" may not be beneficial.' We recently discussed how a judge struck down Myriad Genetics's patents on two genes because they involved a law of Nature, and were thus 'improperly granted.' Meanwhile, the imminent Supreme Court ruling In re Bilski is widely expected to have negative knock-on effects for business method and software patents. Is the tide beginning to turn?"

Comments

Is this a good thing?

[gman003]

Obviously, software patents should be illegal. And patents get seriously abused, with patents on really trivial things.

Some patents, though, I can agree with. If I invented a new rocket engine, one significantly different from any existing one, I would like to make money off of it.

Realistically, patents should be restricted, not banned. There should really only be a few hundred patents a year, not thousands. Get some educated specialists to work for them, reform the system to only allow truly innovative patents, and keep out bullshit like software and "process" patents.

Re:No

[MightyMartian]

And which patent trolling law firm do you work for?

Re:Piling on

[shutdown -p now]

And is in a format readily consumable on a typical "entertainment device" (i.e. a Windows PC or an iPhone).