Why Software Patents Are a Joke — Literally

eburnette writes "A former Sun/Oracle employee explains how developers created patents in an unofficial contest to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. James Gosling said, '... we got sued, and lost. The penalty was huge. Nearly put us out of business. We survived, but to help protect us from future suits we went on a patenting binge. Even though we had a basic distaste for patents, the game is what it is, and patents are essential in modern corporations, if only as a defensive measure. There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn't nearly the goofiest.' Now Oracle is using patents from the same folks as the basis for its lawsuit against Google."

Comments

Re:His comment on moral high ground for Microsoft.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Yeah, it reeks. It smacks of a script and a teleprompter, or perhaps that mysterious bulge George W. had on his back during that televised debate. A later comment:

SCO is a copyright case. While copyright litigation can also cause problems, there's a fundamental difference: you don't infringe copyright inadvertently. Theoretically you could, but practically you won't just by coincidence write a significant number of lines of code the same way someone else did. But patents are broad and you can infringe them totally unknowingly. That's why programmers who make independent creations never have to worry about copyright but unfortunately do have to worry about patents.

At least other companies have the balls to initiate their own action, rather than chickenshittedly throw money at a proxy because they themselves have stolen code and numerous violations on their hands.

On a related note, I got some pussy around 9pm Pacific time. I opened 'er up like a Christmas present. Wait, what was Florence_Nightengale selling again? Sorry, bro, I already use MySQL.