Pieter Hintjens
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Inspired by some ideas presented at EUPACO-2, I'm going to try to summarise a simple set of arguments for explaining to even the most stubborn patent lawyer why patents on software simply don't fly.
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by:  pieterh 1179854597|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by  Anonymous1196432128|(%O ago) jump! |
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As the EU snatches defeat from the slavering jaws of victory, and Microsoft cries crocodile tears, while counting its license fee chickens, we take a look at what's really happened in Brussels this week, and how it will affect the FOSS community.
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by: pieterh 1193135078|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by Anonymous 1195339391|(%O ago) jump! |
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Exclusive privileges - patents - are a natural right, a reward for innovation, an incentive to invent, an incentive to disclose. Do these arguments sound familiar? They should: they are the arguments used by every patent advocate when they explain to us why we need, for our own sake, patents on software. What few people know is that these arguments date to the mid-19th century, when economists fought with patent advocates over the establishment of a patent system, and lost.
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by: pieterh 1195163585|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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What is behind the Acacia suit against Novell and Red Hat? Is it simply perfect timing, or something more than coincidence? We explain one possible strategy behind the lawsuits.
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by: pieterh 1193136447|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Reuters reports: "Kroes personally negotiated with Microsoft President Steve Ballmer in a number of conversations including over a meal at a restaurant near her home town of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, she said. [...] They agreed that the royalties payable for the interoperability information will be [...] of 10,000 euros. The royalties for a worldwide license including patents will be [...] of 0.4 percent." This is Microsoft final victory over competitors, as FFII predicted in press release of last 17 September "Microsoft will trump EU competition ruling with patents".
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by:  zoobab 1193060541|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by pieterh 1193114321|(%O ago) jump! |
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House prices fall and bad debt shakes the financial markets across the US and Europe. Bankers look nervously at their portfolios of consumer debt and mortages. But some analysts say that it's patents, not houses or loans, that will tip the global financial market into crisis, early in 2008.
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by: pieterh 1191430557|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Megatron continues to blast its OOXML format through the ISO process like a tank driving through a village church. Bad faith, anti-competitive, or illegal, history will decide. In the the War on Standards, the stench of bribery and corporate influence has reached the ISO secretariat.
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by: pieterh 1186768688|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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According to leaked documents and the EPO's own site, the EPO is planning to separate the Board of Appeals (aka DG3) from the European Patent Office, and turn them into an independent body operating within the European Patent Convention (EPC). This looks like an attempt to move forwards with EPLA, despite a ruling from the European Parliament's legal service that this would be illegal.
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by: pieterh 1185275879|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by  bosson1185463039|(%O ago) jump! |
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In "Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?", Ronald J. Mann argues for software patents, but in fact tells us that 80% of new software startups have not acquired a single patent within four years of venture funding.
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by: pieterh 1184598058|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Is EPLA dead or not? In a recent speech EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, a long time supporter of Microsoft's quest to tame the European technology market through the strategic software patenting, suggests that EPLA is still on the cards.
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by: pieterh 1182765294|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Pieter Hintjens continues his look at the costs for patent litigation across Europe, and comes up with a surprising result for what happens in countries that create specialised courts that hear only patents, the model being proposed for a single European patent court system.
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by: pieterh 1181062490|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Mark Shuttleworth recently wrote that “Microsoft is not the real threat”. In this article I argue that Microsoft is most definitely the threat. They hold the sword at the throat of much of the IT industry. When Microsoft understands, finally, that the future belongs to the good guys, that “do no evil” is more powerful marketing than “do more evil”, that in order to have a future, a firm must not hold onto the past... then, finally, we can say that Microsoft is no longer a threat, and we can turn our full attention to the trolls and the lawyers and the bureaucrats.
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by: pieterh 1180545240|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by pieterh 1181028877|(%O ago) jump! |
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In this report we look at data on patent litigation in the EU and note that Germany, the main backer of a central patent court, accounts for 57% of cases in the EU. We note that the costs of litigation correlate strongly with the volume of cases; that Germany and the UK account for 90% of all litigation costs in the EU; and we conclude that under EPLA, the average cost of litigation could rise from 150,000 Euro to 1.5M Euro.
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by: pieterh 1180793600|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Nokia has been paying $500m a year to Qualcomm for patent rights. Enough is enough, says Nokia. Ironically Nokia was a staunch defender of every European's rights to defend themselves with software patents. I'm wondering how long it will take someone to argue that poor Nokia was left vulnerable exactly because the FFII beat out the Software Patents Directive...
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by: Anonymous 1180452167|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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A brief snapshot from a successful and packed event that raised more questions than it answered, but left most people agreeing on the problems of the European patent system, and some of the solutions.
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by: pieterh 1179479081|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by  phm1179915611|(%O ago) jump! |
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People actually ask me such questions. The long answer involves twenty metres of garden twine, three setting poles, a pair of chopsticks, and a greased pig called Berty. The short answer is two letters long, starts with "n", ends in "o", and rhymes with "snow".
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by: pieterh 1179826709|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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What is the main job of the EPO? To sell patents? Or to examine them and reject invalid patents? A close look at the economics of the examination process make it pretty clear
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by: pieterh 1179433842|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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In two rare landmark rulings the US Supreme Court bashed some sanity into “Lawyers Gone Wild Vol 15”, otherwise known as the US patent system.
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by: pieterh 1177954054|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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by  podmokle1178893016|(%O ago) jump! |
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As I predicted on Digital Majority about two months ago, Dell has announced that it will offer its customers a neat package of Dell hardware, Suse Linux software, and Microsoft patents.
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by: pieterh 1178559289|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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I asked some of the thirty-plus experts coming to speak at EUPACO-2 to explain why thought EUPACO-2 was worth the effort. Here are their answers.
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by: pieterh 1178183202|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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