Stopsoftwarepatents

Groklaw: Preservation - "I got this idea from looking at some of the early articles' comments and because of the article on software patents and math. I was, frankly, so proud of the wonderful comments you provided, with links to substantive materials to support your points. I'd like to make it quick for people who don't have time to read each and every comment on each and every article to find the cream of the comments. If you would help me do that, I'd be thrilled."

PCWorld: Survey: Microsoft Has Strongest Patent Portfolio - "Companies also can use their patent portfolios to disrupt competitors and gain revenue from companies that want to use their patented technologies. Microsoft, for example, has made claims that it holds patents for technologies in Linux, which open-source proponents viewed as a tactic to discourage people from using open-source software. Microsoft and other companies also have cross-licensing patent agreements in which companies pay to use technologies other companies have patented."

TechTarget: Seagate found to have infringed patent, but beats lawsuit from Siemens - "The last two years have seen plenty of patent litigation among storage companies, including a battle between Sun Microsystems and NetApp Inc. that is still ongoing. However, other patent lawsuits that have made a splash in the storage industry, such as Quantum’s suit against Riverbed, have been settled out of court or otherwise fizzled like this one. In the Sun case, at least one of the patents cited by NetApp in suing Sun has been taken off the table by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office due to similar enforcement issues. So far the lawsuits are looking like key talking points for those who argue the patent system in general badly needs reform."

AG-IP: Microsoft Holds Top Patent Portfolio for 2008 - "According to Chief Patent Counsel Bart Eppenauer, who oversees Microsoft’s patent portfolio, the company’s evolving worldwide IP strategy is the result of a global innovation philosophy combined with a strong commitment to Microsoft’s business and technological priorities within local markets and economies. “As the company expands its R&D facilities and efforts around the world, we have stepped up our efforts to expand Microsoft’s patent portfolio by increasing filings with the world’s major patent offices,” Eppenauer said. “We are continuously improving our ability to better identify and capture the innovation taking place at Microsoft and the related IP in alignment with Microsoft’s business goals of investing in innovation to improve people’s lives and provide economic benefit to regions around the world,” he added."

MIS: Survey: Microsoft has strongest patent portfolio - "Companies also can use their patent portfolios to disrupt competitors and gain revenue from companies that want to use their patented technologies. Microsoft, for example, has made claims that it holds patents for technologies in Linux, which open-source proponents viewed as a tactic to discourage people from using open-source software. Microsoft and other companies also have cross-licensing patent agreements in which companies pay to use technologies other companies have patented."

Law: Tech Amici Target High Damages in Microsoft-Lucent IP Case - "Oracle, Apple Inc., Yahoo, Intel Corp. and several others are throwing their weight behind Microsoft Corp. as it tries to persuade the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn a $500 million jury verdict for infringing on a Lucent patent. That case was decided in 2007 in a Southern District of California federal court before Judge Rudi Brewster. [...] Microsoft got hit with $500 million in damages because the act of creating a new appointment in the calendar function of the company's e-mail product, Outlook, infringed on a Lucent patent. The damages were calculated by taking a percentage of Outlook sales, and to a lesser degree, the sales of other Microsoft products with similar functions."

HomeMediaMagazine: Vizio Asks FCC to Lower Digital TV Patent Fees - "HDTV company Vizio is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to lower patent fees for digital TVs, claiming they are excessive, unregulated and costing consumers more than $1 billion and counting. “This is the great untold story of the transition to digital television,” said Amos Snead, spokesman for the Coalition to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transmission, or CUT FATT, which Vizio is backing. “Since 2007, American consumers have been paying more than 20 to 30 times what consumers in Europe and Japan pay in royalties for basically the same technologies."

Ecousitcs: VIZIO Supports 'CUT FATT' Effort to Reduce Excessive DTV Patent Licensing Fees - "VIZIO, America's HDTV Company, announced its support of the Coalition to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transmission. VIZIO is petitioning and urging the FCC to take action and protect American consumers from excessive patent charges for DTV that have already exceeded $1 Billion. The coalition, also known as CUT FATT, was formed to protect American consumers purchasing televisions from the excessive unregulated patent fees, charged by companies claiming to own the patents needed to comply with FCC standards for digital televisions (DTV). "At VIZIO we support the American consumer, it is our duty to offer them more for their money, therefore we support the efforts of the CUT FATT coalition," said Laynie Newsome, VIZIO VP, Sales & Marketing Communications and Co-Founder. Formed in mid-2008, CUT FATT's mission is to raise awareness among Members of Congress and the FCC about the uncontrolled price gouging of these patent holders."

Mondaq: United States: Intellectual Property 2008/2009 Winter Bulletin - "Coupled together, these statements could be argued to exclude entire fields of computer science that focus on the design of algorithms independent of their application to specific data, such as cryptography, computer languages, compression, and database design, just to name a few. Finally, the exclusion of "public and private legal obligations" seems particularly shortsighted. All financial transactions and their constituent elements -- price, asset value, bid, offer, exercise price, etc. -- rest upon a framework that makes the transactions enforceable legal obligations. The court's statement here unnecessarily jeopardizes protection of legitimate innovation in fields such as ecommerce, financial engineering, and computational finance."

IAM: Key themes for 2009 - from green patents to the IP marketplace - "Will 2009 finally be the year in which Europe starts to make real progress towards a Community patent and a unitary court system? Some think there is still hope, most of the rest of us are rather less optimistic. In the end, it seems, Europe is far more comfortable talking a good fight than fighting one. When it comes down to it, national self-interest will usually trump any initiative that may leave some national patent offices out of pocket and some countries feeling linguistically diminished. Things are not helped by a Commission that often seems to hold contradictory views on IP (although Commissioners are set t be replaced in June 2009). What could change things is if European leaders get the bit between their teeth, as the seemed to in 2007. With so many other things to worry about, however, you have to wonder whether there will be time for patents in 2009."

OSNews: Microsoft's Pay-Per-Use PC - "The US patent system is sick for any rational person to see. It doesn't fulfill it's original purpose to protect small inventors. It is a shame that this model is trying to be foisted on the rest of the world through back-door dealings such as the ACTA trade agreement. Thank goodness the Europeans have been sensible enough to reject software patents so far (but it is a matter of time before the insatiable corporate interests get their way)."

Heise: IEEE ranks patent applications - "For the third year running the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has ranked companies in different sectors to estimate the power that these companies have, based upon their patent portfolio. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft came top in the "Computer Software" category and IBM tops the "Computer Systems" chart."

BoycottNovell: Microsoft Spreads Intellectual Monopolies as Business Model - "Microsoft views its future direction as one that’s centralised around software patents, probably with moneyflows that are based on “compensation” (welfare), not sales. As indication of it, watch this Google results page for the search phrase “cross licensing patents”. 6 out of 10 top results are about Microsoft. No kidding."

Slashdot: Universities Patenting More Student Ideas - "Working as a NASA intern, grad student Erez Lieberman had a eureka moment, resulting in an algorithm that detects whether a person is standing correctly or is off balance. Unfortunately, MIT liked it so much they decided to patent it. Seeking permission to use his own idea for his iShoe startup, which develops products like insoles to address the problems of seniors, Lieberman was told no problem — as long as he promised a hefty royalty and forked over a $75,000 upfront payment. Whether or not students are aware of it, the NYTimes reports that most universities own inventions created by students that were developed using a 'significant' amount of schools resources."

SlideShare: Stop Software Patents 25C3 - "Change the Courts 2006: Consultation BSA-EICTA: central caselaw 2006: EPLA Remove National Courts Replace by Central Court / Central Caselaw “We must moreover continue to attempt to harmonise the practise of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions at the European level. This is to be attempted by a common European patent court system (EPLA) in which the member states can voluntarily participate. Thereby a unified procedure and legal certainty are achieved.” --German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology / Central Caselaw “Baumann added that the new court was not intended to \"codify software patents\", but it was hoped it would provide better intellectual property protection for inventions with embedded software, such as mobile phones and satellite navigation systems.” -- James Murray, IT Week"

FFII: Software Patents in Europe via caselaw of a Central Patent Court - "We must moreover continue to attempt to harmonise the practise of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions at the European level. This is to be attempted by a common European patent court system (EPLA) in which the member states can voluntarily participate. Thereby a unified procedure and legal certainty are achieved. --German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology / 2009 must be the year for the negotiations in Brussels a breakthrough in the creation of the Community patent and a European patent court --Brigitte Zypries, German Ministry of Justice"

ZDNet: Microsoft files pay-per-use PC patent - "Microsoft's patent application does acknowledge that a per-use model of computing would probably increase the cost of ownership over the PC's lifetime. The company argues in its application, however, that "the payments can be deferred and the user can extend the useful life of the computer beyond that of the one-time purchase machine"."

TheRegister: City of Heroes fingered in MMO patent lawsuit - "On Christmas Eve, South Korean game developer NCSoft received a lawsuit in its stocking from a Massachusetts firm that claims to hold an extremely broad patent for developing online virtual worlds. The legal complaint from Worlds.com alleges NCsoft infringed on its patent for a "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The lawsuit fingers nearly all of NCsoft's catalog of massive multiplayer games sold in the US, including City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa , Lineage, and Lineage II."

WebProNews: Google, Microsoft, Apple Sued By Cygnus Systems - "On March 18th, a company called Cygnus Systems was granted a slightly dull-sounding patent for "System and Method for Iconic Software Environment Management." Now, the development's looking more significant, as Cygnus has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Microsoft, and Apple. [...] If necessary, Google, Microsoft, and Apple will surely fight all of this tooth and nail. Whether even a smallish effort is necessary remains to be seen, however, since examples of prior art are abundant."

CIOL: IT giants face patent violation suit - "It has filed a lawsuit against Google over chrome, Apple over iPhone and Microsoft over Vista and Internet Explorer 8. Cygnus System said it had acquired exclusive patent for this, which was granted in March 2008. It has demanded 'reasonable royalty' from the three IT majors, as well has requested a court injunction for preventing any further violation on patent."