   Patents ArchiveJuly 05, 2006Guns Don't Kill People - At Least Not Without A Valid EULA
Bruce Schneier describes a patent covering access control for bullets.
Bruce Perens on Software Patents: Told You So
We've warned you for a decade. Now the monster has finally arrived: attacks against Open Source developers by patent holders, big and small.
April 27, 2006Free Software Author Told to Pay $203,000 for Railroad Patent
Turned out the software he was being sued for was, in itself, prior art.
April 05, 2006Mono's Ring of Patent Fire
Greg from Redhat's Fedora project explains how Mono is protected by Novell's armory of ex-Commerce One patents.
March 10, 2006U.S. Grants Patent for AJAX
Will Web 2.0 grow successful enough to attract patent trolls?
January 10, 2006USPTO and Open Source Community Working to Fix Patents
Groklaw reports on the team attempting to fix the software patent problem.
November 29, 2005One Man Against One Click
Plucky blogger decides to challenge Amazon's one-click patent alone.
November 18, 2005Public Patent Foundation challenges JPEG patentNovember 14, 2005Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?
Worth reading for the mountainous rise in patent applications over the last few years.
November 01, 2005Why Software Patents are Like SmokingRIM vs NTP vs the Common Good
"The tail of inventor enrichment is currently wagging the dog of social benefit," says eWeek.
September 20, 2005Red Hat and Patents
The deputy general counsel for Red Hat takes a look at how patent reform affects free software.
September 07, 2005Computer Associates Says It'll Play Nice With OSS Patents
CA promises not to use 14 patents against open source software.
August 17, 2005Computer-Implemented Inventions at the European Patent Office
A pro-software patents org tries to get everyone's story straight.
An "Invention" So Non-Obvious, It's in the Name of the Device
ZDNet's David Berlind on the DVD player patent for, err, autoplaying a DVD.
August 12, 2005OSDL Announces Patent Commons Project
The free software community's communal defense against patent trolls.
August 01, 2005Skilled in the Art of Push Polls
Screenshots of a curious poll by Microsoft regarding pursuing RedHat for alleged patent violations.
The Person Whose Company Dies With the Most Patents, Wins
Historian Randal Stross on Microsoft's hunger for software patents.
June 28, 2005Proposal for a Device in Which Money Is Shoveled into Point A, and Incinerated at Point B (Fig. 1)
GAO report points out the the patent office has spent over a billion dollars on their IT systems, with little to show for it.
May 11, 2005Small Steps to Fight Trolls
Brenda Sandburg analyzes the latest modest legislative proposals to defend patent law against patent trolls. She also reveals that Peter Detkin, who coined the term, now works for Nathan Myrhvold's Intellectual Ventures -- a company that's been accused of trollishness itself.
May 10, 2005Adobe Head Says Software Patents Are a Bad Idea
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen acknowledges that allowing software patents to slip under the wire in the 1980s was a mistake, but says it's too late to turn back now. Thankfully, that's not the case for Europe and India.
May 04, 2005Software Patents in Four Minutes
Bill Gates and Richard Stallman - together at last! - in Gavin Hill's snappy animated guide to the problems of software patents.
Who Needs Products When You've Got Rents?
The New York Times reports on Blackberry manufacturer RIM's $450 million payout to NTP, a company that produces nothing but patent suits.
April 27, 2005Head of Patent Office Pushes for Reform
More examiners, first-to-file grants, and post-grant review of patents were some of the reforms listed by Jon Dudas in recent Senate testimony.
March 23, 2005New Indian Patent Law Threatens Human Health
As a condition of joining the World Trade Organization, the country changed its patent laws in a way that will, among other things, reduce the availability of affordable pharmaceuticals, such as AIDS drugs, in poor countries that desperately need them.
March 17, 2005SCO's Silver Lining
Stuart Cohen argues that the suit has forced open-source developers to be more diligent, which will strengthen the movement in the long term.
March 02, 2005European Commission Ignores Opposition to Software Patents
In a jaw-droppingly arrogant move, the European Commission has decided to push a controversial software patent plan forward over the protests of the public and the EU Parliament.
February 17, 2005Bill Gates, Communist
Richard Stallman with an op-ed on software patents and the recent hubub over Bill Gates' application of the word "communists" to the free culture movement.
February 08, 2005Patents Leave Japanese Writers at Loss for Words
A Tokyo court has taken word-processing software Ichitaro -- the only serious competitor to Microsoft Word -- off the market because of a dispute over software patents.
January 26, 2005Keep Thanking Poland
The EU Patent Directive was stalled again this week when Poland raised more concerns about the controversial, ill-conceived proposal.
IBM/SCO Peek-A-Boo Continues
A judge has ordered IBM to show more code in the coyest patent fight ever.
January 11, 2005More On Why to Thank Poland
The controversial EU software patent directive was supposed to be rubber stamped, but Poland's opposition and a letter from 61 MEPs has thrown its future into (welcome) doubt.
January 05, 2005Don't Forget Poland!
Poland recently took a courageous stand on intellectual property, and as a result the EU will *not* be saddled with software patents. It's hard to overstate the importance of this action, and we'd like to thank Poland very much.
December 14, 2004Is Patent-Only Protection for Software Smart?
Greg Aharonian hopes to convince a court that copyright shouldn't apply to software -- a plan that would trade invalidating the GPL for a reduction in the term of the work's protection.
December 13, 2004Patents as Toxic Waste of Dotcom-Bust
Our own Jason Schultz on the fate of some nasty patents that were granted at the height of the boom.
Bad Santa
If the patent lobby succeeds in circumventing the EU parliament, the EU could get software patents by Christmas. Slashdot coverage here.
November 19, 2004Poland Pulls Support for EU Patent Directive
According to the Polish government, the current draft is too mushy on the patentability of software programs; it wants a bright line that bans the practice.
November 18, 2004The Economist on Patent Reform
Very nice piece on the problems with the patent system.
September 30, 2004PubPat Busts Microsoft Patent
The Public Patent Foundation has succeeded in blowing one of Microsoft's amazingly broad patents out of the water. Way to go!
September 15, 2004Nothing New Here, Move Along
It's only Acacia Research targeting even more victims in lawsuits asserting patent dominion over technologies to stream audio and video over the Web.
September 07, 2004Patents are Killing Software InnovationAugust 12, 2004Universities to School Acacia
Over 50 universities are coordinating a legal response to Acacia Media Technologies, which claims that the schools are violating its patents by using streaming audio and video in their courses. Acacia is on the EFF Patent Busting Project's "Most Wanted list."
August 06, 2004Big Blue Promises Safe Passage for Linux
IBM has pledged not to use its massive patent library against the Linux operating system and is challenging other companies to do the same.
Apple Pays for License to Sell Music Online
A company called E-Data has already extracted payments from Microsoft and HMV over its 20-year-old patent on "the transmission of information to a remote point-of-sale location, where the information is then transferred to a material object."
July 07, 2004EU Software Patents Under Seige
Several countries are now stepping forward with concerns about the proposed law, and we couldn't be happier.
July 05, 2004Holland Rejects Software Patents
The Dutch Parliament recently voted to pull its support for the EU Directive on Software Patents.
EFF Patent Busting in the NY Times
Today's New York Times has a short profile of our new patent busting project.
June 16, 2004Tim Berners-Lee Awarded Large Wad of Cash
Oh, and the Millennium Technology Prize, which recognizes technologists who've dramatically improved the quality of life. This article points out that much of the Web-inventor's impact stems from his decision to forego patent protection on his ideas.
June 11, 2004Microsoft To-Do: Obtain Many Patents, Enforce Them
Big Redmond has embarked on a campaign to obtain and exploit a large number of patents - including one that covers the novel concept of a "to-do" list for coders.
May 26, 2004Clear Channel Finds Another Way to Abuse Artists: Patents
The company recently bought a patent for recording a CD of a concert immediately after the show. A profitable, artist-empowering industry currently uses the technology, but Clear Channel plans to enforce its patents across and beyond its 130 U.S. venues.
May 25, 2004Open-Sourcing the Law
Grokline is a collaborative "living history" of UNIX ownership aimed at drop-kicking future copyright/patent claims.
May 20, 2004Common Sense Spotted in UK Discussion of National IDs
Forgery, biometrics and the problems with both in this article from the Register.
May 18, 2004Anti-Patent Vibe in the EU
Groklaw with several news snippets demonstrating the anti-software patent vibe in Europe.
May 12, 2004The Patent Busting Gene
The USPTO recently granted the Public Patent Foundation's request for reexamination of a DNA-insertion patent held by Columbia University. This is how it's done, and we'll soon follow suit in EFF's new patent-pusting campaign.
May 10, 2004P2P Spoofing Patent Awarded to Two Academics
Of course, the record labels have been doing this for years, and legal fights may well ensue. May those battles be long and expensive.
April 25, 2004Acacia Underscores Need for Patent Busting
The company is trying to file a class-action suit against porn companies that may have violated its video-streaming patents. If Acacia wins, expect similar claims against more straight-laced businesses.
April 19, 2004Microsoft's Big FAT Filesystem Patent
The Public Patent Foundation, a new patent-busting group, shoots for the stars in its war on over-broad patents.
April 11, 2004Brussels to Sprout Anti-Software Patent Rally
On April 14th, FFII will stage a demonstration/conference/dinner to protest the evils of software patents.
March 12, 2004Nintendo to Emulator Fans: Game Over
|
RSS Feeds
|
