Dan Bricklin was recently an expert witness in the Hyperion vs. Outlooksoft case that was tried in the US District Court in Marshall, TX.  Outlooksoft (the defendant) won – and Dan’s testimony was critical to invalidating the Hyperion patent. Dan has two excellent essays up about this – his experience in the case and his […]

I felt like that wonderful Robin Williams character when I fired up FeedDemon this morning and saw the flood of patent posts from Jim Moore and then bounced around Google Groups for the Irregulars list and saw more commentary on the IBM Patent announcement.  Eventually, I noticed that Jim had taken me to task for […]

As I’ve written before, I’m a huge critic of the existing patent process, especially as it applies to software patents. Today, the NY Times has an article up describing how IBM will begin putting its patent filings online for public review. This is a huge positive step by IBM and shows real leadership in addressing […]

John Funk, a partner in Evergreen Innovation Partners, recently had a nice summary of the minor victory eBay just had in at the Supreme Court in the universe of defending against software patents.  As John points out, it’s a minor victory, but helps reinforce that an injunction and system shutdown is not an automatic outcome […]

As you probably know from prior rants on this blog, I think the U.S. Patent System is completely screwed up, especially with regards to software patents.  Since I’m in Paris right now, I was pondering French food when I remembered Eric von Hippel and Emmanuelle Fauchart’s brilliant paper titled Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case […]

Dan Bricklin has a thoughtful post on software patents as a follow up to a bunch of stuff that’s gone around the web the past few weeks since the NY Times article on Microsoft’s quest for patents.  Buried in Dan’s post is the ultimate wisdom: “I’m not against patents in general (they are good for some […]

I just received an email from a blog reader asking for a recommendation for a book that addresses the “importance of intellectual property with regard to building successful technology companies.” I’ve read several IP-related books in the past (one of the guest lectures I used to give at MIT Sloan School for 15.351: Managing the […]