I have to keep reminding myself that some things just take a long time.  My rampage against software patents continues and, while my efforts around the StartupVisa have dominated my “government time” in the past quarter, I’ve still got my eye on the ultimate goal of rendering the construct of a software patent invalid. I […]

There is a great article by Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, out today titled The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents.  Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute who is also a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Princeton, totally nails it.  Here’s the beginning: “Imagine the outcry if the […]

If I told you that I had just filed a patent for “a system to sell equity in domain names”, I’d expect you to laugh at me.  I haven’t ranted and raved against software (and business method) patents for a while because I got bored of doing it.  The PTO has gotten so far behind […]

While it’s not over yet as the Supreme Court might weight in, the Federal Court Kills Patents on Business Methods.  I haven’t read things carefully yet (I’ll leave that for the bathroom this weekend) but from the quick analysis I’ve read (In re Bilski: Patentable Process Must Either (1) be Tied to a particular machine […]

Yippee – the criticism of the software patent stupidity is starting to heat up and some really smart people are making both useful arguments about the issues and interesting proposals about the solution.  In addition, there are some general articles starting to appear that explain that while patents (and property rights) have an important role […]

In my quest to abolish software patents, I’ve been pondering "short term approaches" since I doubt the Supreme Court is going to wave a magic wand and make my fantasies come true anytime soon. I’ve been hearing about something lately that bothers me a lot.  More and more companies are paying engineers a bonus to […]

Dave Roberts – the VP Strategy and Marketing at Vyatta – has written a solid post on Open Source Juicer that tears apart Steve Tobak’s CNet article titled The Patent Reform Act will harm the US technology industry.  There is a ton of meat in Dave’s post – which is (unfortunately) also titled "The Patent […]

Maybe.  The upcoming en banc session of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit happening in May is an important one.  Brad Stone of the New York Times has a nice short summary of what is going on here in New Patentable Idea: A Way to Invalidate Vague Patents.  The End Software Patents […]

I’m really pleased that Google has taken an aggressive position in fighting back against the Jarg search patent.  The Jarg patent is another absurd one and Google is on now on the receiving end of the same kind of patent troll (which – ironically – is being promulgated by a major university) action that has […]