As my Quixotic adventure for abolishing software patents continues, I’m starting to come across essays, examples, and suggestions from software engineers that support and confirm my point of view. Terry Gold of Gold Systems pointed me to an article from Art Reisman, the CEO / CTO at APConnections.  Terry is on Art’s advisory board. Let’s […]

A few weeks ago, Slashdot pointed out that a Critic of Software Patents Wins [the] Nobel Prize in Economics.  I finally got around to reading the paper that Slashdot referred to – Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation by James Bessen and Eric Maskin (the aforementioned Nobel Prize winner.)  The paper was written in 1999 and […]

My railing against software patents shouldn’t be new to you, dear reader.  Recently, this tilting at windmills has generated some attention.  Among other things, a new group of interesting people is forming a coalition named End Software Patents. This group is being spearheaded by several very smart people, including Ben Klemens – a guest scholar […]

Jonathan Schwartz – the CEO of Sun – has a superb blog post up today titled Thank You, Network Appliance.  Apparently Network Appliance has sued Sun for patent infringement and rather than hide behind his lawyers, he’s taking on the battle on the front lines on his blog.  Way to go Jonathan. Tags: patents

Yippee!  Jason had some comments up at AsktheVC.  I can’t wait until the day comes that all the “obvious stuff that has been patented” gets invalidated (the patents – that is.)  Having just read Supreme Conflict I have a new appreciation and respect for the Supreme Court.

Jason is getting riled up about patents over on AsktheVC. I figured it’d be a good time to finish up the set of posts from John Funk suggesting an empirical way to evaluate whether software patents are bad (or good). If you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2, take a look at them first […]

In January, I posted Part 1 of an empirical approach to determining whether software patents are bad (or good). The essay was sent to me by John Funk, founder of Evergreen Innovation Partners. This is part 2 (please read part 1 first if you are interested.)  As a quick reminder – the premise of the […]

I’ve written plenty about patents in the past, including a provocative post titled Abolish Software Patents.  I was having a conversation with John Funk, a partner in Evergreen Innovation Partners, at the end of last year after a catch up lunch.  We got into a serious conversation about the fact that so much of the […]

No – I haven’t read it yet (just the summaries.)  Yes – I probably will (read it.)  However – until then – Chris Pirillo has the best word on the Friendster patent so far.