In 2008 I was invited by Pamela Samuelson, who I met through several Silicon Flatiron events, to be on an advisory board at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.  I attended the one meeting that we had and a subsequent symposium and wrote about it in the post Entrepreneurial Companies and the Patent System. […]

I’m far away from Washington DC today.  Actually, I’m a lot closer to Russia than I am to DC and that makes me an expert on Russia.  Wait, someone else said that (although the people next to me and Amy at dinner last night were speaking Russian.) But my friend the Internets (actually, the Web) […]

My friend Sawyer was as disappointed in the outcome of Bilski as he was in the ending to LOST.  In fact, he asked if I’d change his pseudonym to Joseph Adama of Caprica but I vetoed this over extreme nerdiness.  Nonetheless Sawyer let loose on Bilski and helps clarify both his perspective on why the […]

I’ve been quiet on my reaction to Bilski because I’ve got an OpEd floating around that might get published in the next few days.  It’s been rejected by one major publisher because according to the senior editor  “it didn’t fit their opinion on the case” and another major publisher because “no one really cares that […]

On the eve of re: Bilski, the anxiously awaited Supreme Court decision on business method patents (with potential implications for software patents), I decided to collaborate with the End Software Patents coalition and send out 200 copies of the short movie they recently produced called Patent Absurdity about why software should not be able to […]

As long time readers of this blog know, I’m strongly against software patents.  Succinctly, I think they are (a) invalid constructs, (b) totally unnecessary, and (c) a massive tax on and retardant of innovation. More and more of my VC brethren are beginning to come out publicly against them as are many extremely well respected […]

When I saw this a few minutes ago as I trolled through my daily folder, I thought of an email I got yesterday titled “turtles all the way down” that referred to an article yesterday on TechDirt titled What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong?  The article discusses a […]

Yesterday I published one of Sawyer’s posts titled Why the Decks are Stacked Against Software Startups in Patent Litigation.  In it, I realized that Sawyer hadn’t defined the different types of plaintiffs in a patent case.  Below are good definitions (from Sawyer) of each type and clear explanations about what you are up against in […]

The conventional wisdom has long been that software startups benefit from patents.  I’ve been investing in software / Internet companies for over 16 years and I’ve never once had a patent influence my investment decision.  More importantly, since it takes a number of years to get a patent, most startups haven’t even contemplated applying for […]