It's McCarthyism all over again [LWN.net]

It's McCarthyism all over again

Posted May 14, 2007 4:23 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
Parent article: Microsoft takes on the free world (CNN)

"...[Microsoft] asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents."

Somebody surely has a high opinion of themselves. What a load of mule hock! Some day (hopefully sooner) people (including Microsoft) will realize that FLOSS owes its high quality to the very open nature in which it is developed, not because it copies Microsoft.

Seriously, though, Microsoft running around noisily claiming that the Linux kernel and related user space programs violate Microsoft patents without specifying exactly which ones reminds me of similar behavior by Joseph McCarthy in the U.S. Senate in 1950, running around claiming that the American State Department was infiltrated with Communists. Just my perception.

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It's McCarthyism all over again

Posted May 14, 2007 4:37 UTC (Mon) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Sadly, the way USPTO granted overly-broad patents without checking for prior art, Microsoft's claim is probably true in a very twisted way: nobody can write anything meaningful without violating some patent that one of the big tech companies (IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc.) holds. The culprit is the patent system, not the author of the infringing software.

Regardless of whether software patents is a good idea or not (I personally think it's not), the USPTO and Congress have a serious conflict-of-interest problem here. Granting more patents earn them more money, and examining patent applications carefully cost them money. Plus, they don't lose anything for patents that are overturned. The Justice department should charge USPTO for the time wasted by patent challenges, if the patent ends up overturned because of USPTO's fault. That way they'd have an incentive to be more careful.

It's McCarthyism all over again

Posted May 15, 2007 10:36 UTC (Tue) by egoforth (subscriber, #2351) [Link]

This is one of the better patent reform suggestions that I've heard. Not that I'm holding out hope for any meaningful change, but it seems fairly straightforward and workable so long as there is some easily identifiable criteria to place blame. The charges could be done on a sliding scale based on the number of claims in a patent that are overturned, so that the costs increase with the amount of neglect.

costs

Posted May 19, 2007 22:33 UTC (Sat) by pdundas (subscriber, #15203) [Link]

A way to do that might be to make the US Patent Office liable for the legal costs of the successful challenger.

A company which made and defended the invalid patent (if they were shown to be knowingly - rather than, say, negligently - ignoring prior art) could also be liable for consequential loss by the challenger - delay to product launch, etc.