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The Death of Google's Patents (Patently-O)

Posted Jul 23, 2008 14:51 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227)
Parent article: The Death of Google's Patents (Patently-O)

The author is very, very clearly pro-patent-everything.

Not that it matters, I guess -- there'll always be idiots.  If what he says about "the death
of software patents" that's going to cripple the industry (where "the industry" clearly means
the "patent troll industry"), then I feel like throwing one hell of a celebratory party.

I haven't heard about this anywhere else, though, so I wonder if it's just a case of a patent
troll going Chicken Little about some minor changes that only invalidates a handful of
software patents.

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Jul 25, 2008 14:34 UTC (Fri) by kingdon (subscriber, #4526) [Link]

If you want to see something about these cases from a not-so-pro-patent point of view, see for
example http://www.eff.org/cases/re-bilski" (EFF) or
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080409033837121 (groklaw).  Things are not going so
badly these days (see for example the Supreme Court's KSR decision -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSR_v._Teleflex - regarding obviousness which is having a big
impact in the lower courts and patent office), although of course things had gotten pretty far
out of whack in the 1980s and 1990s, and these things can turn around pretty slowly.

The Death of Google's Patents (Patently-O)

Posted Jul 25, 2008 18:02 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

If what he says about "the death of software patents" that's going to cripple the industry (where "the industry" clearly means the "patent troll industry"), then I feel like throwing one hell of a celebratory party.

If the patent troll industry is crippled, then so are the industries that supply it with patents: small inventors and pure inventors (companies that invent but don't also manufacture or do legal work).

You can criticize patents themselves, but as long as patents exist, the patent trolls are an important part of the economy.