The Patent Busting Project. “The new EFF initiative seeks to document these threats [to small organizations targeted by holders of bad patents] and fight back against them. EFF has pledged to file “re-examination” requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), asking the agency to revoke patents that are having negative effects on Internet innovation and free expression.”
I haven’t really been following
the SCO lawsuit against IBM too much, but this story about SCO’s Mind-Bogglingly Bad Faith in Dan Gillmor’s Journal caught my eye.
Bezos and O’Reilly
have teamed up to put their money where their mouths are following the one-click hoo-ha a few months ago by opening BountyQuest, dedicated to finding prior art relevant to controversial patents. They put up a bounty to be awarded to the first person who finds an example of prior art (and I assume who documents and supports their claim).
James Gleick wrote an article
about the problems with software patents that cover online practices and methods. It’s a pretty good article, though intended for an audience who’s never heard of the issue. [via MetaFilter]
Required reading
on the issue of software patents: Simson Garfinkel, Patently Absurd, Wired 2.07.
