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An outline of patent problems--and solutions
Patents have become a minefield that inhibit software innovation, a fact recently highlighted for me in a conversation with Rob Tiller, Red Hat's vice president of Intellectual Property and assistant general counsel.
Many software patents are of poor quality and are difficult to interpret, Tiller explains, made worse by the fact that patent boundaries are often vague: a patent can even cover an invention the patent holder never conceived.
Compounding this morass, it's difficult to impossible to know if code you have written could be covered by a patent, as search methods are unreliable (and damages are structured … Read more
