Comments on: Patent problems pester penguin

Free Software Foundation counsel Daniel Ravicher says a broken patent system is in urgent need of repair.

[ehj]

Weather forecast for Europe

Umbrella-business may not have a market in Europe in the field of software if the EU software patent directive is passed with the European Parliament amendments:

"Member States shall ensure that the production, handling, processing, distribution and publication of information, in whatever form, can never constitute direct or indirect infringement of a patent, even when a technical apparatus is used for that purpose."

"Member states shall ensure that data processing is not considered to be a field of technology in the sense of patent law, and that innovations in the field of data processing are not considered to be inventions in the sense of patent law."

Together with proper definitions of what is technical (i.e. "statutory subject matter").

The european national parliaments have an uniqe chance to improve weather conditions back home if they ask the Dutch Council Presidency to withdraw the voting on the software patent directive this fall. They have good reasons to renegotiate, since the Council has ignored and rejected all the work of the European Parliament and the consultative organs of the EU without any justification.

http://swpat.ffii.org/letters/cons0406/index.en.html

[BrucePerens]

Dan's working for Open Source Risk Management

Dan is counsel for FSF and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, but to be fair we should also mention that he has been retained by Open Source Risk Management, a company that insures against patent risk for Open Source users, to work on the problems mentioned in his editorial. I'm a member of the board of directors of that company.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

[TurboG]

Thanks for the added info

But to be fair, isn't this the same Mr. Ravicher that's mentioned in the Forbes article found at this link:
http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2004/08/02/cz_dl_0802linux.html ?

Now, I don't know if I'm supposed to take Forbes word for it, or if I'm supposed to believe Mr. Ravicher's online bio at http://www.pubpat.org/Board.htm but either way, this doesn't sound like someone who's truly concerned with the problems patents pose for the open source movement. Rather, it sounds to me like someone that's out to get a piece of the pie. The recipe for that pie? Simple, really. Make people scared, tell them that patents threaten Linux, and then sell them insurance. (Sounds a lot like how the mafia used to work, doesn't it? ;)

You can't have an independant opinion, regardless of what your experience may or may not be, and at the same time be associated with a company who's business it is to make money out of the opinions you express - and on top of that expect to be taken seriously.
Think of it as if a politician would campaign for a new law, that would make it illegal to sell white cars, and at the same time is engaged as a lead counsel for a company that sells black cars. You probably wouldn't take this guy very seriously, would you?

[gary.wilkinson]

working around patents

The problem with trying to work around patents is two fold. The first that some patents are so broad you can't work around them easily and secondly the complexity of trying to find out if a patent actually exists or is even valid. Generally you only find that out when the lawyers have finished fighting - 20 years down the line when the last appeal has finished.

IP Keiretsu

Bruce, why is it that when this topic is discussed in these articles, neither you nor members of your community mention the alternative where communities form IP keiretsu in the form of standards and specifications organizations with participation agreements that protect members jointly but still enable open implementation. The W3DC does this.

As many with experience in the software industry have noted, it is almost impossible to write code without stepping on someone's patent. That means that many of the formerly proprietary codebases now being released into open source have to be vetted or simply accepted as also risky. Unless steps are taken to indemnify or to form these IP keiretsu, the middle tier vendors who MUST indemnify as a result of RFP-driven contracting are accepting the majority of the risk and for them, open source is too risky given proprietary alternatives.

I agree the system is broken. I assert that the combinations of approaches such as risk management and IP keiretsu are here now to mitigate the situation until a more effective remedy such as international patent law reform (this is not just a US problem) is undertaken.

[ahzzmandius]

All software faces the same level of risk

If you haven't noticed the number of software AND hardware patent lawsuits lately then you must not be reading the news. Patent lawsuits have become a part of daily business life in the last few years. Just about EVERY software and hardware product out there infringes on some patent somewhere somehow.

Linux is no different in it's threat level than any other company. Do you really think that Big Blue will sit back and not defend it's new cash cow if it becomes threatened? Or RedHat? Or Novell?

Combined, these companies have plenty of firepower to defend Linux. The threat to linux via patents is no worse or better than the threat of patents to say Windows (Remember IE loss that MS sustained recently?)

This is why people are saying that it is FUD. Not because it doesn't exist, but rather, because it is nothing unique, new, or more dangerous than any of the threats to any other product out there.

[herrwitt]

patent disputes ???

Will MicroSoft quash LINUX in a storm of patent disputes ??? Somehow , in the (cyber)scheme of things , I feel that MS has broken , @ one time or another , nearly the total number of patents it now possesses ... The very sense of a 'spirit of innovation' , so well scripted by MicroSoft in its recent p.r. campaign , may find itself thwarted by this very fact ... To those who read this , who still possess an 'open mind' on the subject , may I (humbly) suggest that ... if we truely seek a truly dynamic cyber environment , filled with hyper creativity , then we need a vibrant , open source community as an integral part of it ... Else where will MicroSoft ?find? all its 'innovative' ideas ???