DISQUS

Noel Le · 3 years ago

***evidence that patents are harmful to the software industry***

Wouldn't going through economic or market research studies be more valuable in making this claim than analyzing 1 softare patent per week.

By the way, what evidence is there that patents hurt the software industry. How exactly is the industry worse off with patents.

eee_eff · 3 years ago

I think you are missing the mother of all descents into trolldom--SCO's lawsuit against IBM, Dainler-Chrysler, Auto-zone and the related suits by Novell and Red Hat against SCO.

Suing your customers is always a sign that your business plan has failed--and that you have no long term plan.

I am very sorry to see SGI go down like this--especially since I am a big fan of their XFS file system--I have been using it on SuSE linux for the past 4 yoers or so...

Noel Le · 3 years ago

First of all, how much does the SCO suit rely on patent claims. Second, what point is there in IP if you can't assert your property rights.

I'm not a fan of litigous trolls, but as usual, Tim tries to make a point that his evidence really has little bearing to.

Steve R. · 3 years ago

Noel: A fundamental problem exists. That is the question of whether a property right even exists. Just because someone claims to have a property right, that does not mean that one exists. What we are seeing today, is the use of lawsuits to "create" a property right where none has existed.

Androhair · 3 years ago

Androhair: I would say one of the most important issues that has to be solved is the Active X controllers pattent lawsuit that Microsoft Internet Explorer holds, as this affects a lot of people in the ecommerce industry..lets just hope IE comer to an agreement as soon as possible for the benefit of everyone.
www.androhair.com

Noel Le · 3 years ago

Steve R, I think everyone knows our patent system needs fixing. But getting rid of software patents, rather than improving them, or arguing that patents have a net detrimental effect to the software industry, are not productive discourse unless you substantiate your claims. Right Tim:)

Steve, you're right that patents don't provide either an absolute or irrefutable property right (I think Prof. Carl Shapiro wrote about this, I'll look up the article later), and your claim that folks try to "create" property rights observes the difference between broadly claimed patents and technologies subject to their suit. Again, these are issues of claim construction, and if anything else, recognize that courts have an important role in interpreting what rights actually fall under a patent. Implicitly, you disagree with Tim's argument that the value of patents lies on the face of their claim construction.