Today, thousands of activists and open source developers in Europe must be shouting “Damn you all to hell”. The European Council has decided to adopt the proposed text of the software patents directive (pardon me, the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive). The procedure seems to have been dodgy to say the Read more
This is actually a very intelligent and coherent analysis of the problem of software patents and software copyright, but it fails in many levels. I know that the author does not claim to make an European software analysis, but why criticise the problem of European software patents with an American Read more
John Swainson, the CEO for anti-virus and security products producer Computer Associates will announce a donation of some of its software patents to open source software developers. It will be good to see the shape that this offer takes. IBM’s offer took the shape of a legally binding non-assertion promise Read more
Seems like the European Palrliament has done the right thing and finally driven the stake through the heart of the malinformed software patent directive. The Commision may try something, but it seems that under the present political climate they will not try something for a while. I can hear thousands Read more
As the fight against European software patents heats up, we can find a lot of opinions about the subject. We have irony-filled pieces, like the one where Richard Stallman calls Bill Gates a communist. Then witness this debate between Karl Lenz and Alex Horns. The arguments are not about the Read more
Next week should give us a better idea of what is going to happen with software patents. Earlier in the week, there were some reports that it was possible that software patents were going to be adopted next week. Since then, the Dutch Paliament has adopted a motion to block Read more
Yahoo is suing small company Xfire for alleged patent infringement. Xfire provides a chat application that allows online gamers to chat with each other. However, Yahoo claims that it owns a software patent that protects precisely that, U.S. patent 6,699,125. This patent, applied for in 2001, claims to protect a Read more
Software patents are a serious problem for open source developers according to Linus Torvalds and other open source superstars, despite IBM’s legally binding pledge not to enforce 500 software patents against OSS companies. This should not surprise anybody. With almost every single obvious element of software already patented in the Read more
Yesterday we brought you news about the devilish new McAfee patent. PantentNews has pointed out that the patent also claims to trace IP and then “displaying a world map with an illustration of the trace thereon utilizing the firewall.” Wait a second, that is just a graphical traceroute, is it Read more
Slashdot reports that anti-virus developer Mcafee has been granted U.S. Patent 6,839,852 for monitoring network traffic with a firewall. The patent is for: A system, method and computer program product are provided for tracing a traffic event utilizing a firewall. Initially, a firewall is executed on a local computer. Next, Read more