Fortune Magazine has published an interview with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, where he has made the comment that Linux infringes 235 of its software patents, and it will be looking for licences from developers and corporate users. As your friendly neighbourhood Prophet of Doom, I have been announcing the advent of Read more
The United States Supreme Court has ruled on Microsoft v AT&T, a dispute over patent infringement abroad. Patent law is pre-eminently national, so it does not apply over items manufactured and sold in other countries. American patent law has only one exception to that rule, and it is if components Read more
Recently, Microsoft lost a case filed by Alcatel-Lucent with regards to patent infringement of MP3 technologies owned by the later. In Lucent Techs. Inc. v. Gateway, a jury awarded 1.5 billion in damages to the plaintiff and against Gateway, Dell, Microsoft and other defendants for using patented technology without a Read more
The peer-to-patent project is almost ready to go live, reports the Washington Post. For those unfamiliar with this initiative, the peer-to-patent system was proposed by New York Law School Professor Beth Simone Noveck in this paper. If we agree that the American patent system is broken, and reading some of Read more
(via Laurence Diver and other sources) The Prime Minister’s office has been accepting online petitions, which has prompted all sorts of people making specialist requests. One such petition has been posted against software patents, which reads “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible“. The Read more
A follow up on the Blackboard patent story. Blackboard has seen the writing on the wall and has issued an enforcement promise for open source software projects. According to the terms of this pledge, Blackboard will not enforce U.S. Patent 6,988,138 against software released with an open source licence. According Read more
Excellent news coming from the Software Patent Law Center (SFLC). The USPTO has granted ex parte re-examination of US Patent 6,988,138, which protects “Internet-based education support system and methods”. As previously reported, this patent led to its owners, e-learning software firm Blackboard, to sue Desire2Learn, which also manufactures educational software. Read more
(via IPKat). Halliburton has lost its appeal on its case against Smith international with regards to software for designing drill bits. The software patent involved in Halliburton v Smith protected a software simulation program for designing the drill bits. Halliburton sued Smith, claimed it held patents in both the drill Read more
I’ve finished reading Aerotel v Telco Holdings, and I have to say that I have been impressed with a lot of the excellent reasoning displayed by Lord Justice Jacob in the ruling. I have selected some quotes: “[…] despite the fact that such patents have been granted for some time Read more
The England and Wales Court of Appeal has decided on the case of Aerotel Ltd. v Telco Holdings Ltd & Ors [2006] EWCA Civ 137. This seems to be one of those decisions that splits opinions, or rather, unites them into a negative opinion regardless of the side of the Read more