patent law

See the following -

7 Patent Reforms The White House Should Have Proposed

Simon Phipps | InfoWorld | June 7, 2013

The president's follow-up to his frank condemnation of patent trolls is welcome, but we need more Read More »

An Overview Of The "Patent Trolls" Debate

Brian T. Yeh | Congressional Research Service | August 20, 2012

Congress has recently demonstrated significant ongoing interest in litigation by “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), which are colloquially known as “patent trolls” and sometimes referred to as “non-practicing entities” (NPEs)... Read More »

Apple Wins Patent Battle With Samsung, But Is Losing The War

Adam Chandler | The Wire | May 3, 2014

The legal front in the smartphone wars between Apple and Samsung picked up steam yesterday after a jury awarded both sides some cash in a patent infringement fight.  The jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $119.6 million in damages, far short of the $2.2 billion Apple had been seeking, and less than the $930 million Apple was awarded in an earlier trial in the same courtroom...

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FOSS And Patents - Peer Collaboration As A Key To Countering Patent Risk, Guest Blog By Clark Asay

Clark Asay | Outercurve Foundation | February 26, 2013

In an earlier post I suggested that third-party patents pose the most significant risk of using free and open source software (FOSS). The risk boils down to this: with limited exceptions, someone with a patent that reads on FOSS can prevent anyone else from using that FOSS, even if you or somebody else independently created the software... Read More »

Google: It's Time To Take Action Against Patent Trolls, Privateering

Rachel King | ZDNet | April 5, 2013

Google bands together with BlackBerry and Red Hat as it continues its offensive to defend itself against patent suits. Read More »

Leaked TPP Chapter: 5 Scary Provisions In WikiLeaks' Trans-Pacific Partnership Release

Connor Adams Sheets | International Business Times | November 13, 2013

WikiLeaks broke the seal on key parts of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday, when it released the agreement's intellectual property chapter online. Read More »

New Patent Reform Law Could Reduce Lawsuits By Non-Practicing Entities

Erick Robinson | opensource.com | September 16, 2012

So it has finally happened: a patent reform bill has actually become law. Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted 89-9 to send H.R. 1249 to the White House, where it was signed into law today.  While I have pointed out in the past that this bill misses out on several aspects of reform that previous bills attempted, it does include some useful aspects. Read More »

NZ Software Giants Join Patent Bill Protest

Richard Chirgwin | The Register | September 10, 2012

New Zealand’s largest software exporters, Jade and Orion Healthcare, have lined up with the NZ Open Source Society, InternetNZ, and local industry lobby NZRise to ask the government to revise its proposed patent laws. Read More »

Regardless Of Latest Verdict, Samsung Has Already Won The Battle With Apple

Ina Fried | Re/Code | April 30, 2014

The jury is still out on the latest Apple-Samsung patent trial, but Samsung has already won the larger battle...For all its legal victories, including a roughly $1 billion verdict in the last patent trial, Samsung has continued to grow its share of the smartphone market, both in the U.S. and globally.

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Software Patents And The Return Of Functional Claiming

Mark A. Lemley | Social Science Research Network | July 25, 2012

Commentators have observed for years that patents do less good and cause more harm in the software industry than in other industries such as pharmaceuticals. They have pointed to a variety of problems and offered a variety of solutions...Most software patents today are written in functional terms. If courts would faithfully apply the 1952 Act, limiting those claims to the actual algorithms the patentees disclosed and their equivalents, they could prevent overclaiming by software patentees and solve much of the patent thicket problem that besets software innovation. Read More »

Stop Patent Mischief By Curbing Patent Enforcement

Simon Phipps | InfoWorld | November 9, 2012

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Software patents are evil. They allow the work of innovators to be ambushed and raise the cost of technology innovation. But finding a viable solution to the software patent mess isn't easy. Read More »

The Huge Societal Costs Of NPE Software Patent Lawsuits

Rob Tiller | opensource.com | September 27, 2012

Innovative software companies start each work day knowing that, no matter how careful and how ethical they are, they face a meaningful risk of being sued for patent infringement...A major source of this pain is non-practicing entities (NPEs), which are expert at acquiring and exploiting weak software patents. While this is not hot news to the open source community, the enormous financial harm caused by NPEs is just starting to be understood. Read More »

Top 5: Legal Issues In Open Source In 2014

David Perry | Opensource.com | December 23, 2014

The most-read articles this year on Opensource.com demonstrated a strong interest in the changing aspects of complicated issues. For example, the top two stories this year both relate to a complex series of cases involving a dispute between Versata and Aperiprise surrounding alleged violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL)...

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US Judge Criticises the Patent System

Staff Writer | The H | July 6, 2012

Richard Posner, a judge for the 7th US Circuit of Appeals in Chicago, has publicly criticised the patent system as it applies to the technology industry. In his opinion, the current behaviour of technology companies when it comes to patents is unacceptable. Read More »

Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 In The U.S. Costs $2,500 In India

Thomas Bollyky | The Atlantic | April 10, 2013

By rejecting patent applications, developing countries have kept down the costs of much-needed medications. Can they continue to do so without harming efforts to develop new drugs? Read More »