RE: Patent minefield

Roger,

Very interesting, it seems that these days the final verse of the old
monologue about the signing of the Magna Charter is truer than ever, that
is:-

"That's why in England today you can do what you like, so long as you do
what you are told." 

It also seems to be that whilst 1984 talked about state control, these days
in the western world it increasingly big business who want to manipulate
what we think, and when we think it. 
 
It was a sad sad day when the UK succumbed and allowed software patents to
be granted. I have a friend who used to develop Mass Spectrometers. However
he spent the last 10 years of his working life in patent litigation. I guess
Software is going the same way. 

Dave
G4UGM
Illegitimi Non Carborundum


> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger Bowler
> Sent: 03 May 2010 17:15
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [hercules-advocacy] Patent minefield
> 
> 
> In case anyone doubts that IBM's patent arsenal[1] is 
> intended for non-peaceful purposes, here again is the 
> well-known story about Sun's visitation from the men in blue suits:
> 
> http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
> 
> And apparently they add another 20 patents per day[2]. That 
> means that every day IBM invent another 20 ways they can use 
> to attack developers who have the temerity to stray into what 
> IBM regard as their exclusive domain. Another 20 ways to 
> restrict the freedom of programmers like you and me by 
> staking their exclusive claims on who can develop what.
> 
> --
> Regards,
> Roger Bowler
> http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
> Hercules "the people's mainframe"
> 
> [1] http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/
> [2] 
> http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-it-comes-to-paten
ts-ibm-stands-for.html



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