Patents, Patents, Everywhere...

Open Enterprise: "Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I write a lot about software patents. The reason is simple: they represent probably the greatest single threat to free software, far beyond that of any individual company."

Network World: "Two law professors from UC Berkeley have come up with a novel idea to protect open source developers from patent bullies. They call it the Defensive Patent License. They hope the DPL can address the objections FOSS developers have with patents the way the GPL addressed them for copyright."

Redmonk: "I am against software patents because it is not reasonable to expect that the current patent system, nor even one designed to improve or replace it, will ever be able to accurately determine what might be considered legitimately patentable..."

DaniWeb: "Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse in the world of software patents, a reliable source sent me this response from Steve Jobs about a patent pool that's forming and aiming to nail the open source codecs projects."

The H Open: "Most people in the hacking community are well aware that patents represent one of the most serious threats to free software. But the situation is actually even worse than it seems, thanks to the proliferation of what are called patent thickets."

Rusty Russell's Coding Blog: "The entire chapter was devoted to a glowing advertisement for Intellectual Ventures, pointing out that they own 20,000 patents �more than all but a few dozen companies in the world�, but of course �there is little hard evidence� that they are patent trolls."

OpenSource.com: "Red Hat and Novell stood up to a patent bully and got a favorable jury verdict in the IPI trial which invalidated some software patents that should never have been issued."

LWN.net: "So, do software patents matter for new companies? Lawyer Jason Haislmaier said that they can be important, especially with venture-backed companies, because they are relatively attractive to investors."