Ali Sternburg <[email protected]> writes:
> They lost, despite having sued in the Eastern District of Texas, a federal
> district court famous for its patent-friendly judges and juries.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation rightly uses this debacle to point
out that, despite a not-insane decision in this particular instance,
this is not a good situation to have occurred:
That's the good news. The bad news: it came after the patents
already caused plenty of damage. Companies large and small have
taken licenses from Eolas rather than pay millions to fight in
court. Many, such as Tim Berners-Lee (who testified during trial),
warned about the dangers of the Eolas patents […]
We couldn't agree more, but let's go a step further. What the Eolas
patents make clear is that the system isn’t working. We’ve been
saying it for years, yet both Congress and the courts have failed to
fix the problem. In the now infamous Bilski case, the Supreme Court
gave the green light to business method patents, and, consequently,
to software patents. But the patent system, which is largely a
one-size-fits-all program, simply stops making sense when we start
to talk about software.
<URL:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/why-patent-system-doesnt-play>
--
\ “I moved into an all-electric house. I forgot and left the |
`\ porch light on all day. When I got home the front door wouldn't |
_o__) open.” —Steven Wright |
Ben Finney
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