Red Hat CEO decries software patents

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Incomprehensible teachers

As a result of the patent system, we have the teachings of the technology that can be bought by one of the largest R&D software budgets in the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm neither a fan nor critic of Microsoft, but I am a big fan of insuring that innovations are not hidden behind "trade secrets" that would never see the light of day.

Unfortunately, the current fashion in software patents is more along the lines of, "use a wireless network to transmit electronic mail" with details left to the implementor.

Even hardware patents are nearly unreadable, and neither hardware nor software are useful to a practicing engineer because of the huge differential liability attendant to "willful infringement."

I served for several years on the patent review board for a very large company which makes a good bit of its bottom line from patent licenses, and out of hundreds of patents that I was called on to review, at most a handful taught anything worthy of mention.

Frankly, I'm not all that impressed with most of my own, and there are a couple of dozen of them (I really should tally them up again.)

Robert E. Novak - holder of 14 U.S. patents

And there you have one of the main uses of patents any more: resume decoration. I certainly get more mileage out of mine that way than other conceivable use.

Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding   Posted on: 05/22/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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