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Mark Shuttleworth on the future of Ubuntu
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| As for patents in software, I think society does a very bad deal when it
| gives someone a monopoly in exchange for nothing. The traditional patent deal
| was you gave someone a monopoly in exchange for disclosure of a trade secret.
| You can't really have trade secrets in software.
|
| Of course, the entrenched interests like to frame this as "patents are all
| about innovation", when they really aren't. There's very strong, academic,
| peer-reviewed research that suggests that patents stifle the pace of change
| and innovation.
|
| [...]
|
| The real insight with patents is that what society is buying with that
| monopoly is disclosure. And so the real benefit to society is accelerated
| disclosure of new ideas - not convincing people to invest. People have ideas
| all the time. You can't stop the human mind from innovating. People do
| research and development to win customers, that's what it's really about.
| It's not to file patents. So the entrenched patent holders really aren't
| doing much of a service to society when they articulate their position in
| very flawed terms.
|
| With regard to GNOME and Microsoft, I'm not concerned. My view is that to
| win, you have to have your own vision. You have to have a very clear idea of
| what you can deliver that's unique. You can't go around sort of chasing
| someone else's coat tails. So while I respect the people in the free software
| community who invest a lot of time in making compatible implementations of
| other people's technology, I don't think that's the real recipe for success
| for free software. We have to give people a reason to use our platform for
| itself, not because it's a cheap version of someone else's.
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http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/284760/c1e1b3ae8af1a23d/
Patent Hoarder Caught Shuffling Patents Around To Sue Multiple Times
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| Last year, we noted the trend for various patent hoarding entities to set up
| a group of shell companies with which to sue companies. Part of the reason
| for doing so was to make it that much more difficult for the companies being
| sued to even know who they were fighting against. However, one big patent
| hoarding organization had another plan too… which just backfired. Plutus IP
| is a somewhat secretive patent holding company that has set up a buPlaying
Microsoft Patent Poker
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| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616nch
of
| shell companies all named after stars — and apparently it tried to pull a
| little trick by shuffling patents around among the shells.
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http://techcrunch.freehostia.com/?p=4687
Related:
Who is the world's biggest patent troll?
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| In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different
| answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild
| of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as
| $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from
| universities in Asia."
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http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9816163-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Playing Microsoft Patent Poker
,----[ Quote ]
| This time though, while Ballmer slinks away to try to con … convince people
| that Microsoft Unified Communications somehow offers people more than what
| Cisco's VOIP (voice over IP) been offering customers for years, a patent
| attack finally launches at Linux. Specifically, IP Innovation, a subsidiary
| of Acacia Technologies Group, has filed a patent infringement claim against
| Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat.
|
| So was it just timing, or was it something more? Let's take a look at the
| players.
`----
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2201579,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616
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