[CoLoCo] OLPC SUED

[Alex Comer]

Yes, you can patent software (though I wouldn't recommend it in general, for
philosophical reasons). Sadly the USPTO <http://uspto.gov/> is ill equipped
(in terms of manpower and expertise) to examine all the patent applications
and so most are just "rubber-stamped" approvals, often for "patent
trolls<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll>"
whose sole business model is acquiring patents and suing folks.

Read more here:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-patents.html

Alex

On 11/28/07, Jim Hutchinson <jim at ubuntu-rocks.org> wrote:
>
> On 11/28/07, phillip tribble <phillip.tribble at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/14954/olpc_sued_over_multilingual_keyboard
> >
> > This is very sad. How can we make a difference in a crazed patent money
> > hungry world.
> >
> Could be interesting. Can you patent drivers? Isn't that just software
> and the consensus seems to be you can't (well the OSS consensus and a
> good test of this). As for the keyboard itself, it's exited a long
> time. The only claim could be about putting non-English characters in
> the same location but that might be dictated by logic (such as a z
> sound being on the z key). There may be some underlying technology
> that is a legitimate patent so we'll have to wait and see.
>
> jim
>
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-- 
Alex Comer
alex at platinumcode.com
720-883-5493
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