Hi all, LWN.net mentions here - http://lwn.net/Articles/518936/ - that the New York Times published a feature against software patents:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?_r=0 It also gives one especially damning quote: « In the smartphone industry alone, according to a Stanford University analysis, as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years — an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings. » I have not read the feature itself yet, but I believe it will be nothing new to most people on this list. One proponent of software patents on this list is Geoffrey, who claims it helped protect some obscure startups against people copying their ideas. However, given the huge and increasing spending on patent litigation, the problem of patent trolls and the fact that “In particular, between 1987 and 1994 , software patents issuance rose 195%, yet real company funded R&D fell by 21% in these (software) industries while rising by 25% in industries in general.” (see http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html ). Geoffrey, would you like to change your opinion now? Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ UNIX Fortune Cookies - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/ Why can’t we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having a “War” on it? -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
